The college should just cut bait with the city and the school district and go find their own space. As long as they have to appease those two groups, nothing they want is going to get done.

No hard feelings, let the city and the school district have the space back and do what they want (which sounds like bicker a lot with someone else or each other). There won't be a better time to get as long as a commercial lease as the college wants or to buy space as right now and over the next couple of years. Might as well go that route and rid themselves of dealing with the city and school district and attendant issues.

Good point John the Man. As a DeAnza student, I would like to see more classes on the Middlefield campus, but I agree the DeAnza-Foothill CCD would probably be better off if they didn't have to deal with the Palo Alto HSD and city council. The city council's position toward the college can change at anytime in the future, because people will win and lose seats on the city council. If the college bought or leased land from a private source, they would be much better off in the long run.

This has just been going on too long now, it's time for the college to move on. The city and school district want to hold onto the property and simply lease it out like it was a typical commercial property, which it is not and does not have a market like typical commercial property.

But they also want a say into so much detail of the property, it's simply not worth it. It's like your mother-in-law renting a house out to you, but then trying to tell you you must take your shoes off at the door as a condition of the rental agreement. Sure, you can set those types of rules but you can't expect people to want to rent from you for long... or rent from you at all.

Plus there are just too many other people to please: the city council, the school district, the neighborhood.... it's simply not worth it. And with all real estate markets really being a buyer's market, it's the best time to just find a new satellite campus and let the city and school district figure out they can't make anywhere near as much money or have anywhere near the market they think without the college.

The college has the leverage, not the city or the school district. It's time the college exercise that leverage and just rid itself of the headache that is the city and school district. Let them be someone else's problem.

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