I applaud the city council for its courage to innovate. When you are creating a new community, you have a rare chance to create one that looks forward into the future, rather than one that looks like the past.

I hope that is a world leading community that is small in its physical and carbon footprint, to achieve scalable economic and environmental sustainability. I hope it is free of all residential private cars, to acknowledge and foster a different way of life in harmony with the Bay that can only be achieved adjacent to large existing job centers.

To clarify Mr. DeBolt’s quote of mine, my dream for North Bayshore would never apply to my family, two teachers who both work outside the city. My dream is for the many people who work in North Bayshore, who aren’t wealthy, and are barely making it. Despite the impression many have of those who work for companies in North Bayshore (which I do not), there’s enough who barely make it to fill many eco-warrior micro-housing biking communities, even with extreme restraints on cars and house size.

In MV’s past, there always was housing to match one’s current situation in life, allowing one to save and move up in the city. Now there is only expensive and more expensive, robbing half the city of renters a chance at what many benefited in the past.

There are already 750 people living in that census tract as of 2010, down about 300 from 2000. It has always been a community and still is.

Many years ago the city needed more affordable housing for it's young, mostly single workforce, so they approved massive development of primarily one and two-bedroom apartments along California Ave. Since this was planned for young workers with no families, they didn't plan for school space or park space accordingly.

Now those apartments are filled with families, cramming sometimes 3-4 children per bedroom, with way less park or outdoor space than any child deserves and an overcrowded school (so much so that children must be bused to other MV schools).

I'm not necessarily against building housing in the North Bay, but I've seen this story play out before, and it hasn't had a great ending. I'd like to think we are smarter this time around and will plan better, but I have my doubts.

Housing provided by employers is a good idea but you will still need to build housing elsewhere. Google builds housing for workers, workers live in that housing.

Houusing on El Camino Real would be good to provide housing for those who don't work for Google. Not all compaines, busineses have the means to provide housing but yet add workers.

The article quotes Christopher Chiang, a current North Bayshore resident who expresses his views frequently in public. But the article didn't mention that most voting residents in North Bayshore disagree with him. In the recent City-Council election, that precinct voted foremost for Lisa Matichak, whose platform emphasized neighborhood preservation (in opposition to the three elected candidates who advocate housing construction, specifically in North Bayshore).

However, many people in MV agree it's desirable to make home ownership more available (it can free residents from the uncertainty and long-term sunk costs of renting). You're seeing that from Council in a trend toward supporting small owner-occupied housing construction. Much of the developer interest and investment in recent years, though, has been by firms like Prometheus that build for rental.

I for one wonder how much this reversal cost.
Of course those living out there on the "ground" floor will be able to go fishing through the windows in just a few more years. Another Mountain View Fantasy.

I agree that not all current North Bayshore residents agree with more development. It is worth noting that the only two residents who spoke at the council meeting were in favor. Also Ms. Matichak carried North Bayshore by 3 votes over Pat Showalter Link Web Link (who supports NB housing), so the election results support the view that the current residents in North Bayshore have diverse opinions, as does the rest of the city.

The earlier comment on more traditional rental housing is spot on that it will perpetuate the wealth gap in the Silicon Valley. I hope we stop doing more of the same, and try something innovative like micro-housing, which is the only way to achieve affordability on scale when land is so expensive, and it also happens to be most ecological as well.

Does anyone know what the plan is to accommodate the presumably growing number of children that will reside in Mountain View? There are already overcrowded classrooms in the current schools in MVWSD (as highlighted in recent Voice articles), so particularly in areas where large multi-family developments are planned, has the council made any comment on whether there needs to be a plan to build more schools, allocate more funding to prevent ongoing ballooning of class sizes, or hire larger staffs of qualified teachers??

As long as there are Safeways and Starbucks and schools, housing there would be good. Or make living there contingent on being single and employed in the area.

Missing from the spin comment above that Matichak "carried North Bayshore by 3 votes over Pat Showalter" is both that the margin was much higher over the other two new Council members (thus, NBS voters chose Matichak over Lenny Siegel by a 4:3 ratio), and that in the small NBS precinct, a few votes is decisive.

That election result constitutes the only recent data we have that _objectively_ measured views among North Bayshore residents. Whereas at Council meetings, tiny groups of self-selected agenda-driven speakers are the familiar norm. For instance, in the Voice's report on Council's recent Bus Rapid Transit discussion (which prompted an endless comments thread here), two of the three speakers quoted favoring removal of car lanes from El Camino in MV didn't, themselves, live in MV, or even in adjacent towns.

Who cares what one precinct thinks. Not everyone gets to vote, but it sure is surprising that the three pro housing candidates won and not one of the EPC council candidates did. The whole non housing vote for NBS was silly. Take a look at the excuses some former council members used to explain their votes.

Not every landowner will want to build housing but I bet google will build some rental housing . As to the alleged problems, potential renters will be fully aware of them and some will still choose it live there. Amazing.

Maybe if they get a few more kids living in North Bayshore, the school district will be able to reopen the closed and leased-out Whisman School on Easy Street (Near Moffett Blvd and Highway 85, just south of 101.). Those kids are currently bused to schools that are farther away than the trip would be to north Bayshore.

This was circulated in the community Balanced MV discussions, and is relevant to the discussion in our city.

In Menlo Park:
"Facebook executives say they are open to new land-use approaches with the latest purchase. Most significantly: Publicly accessible mixed-use housing, retail, even a hotel are all on the table, thanks to a city-led "visioning" process for the area that Facebook says it fully supports and helped develop.

"We feel you just can't build a corporate campus, it has to be integrated into the community," Facebook real estate chief John Tenanes said in an exclusive interview this week.

"Facebook now controls roughly 200 acres on the edge of the San Francisco Bay, and executives say they want to think beyond their buildings' walls to take advantage of trails, a railway easement and a tunnel to better connect their campuses and the neighborhood."

Full Article Web Link

The city should solve the campground and homeless problem in the old Safeway parking lot on California before solving housing problems for Googlers. That would be the morally correct thing to do. Or just ignore it...

What say you Christopher Chiang?

Is their any land left since Google bought up most of the open land in Mtn View and now moved into Sunnyvale? IS'n the cost in the area 11 million an acre? those houses / condo will be small or $$.

If you are building a new community in North Bayshore, why not aim for a new standard and go car free? If people can't meet that standard, there's other places to live. Below is a relevant recent article.

7 Cities That Are Starting To Go Car-Free
EXCERPTS:
Urban planners are finally recognizing that streets should be designed for people, not careening hunks of deadly metal.

A new satellite city planned in Southwest China could serve as a model for a modern suburb: Instead of a layout that makes it necessary to drive, the streets are designed so any location can be reached by 15 minutes on foot. The plans, designed by Chicago-based architects Adrian Smith and Gordon Gill, don't call for completely banning cars, but only half of the road area will allow motorized vehicles. Out of an expected population of 80,000 people, most will be able to walk to work in local neighborhoods.

Copenhagen started introducing pedestrian zones in the 1960s in the city center, and car-free zones slowly spread over the next few decades. The city now has over 200 miles of bike lanes, with new bike superhighways under development to reach surrounding suburbs. The city has one of the lowest rates of car ownership in Europe.

Full Article
Web Link

High housing costs are simply a matter of supply and demand. There are only two ways to make housing cheaper: either increase supply (as this article discusses), or reduce demand (i.e., get out the pitchforks and drive Google out of town). @DC: high prices are a reason for building more housing, not against.

At the same time, Mountain View is a not-very-big town with limited influence on the regional market. With this in mind, I applaud the intention of one of our new councilmembers to bring together heads of neighboring cities to work out the housing issue together. Every city has to pull its weight.

Comparing Mtn View with the Danish capital Copenhagen, now that is a new one. So you want 1800 plus people to live in one square mile in Mtn View. Now that would be on 5 story building everywere, specialy in downtown and that would include all of the surounding area. Ready to redevelop most of Mtn View and not just North Bayshore. If you want to live in a big city, maybe you need to move there. Mtn View is still a rather small city and most residents like it that way.

I'm sorry, but 1800 people per square mile is not a lot. Mountain View already has 75000 people on 12 square miles. You can do the math yourself.

You may like a "rather small city", but this kind of community is not sustainable under current market forces (i.e., a growing economy). If we stopped building, in 20 years Mountain View would be an exclusive enclave that your children would most likely never be able to afford.

Right now we have about 62000 per square miles, so think of it three times as much. Maybe it's time for some of you to take a trip to Denmark to see what the downtown of a major European city looks like. Or may be just travel to Chicago or New York.

I think your numbers are each off by a decimal place.

I agree that tripling Mountain View's population density would be a big shock that most residents wouldn't like. But no need to travel to Europe to see how it would look -- Copenhagen is only slightly denser than San Francisco. I wouldn't live there, or at least not in most neighborhoods, but there are some fine models of medium-density, walkable/bikeable development elsewhere in the Bay Area, such as MLK Way in Berkeley or Rockridge in Oakland.

Adding 5000 units of housing in North Bayshore and another 5000 along El Camino would increase the population by about 30%. Even if that were spread out over ten years (3% per year), the rate of growth would not be sustainable for much longer, either politically or economically (there isn't much more land available for redevelopment). But in the 2000s, our growth rate averaged 0.5% per year. Increasing that to 1%--2% in the long term, cooperatively with neighboring cities, would do a lot to keep housing prices down.

Carnegie Mellon is in Pittsburgh, not Philadelphia. By confusing the two, you are certain to offend expats from both.

is change. Earlier poster is correct in saying that voters gave a mandate. People don't attend meetings not necessarily because they don't want to, but because they have jobs and busy lives. Voting is the main tool they have, and obviously they spoke to a pro-housing position. I'd like more civic engagement too, but I haven't been to a meeting since forever. I hear all this grouchy, anti-housing about "let the market decide" well, voters are the market. The voters elected people to decide based on a pro-housing decision. If people don't think adding housing is acceptable, or that there's not enough schooling -- as they would say, let the market decide. If it's important enough, it will get incorporated. Parents also move to where there kids will supposedly have better schools. If not MV or LA then nouveau riche will send their kids to Harker or something. It will be figured out.

Zoning laws and restrictive permitting policies are a huge market distortion. Rents being what they are, a truly free market would build scads of apartment/condo towers. It's specious for opponents of growth to justify their position by appealing to market forces.