My take away from a fairly recent meeting in council chambers when a Google development executive addressed council, was that Google "supports the notion of housing in North Bayshore" but that was as far as Google was willing to go when pressed by a council member to get a definitive "yes" or "no" to the question -- if housing units were allowed in the area, would Google build/own this housing? Google's "we support the notion..." reply was a coy "no". Google will not be building housing in North Bayshore.

Given the insane price and scarcity of real estate, why are we still building 4-5 story buildings in NBS? This is the perfect place to build some real densities so we can preserve our land for other things like parks, housing, schools, etc.

I'm trying to figure out where this new office will be located. What buildings or businesses are at the site now?

All these locations are currently occupied by Google and LinkedIn office buildings, right?

The current buildings are one-story and spread out over a good distance, making them inefficient for a companies that want employees to work closely together on large projects.

I hope we approve their development of the biggest, coolest, most forward thinking buildings ever with as much space as possible. In this way, we will be the center of gravity for everything south of the City, and even if Google leaves or diversifies, we will still have this incredible infrastructure to attract whatever the next hot thing is. If we don't do this, they will find somewhere else to go and we will lose the energy, money and urban planning flexibility we currently have. And no, I don't work for any of these companies; I work for a small company near San Antonio and El Camino.

"where" is almost right. This is all on existing space, but it could be anywhere there are buildings. LinkedIn is proposing to build down where the Laser Tag place is, but Google, Intuit, and Microsoft would be proposing to build new buildings where they already are, just bigger. You're definitely right that these office layouts are straight from the 80s, when it was assumed everyone wanted to drive to an office building that was surrounded by giant parking lots.

This is the part that confuses me: "west of Shoreline Boulevard and on the north side of the Century movie theaters and Plymouth Street." I really wish they had a diagram or map. I guess we'll know soon enough.

I understand west of Shoreline. Does the north side of the Century movie theaters mean the space currently occupied by Sports Page and the other small restaurants? If they just meant the buildings on the other side of Plymouth, then why mention the movie theaters at all.

For a large project north of Plymouth, I wonder if it'll stretch down to the Country Deli space.

Mercury News has a more detailed description of where all this development will take place:

Web Link

Google wants to rebuild on Huff. No big deal then.

My main concern is that those initiatives will attract even more people to Mountain View. Currently we already have a big gap between the offer of homes and the demand, by increasing employment around in approximately 20,000 new positions or more, the prices for renting and buying homes in the area will blow up sky high.

Our City Counsel should be worried about this important phenomena that is pushing out of the city people that leave here for many years, as far as two or three generations, working jobs that are absolutely necessary for our community, but that do not pay sufficiently for those families to sustain their homes.

Our City Counsel should demand plans from those large employers, to increase invest in building new homes to accommodate the growing demand they are provoking. Space for supporting new homes, schools, community centers and all necessary facilities to expand the city on a holistic sustainable way.

This should be our main preoccupation around those mega investments coming to our town.

20,000 new jobs, and that’s just in North Bayshore. It feels strange to say it, but that’s exactly what we DON’T need. But we will get it anyway, because the 3.4 million sf of new office space has already been approved by the last city council, and the new council can be expected to say “yes” to whatever Google desires.

And there’s that potential Google expansion into Moffett Field too...

So the next hot topic will be: Gee... now where can we put all that additional housing that these Councilpersons believe they were elected to provide, to remedy the “jobs/housing imbalance”? Those 5,000 units? Or maybe it should be 20,000?

Answer: It will go into your neighborhood, of course, unless you are fortunate enough to live south of El Camino, on the Los Altos side of Mountain View.

Ken Rosenberg wants a “world class city”. Mike Kasperszak has talked about the “Manhattanization of Mountain View”.

Good luck to us all.

Google blogged about their proposal: Web Link

Google is going to grow its business whether the city likes it or not. Telling them to stop hiring is naive. If the city refuses to let them grow in Mountain View, then they are just going to build office buildings in nearby cities like Palo Alto and Sunnyvale and our traffic problems will be the same even worse, since employees will have to commute longer distances to work and also shuttle between office buildings.

Our best option is to work with Google on improving non-car transportation options. Google buses are one option that is already working for them. We also need public transportation options, bike paths, etc. There are lots of things we can do, if we start working before the problem grows.