Wait, this is what they have been saying since 2007, right?

But when is the project going to start? This is an empty promise. Google is still letting people go in the local offices, right?

I cannot believe the city is still trying to kick the football every time that Google sets it up and then pulls it away

Charlie Brown and the Football.

That's not true. I don't know what happened in 2007, but the city didn't decide to add homes in North Bayshore at all until 2017. Large projects like this take a long time to plan, and the pandemic didn't help. Six years is not unreasonable.

@ivg not 2007 but not 2017 either :)

North Bayshore Precise Plan was adopted in November 2014. Also decision to add housing predates that by a couple of years, and developers could have started planning for housing 9-10 years ago.

That said, the development agreement with Google runs for 30 years...so yes indeed 9-10 years is not that long :)

The 2014 version was the one with no housing. It sparked a voter revolt, which brought the Rosenberg-Showalter-Siegel slate onto the City Council. (Although the plan wasn't adopted until November, it was clear by summer where things were headed.) It then took two years after the new Council was installed to update the plan, thus, 2017.

You have to open the PDF to see the version history, unfortunately.
Web Link

OK so the plan was approved in 2017, that was 6 years ago, if the plan was approved then there was nothing to do other than clear and build, right?

But nothing? We don't even see any work being done, right

Face it, this is not happening.

awwww The MVWSD property development management will not be getting $1 Billion for new schools anytime in the next decade? Probably beyond their capability anyway (the teacher housing opening delayed yet again)
If and when the Middlefield Park Project gets built, maybe the City should take claim FIRST on the land donation to build the hundreds of Below Market Rate Housing (that the City and partners need to fund themselves anyway). Donation of Housing Project Land first / let Google Development Director sit on his hands - as long as business dictates. (with or without LendLease)

Voice Reporter Margaretten - thanks for the good 'past reporting' links and the easy-to-understand article.

Seems like just the other day I left this comment on another story:

“For-profit developers will only build if they can make sufficient profit. If they can’t the building stops. As long as there is a market for expensive housing, developers will attempt to meet that demand. State politicians have created a "solution" that will increase the supply of expensive, market-rate units, as long as the demand for such units exist. Period. It is not even a recipe that will lower the cost of market rate units. It is a fantasy to believe that developers are lemmings who will continue to build even if they lose money when they do so.” - Web Link

From arstechnica: “The decision to end these agreements followed a comprehensive review by Google of its real estate investments, and a determination by both organizations that the existing agreements are no longer mutually beneficial given current market conditions” - Web Link

Translation: “the project no longer pencils out”. So Google stopped building.

FYI, this bit was left out of the story above:

“Google recently [April 2023] cut the number of affordable homes it will build in Mountain View’s North Bayshore neighborhood by 25%, amounting to 350 fewer units than the tech company pledged in past iterations of the plan … Ever since the project was first introduced in early 2021, Google has touted a vision to reserve 20% of the plan’s proposed housing for low- and moderate-income residents. Out of the 7,000 units that are expected to come out of the North Bayshore Master Plan, Google set a target for 1,400 of those homes to be affordable.” - Web Link

From arstechnica: “Google declined to answer our specific questions about the number of homes that will be built now that the original partnership has been scrapped.”