Once again, we see selfish NIMBYism opposing something that's good for a larger community. How much noise do you get from a Little League field? And the kids are only there during the day. I also don't like to see trees removed, but new trees will grow back. Basically, these people don't give a damn if their downstream neighbors get flooded out. As long as their own little lives are not inconvenienced.

One minor inaccuracy of the article is that only Big McKelvey's field orientation is being rotated in this design, compared with its current layout today. Little McKelvey keeps its current orientation, facing Miramonte Ave.

Whichever way the big field ultimately faces, it seems that one row of bleachers will still have to be on the MV Avenue side near the residents, unless it's rotated so that home plate is near Miramonte, which doesn't seem like a very good fit.

Sucks that they want to remove large established redwoods.

It seems to me that the Santa Clara Valley Water District has a lot of money and wants to dig somewhere. Now that they have abandoned plans to dig up Cuesta Park Annex, they need another playground. How about letting them go out to the salt ponds and play there?

Keep the redwoods.

At the meeting the water district said it would cost 80 Million to update Permanente Creek so that it could carry the 100 year flood and they were only given 40 Million, so they elected to build the retention pond. Keep in mind the park will be badly damaged each time they flood it. The retention approach only handles a short term peak, beyond which it does not fix the problem. Clearly a bandaid not a fix.
Complete waste of money.

This park will have lights. It will have loud speakers announcing each batter up. If I lived next door I would take the city to court to block this design. A large portion of the park is being used for parking lot without a single tree for shade. Why not put the parking next to the houses? Beter yet.... fix the creek... leave the park alone....

I wanted to point out the report by the water district, which has the areas of former and projected flooding well laid out - Figure 4-1 in this doc:

Web Link

All the other reports etc. are available here (it is amazing to which level of detail things have been planned; one has to wonder how governments can get anything done):
Web Link

While the plans aren't perfect, and probably cannot be, one should consider the benefits that this project brings to the area, and if you look closely at the map, actually including the houses next to the park. Without protection, they will probably get flooded sooner or later.

Hopefully some compromise can be found with respect to how McKelvey park should be upgraded with the new flood protection feature. Shrinking the big field just a tad so it can be rotated and provide some space for trees to fit in, or doing away with one of the circles would seem sensible, perhaps. It would seem that kids can easily walk from either circle to the fields or the park, and the circles use valuable space (including perhaps, the right one might make rotation of the big field harder?).

By the way, one funny thing. If you look at this from a satellite picture, the area that's immediately south of it ... is yet another baseball field. One kinda does wonder how many baseball fields are needed on such a short stretch. But please ... lawsuits seem like a pretty inefficient way to find a solution / improvement. Thanks for being considerate!

$10 million to plan for a storm that has a 1% chance of happening each year?

And how did Mountain View buy for the last 100 years without this flood basin?

The time we get any flood project work done, the 100 year would have happened already.

The water district's flood projections are exaggerated by 200%. Although they have been collecting data on water levels for decades, they have not used this data in their flood projections because the data does not show a need for flood basins. A large 2 acre pond in Rancho San Antonio has been handling Permanente Creek overflow since the 1950's. Permanente Creek has not flooded since the culvert behind Blach School was built in 1959.

Dear Cynthia, your assertions seem incorrect. Since 1959, the creek has flooded at least three times (1983, 1995, 1998). See Fig. 31, "Recent Flooding":
Web Link

Can you please explain where your 200% number comes from? If you have done research that is more thorough than what's in the study done by the district, please elaborate and link to it.

"This park will have lights. It will have loud speakers announcing each batter up. If I lived next door I would take the city to court to block this design."

The baseball park already has these amenities. If you move near a park, school , or a baseball field you should expect noise.

This is needed because of global warming and raising sea levels will soon cause Mountain View to be under water. So unless you all want to live under water you better give in to this. Live in fear of global warming and give hundreds of billions to the UN so they will save all of us.