When will the 1,400 affordable housing units be built? In 30 years?

Also this is quite interesting:

"Though Google is subject to strict caps on parking in order to curb the use of cars in the future urban district, a proposed garage outside Shoreline Amphitheatre will have 4,330 parking spaces."

Compare and contrast with the following:

"James Kuszmaul, a member of the group Mountain View YIMBY, emphasized that the plan explicitly calls out parking and driving as a "cost" to the community, and that Mountain View ought to take active measures to remove parking when demand comes down. Adding more parking simply encourages more people to use a car, he said, and the city should not be building expensive new parking infrastructure.

David Watson, also a member of Mountain View YIMBY, suggested that downtown commercial development should no longer face a mandate to build parking, which sends the wrong message that more parking is needed. He also made a pitch for paid parking, and said it can be used sparingly based on demand." - Web Link

When will the proposed garage be built? Is this the only garage to be built for the entire project? And will it be paid parking?

I have encountered many YIMBYs who are hostile to the creation of parking in residential areas. They want "housing for people, not for cars". It will be interesting to see if they protest the new Google garage ... I'm betting that they won't, though.

Where is the elementary school in this map? And where is the "eco gem"?

Leslie, I'll take your bet. How much? From my conversations with YIMBY and NIMBYs, I will confidently state that the YIMBYs will oppose anyone being forced to build parking spaces.

@Ellen Wheeler

The master plan shows the Eco Gem is located north of Charleston Road just west of Stevens Creek. It also provides four acres of public open space just north of Santiago Villa in an area called "Shorebird Yards," which will be dedicated to the city to "allow for a potential partnership with MVWSD for a school at this location."

The map quality is not stellar, but you can see it here: Web Link

I appreciate your responsiveness, Kevin Forestieri. Your comment and link are very helpful.

Oh, good.
I'll be dead by the time traffic on San Antonio comes to total stop.
So will the clowns who voted to permit this overbuilding of MV.

Hopefully by that time, Google will have been disemboweled by the antitrust laws and a dozen other causes.

30 years is a long time, but I'm looking forward to this development. The new housing stock will likely attract a lot of Google employees, who won't have to commute and won't keep pushing up existing housing prices. So traffic would decrease and existing residents won't be forced out by rising prices. Plenty of affordable units will also help keep residents in secure housing and not forced into RVs or other alternatives.

Of course, the whole Bay is likely to continue to become more congested and expensive, because not enough cities are taking these measures. But I'm happy Mountain View is leading here.

That said, I don't really understand the parking plan here. I'd like to learn more about it, if anyone in the comments knows of any links?

Alexander, I don't know all the details, but the 4,330 parking spaces aren't all new spaces. A lot of them are the existing spaces that are shifted over to the garage when the current buildings are torn down. The new buildings have practically no parking at them, and all their parking is at this garage. I can't tell how much of the parking is "new" vs just "moved," but some back-of-the-envelope math leads me to think most of it is just moved.

Like Stanford University’s immeasurable contribution to Palo Alto eventually emerging as a noteworthy CA community, Google is doing the same for Mountain View. Do not look a gift horse in the mouth.

we're not going to be able to build out way out of our housing shortage, even in 30 years. Why are we permitting new office space to be built? More office space means more good jobs here = more highly paid people bidding up housing prices. Let's discourage job creation in the Bay Area until housing is in some kind of balance (e.g. when teachers and cops etc can afford to live here at market rates). If Texas, Colorado or Idaho want those jobs, encourage the large companies to build and hire there.

@Alexander, are the new units going to be rental units or ownership units? Or will they be a free perk given to very lucky employees? If ownership units, won't they rise in value like other real estate does? I imagine that they will rise in value very quickly, especially as well paid googlers fight among themselves to live there (and wealthy investors try to acquire some of them too). If googlers are priced out of the new development, won't they still need to drive to work? The new complex sounds like a dreamy place to live if well executed, unless the grocery stores and nearby retail aren't so great ... then the folks there will kind of be trapped, won't they? Wouldn't they want transportation options in order to travel to better groceries and retail? And most people travel to other places besides work.

Will 7000 (3000 at first) be enough to satisfy demand for housing in MV, and thus halt the rise in value of other housing here? Will 7000 units be enough to house all Googlers who work at the Googleplex or nearby? If not, won't housing still rise in value here? Is Google the only employer in the area?

Will everyone who lives in the units pledge to never own or drive a car? Will they pledge never to use uber or subscribe to things like Amazon delivery? If they don't, won't traffic continue to rise with the addition of 1000s of additional households in MV? Remember that the first wave of NBPP housing won't even be available for ten years, yet there is an active campaign to reduce parking in other parts of MV - even if alternative public transportation options do not exist.

I think you are wrong. I think housing prices and traffic will continue to rise as thousands of new households are added here. RHNA wants a 30% increase in the number of households here, I'm not seeing new transportation options on the table.

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The point of the housing is that it was a mistake to exclude housing development from the entire North Bayshore area over the past 40 years. The other industrial area of the city, "East Whisman" has had nearby housing development as it grew more dense with offices over the same decades. Faulty logic said that the North Bayshore area was a bad place to allow housing owing to potential floods. (Well, what will happen when the Google office buildings flood?) Now in both East Whisman and North Bayshore the thought is for multistory residential projects. North Bayshore actually makes more sense than East Whisman for this change to tower housing. In fact, Google's plans don't go high enough. Truly, the area close to 101 is the LEAST LIKELY to flood. There are no existing low slung neighborhoods of homes and apartments to object to the height.

What is overlooked in the article is the fact that one large parcel is omitted in the center of Google's plan. This parcel is owned by SYUFY and lies around the movie theater. They had a plan for office buildings there but have morphed their plan to include many residential units in two tall housing towers. Their plan would move forward more quickly. I don't see adding residences as being a major traffic increase factor. It's not that you restrict the people there to working at Google, but some of them will. That makes the option to walk or take a shuttle more likely. Their plans would move forth quicker than Googles insofar as adding residences. It's not entirely residential, as they want to preserve a movie theater and add some shops and a gym (there was one up there for a long time until Google bought the land and closed it.)

As far as worrying about traffic in 10 years or more, I'd say that's overkill. We may all be flying around on aircraft by then. There are a lot of things that can happen over time, and the plans will self-adapt as new projects want reasonable traffic for their tenants.

This is BS. They will be removing large redwoods and they have absolutely no reason why they should be able to. This impacts carbon, the mood of the neighborhood, and all the animals that have nests and live in the trees.