Mountain View is surviving the increased heights/densities it allowed along El Camino Real for multi-unit residential growth. Palo Alto will too!

MV El Camino Real Specific Plan
GreenBelt Alliance (El Camino in general) Web Link

What's interesting is that this stretch is about 0.5 miles out of a total run of 4 miles of El Camino through Palo Alto. Palo Alto Square is already adding office space by converting the theatre to office use. It really makes sense to add housing on that particular site given how it already has so much office space, and that's 1/3 of the distance being considered. There are some really old low rise office buildings on most of the rest of the distance, plus the 2 restaurant spaces that are being developed into housing.

It would be good to have 25% of the housing be BMR affordable units. If Stanford buys a complex with these in it, then (a) those units still have to be taxed for schools and (b) they can't be limited to Stanford affiliates. So the council should consider some way to increase the requirement for affordable housing in any of these new developments.