When will Google's own employees organize to make it known to their own company that they also desperately need more housing? Until this stakeholder group, Google employees, stands up for their own interest, this seems to be going in circles.

Tell them to take a hike. Go build 80,000,000,000 square feet of office space in San Jose, traffic is already bad enough here.

@Juan

Traffic is bad because you guys spent decades neglecting to invest properly in transit infrastructure.

@Juan, Google will take a hike.

They already assembled a huge campus in Sunnyvale north of 237, bigger than their Mountain View campus, I think. When San Jose campus deal is finalized and approved I'm not sure why Google wants to build more in Mountain View.

Google is interested in Google - not a community in the way,

Scattering our housing and not fixing transportation infrastructure seems misguided. Mountain View should just have a high density area with no new buildings less than six stories and from there build great transportation alternatives such as to North Bayshore. The space between El Camino and Central and bound on the other sides by Castro and San Antonio is ideal for really dense housing. We should not be forcing people to live in places where roads and services don't support residential living.

Please, let google's 'threat' materialize, and don't let the door hit 'em on their way out of town.

As I said months ago. Google was playing with this city. And the city was so easy to get manipulated by Google. Being teased into giving Google almost anything it wanted. This was so sad to eye-witness. If you think Google will be satisfied if the City agrees with it after this, you have got to be kidding, they will move the cheese forever.

It is time for our city to stand up and stop capitulating.

Google sounds deceitful, unless they build at least a good portion of the
housing. They can play their games about the exact number, but they started
this idea not being straightforward. Don't get hung up on the 9,567 number.
They will come around. Maybe they will build more at Moffett Field,
of somehow they manage to get a bridge to connect the 2 locations. Maybe that
bridge should be conditioned on housing in North Bayshore.

I'm glad Google got tired of a greedy local government trying to cook the golden goose. I hope they move to San Jose and all the nimby owners property values plummet. It's a nice dream.

Google employees should declare a "Do No Evil Day" and sit home to protest Van Belleghem's threat to build no housing in North Bayshore. gGoogle execs can run the company by themselves.

WTF? Why is Google the only company that can willing to build housing in North Bayshore? When housing already sells for $1000+ a sq/ft, there should be no problem finding other developers to fill the void. There is something seriously[Portion removed due to disrespectful comment or offensive language] with your development requirements if it's too expensive for developers to make money. Google is not the problem here.

@Chuck

Google owns or has very long term leases on about 70% of all of the buildable property in North Bayshore. It's not that Google has to build the housing themselves. They can contract with a developer to do that. But without the land to build on, a development project can't go anywhere.

@Political Inciter

Owning the land is only one piece of the puzzle. NIMBY groups can still throw roadblocks in the way and stall construction.

I will be very happy if Google leaves, my house plummets by $500k, and traffic lessens. Maybe a few others can leave too.

In response to Renter you said: ”I'm glad Google got tired of a greedy local government trying to cook the golden goose. I hope they move to San Jose and all the nimby owners property values plummet. It's a nice dream.”

I am surprised you aren’t aware of the millions of dollars of incentives Goggle received to build their office complexes in the City of Mountain View. That without those incentives Google would not have been as successful in as short a period of time as they are today.

Just equate that they are a multi-billion dollar corporation or a very sadistic cat, the city of Mountain View is nothing but a mouse to play with before the mouse is eaten.

I refuse to be a mouse.

Thank you City Council! Finally something to be proud about what you have done. I see nothing but greed, greed and more greed from Tech.

In today's SF Chronicle there's an article about a study report that finds it would cost California $26 billion to build enough housing to even put a dent in the shortage. The "shortage" is caused by the tremendous influx of tech workers in recent years. When are we regular folks going to stop subsidizing the wealth of the tech companies, their executives and their investors?

What benefit do we non-techies have by this endless tech expansion? They keep their wealth abroad, drive up the rents insanely and provide no common solutions to the problems they generate such as traffic congestions, overloaded schools and drags on infrastructure. Silicon Valley seems close to collapsing under the weight of the success of our much admired tech titans. Sadly they are solely interested in their own success and being very poor citizens. No surprise Alphabet dropped the "Don't be evil" motto, they must have recognized the inappropriateness too.

Anke,

Costa Hawkins almost guarantees that these projects will be profitable.

Why has it gotten this bad? Costa Hawkins was supposed to prevent this deficit. With all the free unfettered profit. What does the industry say, it's everyone else's fault.

How could it be? They had virtually infinite money to influence the state and local governments. You surely (not shirley) cannot mean that they failed to use that influence? For developers, it was just much easier to build office buildings instead of residences. Especially where state and local governments were bending over backwards to get "their" share of the jobs opening up.

All I am observing is that the citizens of California got the raw end of those deals because no one ever looked at the big picture, nor attempted to restore the work and living space balances. Should the people living in California be forced to pay that price?

NO the industries that didn't act are solely responsible for the problem. They made profit for 20 years. It is time for them to fix the problem, and they should expect no public money to assist them, unless they are willing to drop Costa Hawkins.

Amen, Business Man!

"How could it be? They had virtually infinite money to influence the state and local governments. You surely (not shirley) cannot mean that they failed to use that influence? For developers, it was just much easier to build office buildings instead of residences. Especially where state and local governments were bending over backwards to get "their" share of the jobs opening up."

"It is time for them [industries] to fix the problem"

They will never do that simply on the basis of it being the "right thing". All of this is exactly why we need to get big money out of politics, fix our broken system that allows those with the big money to buy our politicians and coerce or hoodwink them into enabling the rich to get even richer at the expense of the rest of us.

Anke,

I cannot disagree with you. The idea I have is that the state should give the industry this deal:

First, the state will not revoke Costa Hawkins for another 5 years contingent on:

Second, a temporary voluntary 20% discount on all rents.

Third, that there will be a 15% increase in existing housing inventory approved projects. Not that they need to be built in the 5 years.

Given that those steps are considered a good faith evidence, another 5 years extension of Costa Hawkins would be allowed contingent on:

Second, a temporary hold on all rents.

Third, that there will be a 25% increase in existing housing inventory approved projects. Not that they need to be built in the 5 years. But the previous 15% will need to be completed.

Given that those steps are considered a good faith evidence, another 5 years extension of Costa Hawkins would be allowed contingent on:

Second, an increase of 10% on rents are allowed on all rents.

Third, that there will be a 25% increase in existing housing inventory approved projects will be completed.

Thus, this is voluntary and fixes the problem with the least public efforts and provides that the industry will still be able to remain profitable as long as the owners are practicing good business judgment.

Why doesn't Google expand into areas with affordable housing, like Tracy, Reno and other parts of the USA? If they build it they will come.

So, Google has been advocating for months, years even, to allow for a substantial number of housing units to be developed in North Bayshore...hard enough that the city of Mountain View has spent nearly two years working on revising their very recently adopted precise plan for North Bayshore in order to see about including 9,850 units of housing...and now that the city is close to making this come to fruition, Google is threatening to derail the entire thing if the city doesn't give them more development rights? Really?

Good corporate citizen my a$$.

The the time and effort that has gone into the 9,850 unit visioning plan has been extensive, and will have a significant impact on all of the current residents of Mountain View, and is ultimately expected to increase the population by 65% and increase the public school enrollment by 46% - which will also require land purchase and the construction of FIVE new schools (THREE elementary schools, TWO middle schools, and ONE high school - which was somehow left out of the EIR.) Cost to construct the schools - not including land costs - is expected to exceed 162 MILLION dollars.

The city of Mountain View recently agreed to *sell one million gallons of water daily - in perpetuity - to East Palo Alto (so they could do more development) and it is unknown what effect the housing development in North Bayshore will have on Mountain View's 20 year water projections...other than there is a projected deficit -- without adding in google's demand for an additional 800,000 sf of office space. (* Sold for a one time fee of 5 million dollars)

The city of Mountain View has been desperately trying to add housing units to help balance the jobs housing imbalance, and here google is selfishly trying to undue all the good things that Mountain View has been working so hard to do - by demanding an additional 800,000 sf of office development rights in order to allow the housing development to happen on the land they control in North Bayshore.

Let your flag fly google.

Gtfo

"Why doesn't Google expand into areas with affordable housing, like Tracy, Reno and other parts of the USA? If they build it they will come."

@MyOpinion, some of us have been advocating for variations on that for some time now. I would not wish on Tracy, Reno or any other city the ills that have befallen Mountain View and the Bay Area. These are the result of the tech companies taking over, bringing in massive numbers of outsiders to take the jobs they create, and leaving the locals to languish. Much more logical would be for the tech companies to set up shop in cities that have been depleted and would actually benefit from a huge influx of newcomers. There was a mass exodus out of Detroit following the mortgage meltdown. Are there other examples?

Here's another article about the council meeting that folks might be interested in. It's basically the same information, but they add a few angles not included in the Voice article.

Web Link

@YIMBY

I was at the council meeting and I didn't hear a single person in the public testimony queue say that we shouldn't build the 9,850 units.

If there were NIMBYs, they were REALLY quiet.

The council has clearly prodded Google into a corner with their demands of nearly 2000 affordable units and environmental requirements.

Given Google's expansion to Sunnyvale and San Jose, it's also clear that Mountian View is not their only option.

I suggest that council gets a dose of reality and plays nicely with Google to resolve this issue.

If you weren't at the meeting, check the video. The Google rep's ultimatum is way at the end. He's not asking nicely, he's ordering the City Council to give them the extra office space, or else: "Just to be clear - no new office, no new residential."

What contempt they seem to have for this city and its Council.

What is their problem? What is 800,000sf to them, with something like 10 million sf in the pipeline in MV, SV, and SJ?

Will they bring their own water and resources to sustain life? What about roads and schools and hospitals and cemeteries and other infrastructure? How about garbage dumps?
This is an excellent opportunity to stop the overcrowding.

Mountain View was founded in 1902, Google was founded in 1998. Believe it or not, Mountain View existed for 96 years without Google, and somehow, someway, we made it through the darkness. My memory isn't too sharp, but I don't recall murder sprees, cannibal zombies roaming Castro street, or citywide riots before Google came to town. We mostly got along just fine. Someday Google will leave, and we'll still get along just fine.

Why has the city of Mountain View sold it's soul to the devil? You have a whole city of residents to serve, most of whom don't work for Google. You are not Google's minions, and it's time to honor a set of values that existed before the high tech god came in and started leading you around, as you salivated at the money being dangled in front of you. GOOGLE DOES NOT CARE ABOUT MOUNTAIN VIEW; GOOGLE CARES ABOUT GOOGLE. Get a backbone Mtn. View, and remove your lips from Google's behind.

If the city of Mountain View really cared about adding more housing they would stop demanding subsidized low-price rents and just allow building at market rates. It's Google's land, let them build what they want already.

We own a small restaurant in the strip next to the theater. Google is our landlord since the land swap last year. As a small local business, our sales are suffering on a daily basis: google employees get free food and Microsoft is renovating its campus for the next one year. Google won’t let us let us sell out lease so we are stuck until Google has plans for the land they bought.

Google, please give vouchers to your employees to dine at Plymouth street restaurants so we don’t shut down for good! Please decide soon.

I wasn't at the City council Meeting, but the tone of Van Bellegham's words left me aghast. Sounds like a bully to me. Mountain View City Council - Please don't cower.

Just some hardball negotiating tactics...not for the squeamish or the uninitiated. They'll hash it all out.

In response to It's new so I'm afraid:

I just wonder what Google is saying in secret to the City, if that is what they say in public, I can only imagine the threats being made to the City in private?

Hooray to the citizens.

The Governor signed all housing bills this morning. ESPECIALLY AB 1505.

Mountain View can now DICTATE that affordable housing is included in all projects.

Along with many other provisions.

Kevin - wake up! there must be some affordable housing included in any new development.. Google doesn't get a free pass just for being Google -

Kevin - There must be some affordable housing included in any new development.. Google doesn't get a free pass just for being Google -

BusinessMan helpfully shared:
"The Governor signed all housing bills this morning. ESPECIALLY AB 1505.

Mountain View can now DICTATE that affordable housing is included in all projects."


Some voices have been skeptical as to how much these measures will really do to ease the housing cost pain and the harm done to regular, non-techie folks (can't even say to "low-income" folks anymore as now even some 6-figure earners are struggling). I wish one of those bills would have required cities to build enough housing for the number of jobs they have, and furthermore to require the housing be there before the commercial development is started. Of course that will never happen, but think about it. A law like that would have forced our and other city councils to think about the cost of giving google carte blanche to expand indefinitely before the damage was done, instead of waiting until so many beloved local businesses and longtime community members were pushed out.

Re: "If they build it [elsewhere] they will come."

It isn't as simple as that. Even a huge tech employer like Google, Facebook, or Apple is going to find it difficult to build a completely new development center in the middle of nowhere. Employees want other potential employers located nearby, so they have at least a chance of getting their next job without relocating again. And employers benefit from having a pool of local employees.

So you end up with locations with tech companies and tech employees gathered together, like Silicon Valley, Silicon Glen (Scotland), Research Triangle (North Carolina), etc., etc., etc.

When I went through Google's months-long interview process in a moment of complete insanity. The Google recruiter could not believe I lived in Mountain View. I was literally the very first local they had dealt with since that recruiter had been with the company. That I was a local, and had lived here for decades was viewed with suspicion since, in Google's mind, I should have already applied of course! I'm sure there are exceptions, but definitely the majority of a Google recruiter's time is spent interviewing folks who do not live here, shuttling them through their byzantine hiring process and helping the folks they ultimately do decide to hire to move into the area. And at the rate Google is importing folks, they had better get serious about building housing, or all their engineers will be living in trailers in their parking lots. Call their bluff.

And the public display of bullying begins. I was waiting for this. Google doesn't care about Mountain View and will use Mountain View to get what it wants, without giving back in return. They may throw peanuts at us thinking that Mountain View residents are so desperate for Google's presence in North Shore that will accept their goodwill gestures as evidence they care about the city and the people who live in it. No, we're not that desperate. Call their bluff. No more office space, period.

If Google is going to hold a proverbial gun to the head of the city of Mountain View, then maybe the city should respond in kind and impose an annual North Bayshore employee 'fee' of $2,000.00 per employee for any company that houses more than 1,000 employees in the North Bayshore district. No exemptions.

Are you listening Google?

GTFO

The California Apartment Association and the California Realtors had a very bad day today. The following laws were enacted today by the signature of the Governor

The CAA and Realtors hates the new SB 2 (Atkins), the Building Homes and Jobs Act, because it creates a new funding source for affordable housing through a $75 fee on real estate transaction documents. It will provide funding based on all transaction documents.

The CAA and Realtors hates the new SB 35 (Wiener) streamlines the approval process for infill developments in local communities that have failed to meet their regional housing needs. It will give affordable housing an advantage regarding getting projects approved and built.

The CAA and Realtors hates the new SB 166 (Skinner) ensures that cities maintain an ongoing supply of housing construction sites for residents of various income levels. It requires that diversity of housing will satisfy all income levels.

The CAA and Realtors hates the new SB 167 (Skinner) increases the standard of proof required for a local government to justify a denial of low- and moderate-income housing development projects. (SB 167 is identical to AB 678.) The local governments will not be allowed to arbitrarily or capriciously disregard all citizens based on their earnings.

The CAA and Realtors hates the new SB 540 (Roth) streamlines the environmental review process for certain local affordable housing projects. The CAA and Realtors hates the new AB 678 (Bocanegra) increases the standard of proof required for a local government to justify its denial of low- to moderate-income housing development projects. (AB 678 is identical to SB 167.) It will give an advantage to affordable housing projects, instead of benefiting the luxury projects.

The CAA and Realtors hates the new AB 72 (Santiago/Chiu) strengthens the state's ability to enforce laws that require local governments to achieve housing goals. It makes local governments accountable for failure to provide the new housing inventory defined in the state and area housing needs

The CAA and Realtors hates the new AB 1505 (Bloom/Bradford/Chiu/Gloria) authorizes cities and counties to adopt an inclusionary ordinance for residential rental units in order to create affordable housing. This provides local governments the power to require sufficient affordable housing to be provided in every project.

The CAA and Realtors hates the new AB 1521 (Bloom/Chiu) gives experienced housing organizations a first right of refusal to purchase affordable housing developments in order to keep the units affordable. This will allow the city governments the ability to prevent property dumping and transfer being done for the purpose of simply raising rents on the property after the transaction.

This has been a lousy day for the California Apartment Association and California Realtors

During his comments about needing additional office space, the Google rep plainly stated, "We have a business to run." Originally, didn't they just want to build dorms on their land to house their employees? I don't think they want to get into the housing business and help out employees of other companies. Why should they? 70% of the apartments will be studios or 1 bedrooms. Is this the kind of mix that promotes a stable neighborhood? Of course none of this is going to happen overnight. How do you phase in retail and schools when you haven't got critical mass yet? Does anyone really believe Google will subsidize either of those? I think this is way more than the city of Mountain View can handle, both in terms of dealing with Google and managing a project this size.

Why is it that Mountain View is choosing to become adversarial with their economic base. Calling their bluff? Really?
These companies will begin to change course, may have already started the process, and then City Council will not be agonizing over bike lanes and affordable housing any more. There are ways to manage growth, and nobody wants to live in a company town, but stop calling these folks greedy and evil. It gets kind of old very quickly.

Google intends to hire out-of-towners, immigrants, and foreigners instead of local so that those employees will guaruntee to work hard enough to keep up with the living cost and housing in Bay Area.

Google's parent, Alphabet, evidently has about $52.2 BILLION of it's 86.3 billion in profits parked offshore in order avoid paying their fair share of taxes...so, yeah, greedy fits.

Google has been advocating for months, years even, to allow for a substantial number of housing units to be developed in North Bayshore...hard enough that the city of Mountain View has spent nearly two years working on revising their very recently adopted precise plan for North Bayshore in order to see about including 9,850 units of housing...and now that the city is close to making this come to fruition, Google is threatening to derail the entire thing if the city doesn't give them more development rights? Really?

How is it that Google suddenly came to this realization publicly on Tuesday night and not one or even two years ago, when Google was imploring the city to allow housing in North Bayshore?

Good corporate citizen my a$$.

The the time and effort that has gone into the 9,850 unit visioning plan has been extensive, and will have a significant impact on all of the current residents of Mountain View, and is ultimately expected to increase the population by up to 65% and increase the public school enrollment by 46% - which will also require land purchase and the construction of FIVE new schools (THREE elementary schools, ONE middle school, and ONE high school - which was somehow left out of the EIR.) Cost to construct the schools - not including land costs - is expected to exceed 162 MILLION dollars.

The city of Mountain View recently agreed to *sell one million gallons of water daily - in perpetuity - to East Palo Alto (so they could do more development) and it is unknown what effect the housing development in North Bayshore will have on Mountain View's 20 year water projections...other than there is a projected deficit during drought years -- without adding in google's demand for an additional 800,000 sf of office space. (* Sold for a one time fee of 5 million dollars)

The city of Mountain View has been desperately trying to add housing units to help balance the jobs housing imbalance, and here google is SELFISHLY trying to undue all the good things that Mountain View has been working so hard to do, by demanding an additional 800,000 sf of office development rights - literally at the 11th hour - in order for google to allow the housing development to happen on the land they control in North Bayshore.

I'll say it again...

Let your flag fly google.

Gtfo

"The city of Mountain View has been desperately trying to add housing units to help balance the jobs housing imbalance"

In what dimension is this happening?

Anyone who has sat through councils project planning reviews for the last three or four years and come to the conclusion that they are desperately doing anything must be smoking some really good stuff. The housing projects coming on line now should have been completed years ago.

@The Business Man: "I can only imagine the threats being made to the City in private?"

Precisely. Its only between your ears, what you have imagined. The problem is you take that and run with it.
I think I imagine something different than you but I'm not here to throw shade on what ever you want to dream up at home. It'll all work out, you'll see. My undies are not yet bunched on this one.

According to ABAG's 2007-2014 RHNA (regional housing needs allocation) update, Mountain View was at 102% of it's overall target of 2,599 with 2,656 permits issued. Hit link below, scroll down to page 6.

Note: Given that 2014 is in between 2007-2014 and 2014-2022 RHNA cycles, Bay Area jurisdictions were given the option of counting the units they permitted in 2014 towards either the past (2007-2014) or the current (2014-2022) RHNA cycle. ABAG did not include permitting information in this report for jurisdictions that requested their 2014 permits be counted towards their 2014-2022 allocation.

Web Link


The city of Mountain View website shows that there are 2,739 units that are either under construction or have been approved by the city and are now in permit review. (This list does not include completed projects.) This list, of course, does not include anything in North Bayshore. Hit the link, and scroll to your hearts content.

Web Link

Which city gets to count housing built at Moffett Field? It's potentially a lot of
housing since both NASA and Google have announced plans to add units there.

Certainly, these units will use Mountain View city services and contribute to
Mountain View traffic. 3000 units of housing up on government land is worth
remembering.

Google is a real drain on the area. They should spread out to other places and I wouldn't
mind if they left entirely. Those buildings would not sit empty, but it might stop some
of the new construction.

In response to Bye Felicia you stated: “According to ABAG's 2007-2014 RHNA (regional housing needs allocation) update, Mountain View was at 102% of it's overall target of 2,599 with 2,656 permits issued. Hit link below, scroll down to page 6.”

The data you provided is significantly misleading because you only looked at the totals, and do not look at the complete housing profile of Mountain View, here is a real breakdown:

Mountain View satisfies Very Low (0-50% AMI) housing where the need was define d as 571 units, but it has only 237 units or 42%, a deficit of 58%. This really indicates a strategic under source of this type of housing.

Mountain View satisfies Low (50-80% AMI) housing where the need was defined as 388 units, but it has only 28 units or 7%, a deficit of 93%. This really indicates a strategic under source of this type of housing.

Mountain View satisfies Moderate (80-120% AMI) housing where the need was defined as 488 units, but it has only 4 units or 1%, a deficit of 99%. This really indicates a strategic under source of this type of housing.

Mountain View satisfies Above Moderate (120%+ AMI) housing where the need was defined as 1,152 units, but it has 2,387 units or 207%, a surplus of 107%. This really indicates the strategic upward forcing of the increased costs of housing in Mountain View. By the use of NOT building a proportional equal access of the variety of housing that should be provided in the city.

The City is not alone in this respect. Thank goodness for the new laws just enacted.

[Post removed at the request of the poster]

Minor correction:

In response to Bye Felicia you stated: “According to ABAG's 2007-2014 RHNA (regional housing needs allocation) update, Mountain View was at 102% of it's overall target of 2,599 with 2,656 permits issued. Hit link below, scroll down to page 6.”

So let’s look at my information another way:

Mountain View needs Very Low (0-50% AMI) housing units based on 571 - 237 = 334 units to remediate the current report.

Mountain View needs Low (50-80% AMI) housing units based on 388 - 28 = 360 units to remediate the current report.

Mountain View needs Moderate (80-120% AMI) housing units based on 488 - 4 = 484 units to remediate the current report.

Mountain View needs Above Moderate (120%+ AMI) housing units 1,152 - 2,387 = a surplus of -1,235 units to remediate the current report. Thus someone who owns the 1,235 units will have to either destroy them, or they will need to be shifted over to the other housing brackets if that is done you get this:

The Above Moderate (120%+ AMI) housing units 1,235 units surplus – (Very Low (0-50% AMI) housing units 334 + Low (50-80% AMI) housing units 360 + Moderate (80-120% AMI) housing units 484) which still leaves a surplus of 57 units.

The City council now has the authority to allocate those surpluses into the other needs groups, and it still has a surplus of apartments according to the ABAG report.

It would seem the solution already exists for Mountain View, it is just that the city and the industry simply doesn’t want to be a part of it.

@Wondering

Home owners paying a fraction of the property taxes that they should be in order to fund services and infrastructure while trying to run business out of the city are the real drain on Mountain View.

@Wondering,

Google has a market capitalization of $580 billion. That's larger than the countries of Portugal, Pakistan, Iran, Iceland, individually. The idea that they will just pack up and move away is unrealistic. In addition, they hold 60+ year leases on some of the property. If they don't occupy their own buildings, they will inevitably find someone else who will.

In response to Irina you said: “Google has a market capitalization of $580 billion. That's larger than the countries of Portugal, Pakistan, Iran, Iceland, individually. The idea that they will just pack up and move away is unrealistic. In addition, they hold 60+ year leases on some of the property. If they don't occupy their own buildings, they will inevitably find someone else who will.”

So what you are saying is that the City of Mountain View should behave itself and give anything to Google it demands?

I hope you are not serious.

For the last 30 years governments have been fighting to be the ones easiest to be manipulated into giving gifts to corporate interests. What is another way of putting it? It is called the “Race to the Bottom” which is described as:

“The race to the bottom is a socio-economic phrase which is used to describe government deregulation of the business environment or taxes in order to attract or retain economic activity in their jurisdictions. An outcome of globalization and free trade, the phenomenon may occur when competition increases between geographic areas over a particular sector of trade and production.[1]

The concept of a regulatory "race to the bottom" emerged in the United States during the late 19th and early 20th century, when there was charter competition among states to attract corporations to domicile in their jurisdiction. Some described the concept as the "race to efficiency", and others, such as Justice Louis Brandeis, as the "race to the bottom".[2]

In academic literature, the phenomenon of regulatory competition reducing standards overall was argued for by A.A. Berle and G.C. Means in The Modern Corporation and Private Property (1932), while the concept received formal recognition by the US Supreme Court in a decision of Justice Louis Brandeis in the 1933 case Ligget Co. v. Lee (288 U.S. 517, 558–559).[2][4][5]

Brandeis's "race to the bottom" metaphor was updated in 1974 by William Cary, in an article in the Yale Law Journal, "Federalism and Corporate Law: Reflections Upon Delaware," in which Carey argued for the imposition of national standards for corporate governance.

Sanford F. Schram explained in 2000 that the term "race to the bottom":

“ ...has for some time served as an important metaphor to illustrate that the United States federal system—and every federal system for that matter—is vulnerable to interstate competition. The "race to the bottom" implies that the states compete with each other as each tries to underbid the others in lowering taxes, spending, regulation...so as to make itself more attractive to outside financial interests or unattractive to unwanted outsiders. It can be opposed to the alternative metaphor of "Laboratories of Democracy". The laboratory metaphor implies a more sanguine federalism in which [states] use their authority and discretion to develop innovative and creative solutions to common problems which can be then adopted by other states.[5] ”( Web Link

In the end this results in the government’s actions to get caught in the “Cost Cutting Death Spiral”

Since corporate and wealthy interests refuse to raise revenues and starve funding by the race to the bottom. The only course is to cut costs. But eventually the cuts in costs cause long term financial problems in handling simple maintenance of existing services.

Let alone planning future issues or worse the fact we are due a significant tectonic event that is likely to cause devastation equal to an atomic blast here in the valley. We are simply setting ourselves up for such a significant economic or physical disaster of the likes that will make our current situation look like heaven. We have to get our act together NOW or we will all lose. Google and the City of Mountain View.

IT IS TIME FOR GOOGLE TO SHOW THE WORLD THAT A TRUE CORPORATE PARTNERSHIP WITH THE CITY OF MOUNTAIN VIEW CAN BENEFIT ALL. THE CITY IS NOT ASKING FOR UNREASONABLE COMMITMENT FROM GOOGLE GIVEN THEIR RESOURCES. GIVEN WHAT YOU STATED A .1% GIFT TO THE CITY OF ABOUT $500 MILLION WOULD RESULT IN MUCH BETTER LONG TERM BENEFITS FOR BOTH. TO GOOGLE IT IS PETTY CASH.

@The Business Man, thank you for the history lesson. Respectfully, I suppose we should agree to disagree. Cheers.

To see what 1.8 million square feet looks like, take a look at Moffett Towers 2, currently under construction in Sunnyvale next to Moffett Field. Each of the new, 8-story buildings has over 350,000 sq ft, and a total of five will be built.

To me, this exemplifies the fallacy of city planning here: huge tracts of land are zoned for industrial use, yet no commensurate land nearby is zoned for residential. Gridlock on the freeways is inevitable.

Make your money and exit. That's what i've done. I made it on the renters!

Do you know what it's like to wake up in the morning and hear the quail calling each other, watch the deer play in the grass?

Do you know what it's like to walk out onto your property and look at the mountains in serenity with a cup of coffee and know it's yours, all 5 acres of it as you walk down to the creek that runs through your property?

No, what you do is get up at 6 a.m. and spend 50 minutes driving to your job only to hear your corporate god tell you you're late!

Enjoy your prosperity!

So Google is trying to play hardball, but just look at the average time a Google employees stays with the company. It's 1.9 years as per business insider. It looks like a revolving door at all the fang companies.
It's about time Mtn View's council looks out for the residents, and we are getting very tired of all the extra traffic. No more office buildings, enough is enough. The EIR for North Bayshore is flawed with no mentioning of schools, the land is all fill, just think of liquefaction during an earthquake. And were is the water coming from. The council sold it to East Palo Alto.

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I just read the Mercury News, Google appears to be apologizing:

On Monday, the search giant sent a letter to the council saying it was sorry for what city officials and many in the public took as an ultimatum.

“We apologize that this came out as a demand, when the intent was to open a conversation to address a potential issue,” Google’s vice-president of real estate David Radcliffe wrote.

Google “strongly” supports having 9,850 housing units at North Bayshore, and is “committed to finding creative solutions … within the 3.6 million square feet” of office space, Radcliffe’s letter said.

“I think they heard from the public and their employees that they looked like bullies, and we’d been working on all this housing, why would they pull out now?” Siegel said Monday.

“I think we’ll basically be able to move forward in designing North Bayshore with them,” he said.

Google’s letter proposed that city fees from development of housing and parks in North Bayshore could be used to offset housing costs, particularly for affordable homes.

“The possibility of using various fees to get a better mixed-use urban neighborhood, that’s fine,” Siegel said. “What wasn’t fine was saying, ‘No topping off of the offices, no housing’ — that was the problem.”( Web Link

WOW