So, the ink is barely dry on the new East Whisman Precise Plan and right out of the gate two projects are pushing the limits of building height, street width and open space. What good is a Precise Plan if it's limitations are ignored? A school clear across town is NO reason to throw East Whisman residents under the bus. Planners, please stick to your guns. You have a plan, stick to it.

The City doesn't make "percise plans"

It makes fiction becasue there is no signed obligations to actually build what is proposed by the developer prior to getting approval from the City.

Thus the City is not accepting any "Percise plan" at all. It is just a "HOPE" that it will be developed.

I'm always interested in these projects (lauded by the City Council, who will get more tax dollars to fritter away) and how they are sold to the residents as "serving the community" and "helping to ease the "housing crisis'" but not peep is said about anything other than constructing these monstrosities.

Where is the article about where the water is coming from to serve these buildings? Could it be because the City Council saw fit to sell water rights to Palo Alto for a pittance? Where is the article about schools to serve the children in these buildings? How about fire and police services? Where is the article about new equipment to serve these over-sized structures?

The City Council is happy to pat itself on the back for being "progressive" which is apparently code for stuffing people into the city a quickly as possible with no regard for current residents. or for those they are packing in. Then we have the City "Planners" which is apparently code for people who rubber-stamp whatever stupidity the council proposes without regard to any plan other than boosting tax revenue.

It would be nice if either these people did the jobs they are purportedly there to do or if they changed theirs titles to something more descriptive of their actions. I'm pretty tired of the deception.

It’s amazing how central planning is a failed approach for allocating goods and services, but many still feel that it works for planning buildings. City planners, council members and public interest groups can think they know how to plan but it is all an illusion. People that build housing invest their own money and won’t build unless there are plenty of people willing to buy their product. So it should be no surprise that developers propose plans that do not fit into the plans of people that have no vested interest in the success or failure of a development.

Rather than plan which products should be produced, city planners should focus on the services they are responsible for the public to provide, like water, electricity, streets, trash removal, etc.

This is an example of a cliche dictating development plans. The light rail that serves the location of the 11 story building is nearly useless. It's too slow to use to go anywhere very far away, and it runs too infrequently to make a simple link to downtown Mountain View and to Moffett Field. Thinking that all those apartments will only have 1 car each is not based in reality. It will be a nightmare.

Now, here's something that might actually help. The council is hell bent on providing overhead transit to link downtown to Google. This light rail has another opportunity. As part of the housing development at Moffett Field, make a split in the light rail. Stop the winding long routes to San Jose at Moffett Field. Then have a new service built on the light rail infrastructure. Operate a free shuttle services to link NASA to downtown Mountain View, more frequently than VTA can afford to run empty cars all around kingdom come to serve San Jose. In peak hours operate this mini light rail every 10 minutes to make it easy for these residents to connect to downtown Mountain View. It would serve both the North Whisman/Ellis area and NASA to link them to downtown Mountain View the way the overhead scheme would work for Google. They could probably run shorter trains and they might even be able to move quicker than the current VTA service between those "stations" such as they are. Little used rain shelters could become something useful.

I bet this would be much cheaper than the overhead gondola deals for Google. It might actually salvage something useful out of the wasteful VTA light rail.

I'm happy to see greater density in a metro area with very high land costs. The very high land costs combined with low density housing leads to very high housing costs. I'm glad to see a push for higher densities that are more in-line with the cost of land.

These condo units are going to be very expensive. Look for them to cost $2 Million each. The apartments are going to be some of the highest price units in the city too. It's up to the city to get it right by requiring reasonable road spacing between the buildings. The developers will try to squeeze every drop of profit out of the project and only the city has the greater good in mind.