Guest Opinion Guest Opinion (December 03, 2004)

Visions of Mayfield Park Monta Loman wants a greenbelt for proposed housing site
By Bill Murphy

My family and I are residents of the Monta Loma neighborhood, which will be affected by the proposed high-density housing for the Hewlett Packard/Mayfield Mall site.

I'd like to suggest that the highest and best use of this large site is not for high- or even medium-density development at all; rather, its highest and best use is to create a greenbelt, to create the future Mayfield Park, the smaller sister of Cuesta Park and Rengstorff Park.

I encourage residents of both Mountain View and Palo Alto to recognize how the availability of the Mayfield site opens up a historic, once-in-several generations chance to decisively improve the aesthetic and quality of life here. This will benefit residents in the Crossings and Monta Loma neighborhoods, as well as the adjacent south Palo Alto homeowners. This is a chance we won't get very often -- we had it with Shoreline, with the Stevens Creek Trail, with the Cuesta Park Annex, and now with the site of the old Mayfield Mall.

Think of what an attractive combination of urban community gardens, tiny tot and picnic areas, athletic fields and wide-open space can do for the "feeling" of our home.

Five of the acres are within the city of Palo Alto, and we will find common cause with residents of the immediately adjacent south Palo Alto neighborhood, for whom the new Mayfield Park would be closer than Mitchell Park in Palo Alto.

We will find common cause among Mountain View's youth sports families, who have had a tough time getting space on impacted Mountain View fields. We can gain the support of the residents who have a back fence abutting the site, if we build a row of single-story homes at the inside edge of the site to serve as a buffer from noise and to respect their privacy.

We can certainly find common cause with the residents of the new Crossings subdivision, for whom the new Mayfield Park would be only one block away. These residents paid park acquisition fees that were used in part for the Cuesta Park Annex, but it's time for them to get open space.

We are at the stage in the process where Mountain View's environmental planning commission will vote to create a list of "alternative" proposals to be considered. A greenbelt has not been included on the list, only different housing scenarios. Once that list is voted upon by the commission, I believe the list is closed and the environmental impact report phase begins.

I hope that it is not too late to include a greenbelt in the list of alternative proposals, and I would ask interested citizens of both Mountain View and Palo Alto to contact their council members and planning commissioners, and their commission staff members. Please request that an open space proposal be included as one of the site alternatives under review. We do not get an opportunity for parkland like this very often.
Bill Murphy has been a resident of the Monta Loma neighborhood for 16 years.

E-mail a friend a link to this story.