Editorial Editorial (July 30, 2004)

A challenge on Mayfield site

It became obvious at a community meeting two weeks ago that there are diverging -- and perhaps unrealistic -- visions of what to do with the Mayfield site, a former shopping mall and office for Hewlett-Packard located at Central Expressway and San Antonio Road.

The residents who live near the 27-acre parcel, in the Monta Loma neighborhood, want low-density, single-family housing. But if they really could have their way, it would be transformed entirely into a large park or just left as an empty lot.

At the other extreme, the site's developer, Toll Brothers, wants just the opposite, suggesting that 600 to 800 new housing units, including some four- to five-story apartment buildings, and possibly some retail space, could be accommodated on the lot.

Clearly, this is not what the Monta Loma neighbors want to see. More traffic, decreased property values and overcrowded schools will be the consequences if 2,000 new people move into the area, they said.

Whether to maintain an empty lot or allow new high-rise developments is a choice the city council will have to make. Because the land is zoned for commercial use and Toll Brothers, which is under contract to buy the site from Hewlett-Packard, wants to build housing on it, the city council is in charge of approving any rezoning. (A small 4.5-acre portion of the parcel which lies in Palo Alto is already zoned to allow housing.)

The council will face the delicate task of finding a formula that will create a significant amount of new housing for the city without causing an uproar in the Monta Loma neighborhood. At this point, it appears virtually certain that there will be new housing, and we highly doubt if all of it will be single-family housing.

Monta Loma residents should be aware that Mountain View approved a state-mandated plan last year with a goal of building 3,500 new housing units over the next five years. In addition, the winners of the 2002 city council race -- Matt Neely, Mike Kasperzak, Greg Perry and Nick Galiotto -- all declared themselves proponents of new housing, a sign that voters agreed the city needs more housing.

In this early going, it is not surprising that the developer and the neighborhood residents seem to be far apart in their goals for the parcel. We just hope that as time goes on, the city council can engineer a compromise that will avoid a protracted battle.

We trust that neither side wants to see a repeat of the fight in 2002 over developing the Home Depot site on El Camino Real near Highway 85. That dispute involved an election and an endless amount of rhetoric. A good way to avoid that outcome is for both sides to lower expectations and approach the issue with a spirit of compromise.

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