|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
With deep concern about the fate of the city’s redwood trees, Mountain View’s Environmental Planning Commission (EPC) agreed on a 4-1 vote to recommend approval of a new hotel and office building on Ellis Street.
Commissioners Hank Dempsey, Chris Clark, Preeti Hehmeyer and William Cranston approved the motion, which also asked staff to explore opportunities to preserve the heritage trees, while Commissioner Joyce Yin voted against it, stating that the motion did not go far enough to preserve the existing redwood trees on the property.
Commission members Jose Gutierrez and Alex Nunez were absent for the Oct. 4 vote.
The project, located at 500 and 550 Ellis St., spans a 2.16-acre site that currently has two one-story office buildings with adjoining surface parking. The developer, Loren Brown of Vance Brown Builders in Palo Alto, plans to demolish the existing buildings to make way for a six-story, 201-room hotel and two-story office building. The site also will include a four-story parking garage.
Thom Jess, owner of Arris Studio Architects, presented the development plans to EPC on behalf of Loren Brown, whose family has owned the property for 55 years. “They see it as an underutilized parcel and are looking for ways to further enhance and further develop the property,” he said.
The layout of the buildings shows the hotel on the southern half of the property and the office building on the northern half, split by a 7,350-square-foot paseo. Created as an open pedestrian space, the paseo includes public amenities like movable tables and chairs, built-in seating planters and an outdoor fireplace and lawn game area, according to a city staff report.
The hotel, which would be the first in the East Whisman neighborhood, has some novel design features. It wraps around a fully-automated parking garage, concealing it on three sides from the street, with access to the garage available from National Avenue.
“From the street, from the pedestrian experience, it really does feel like a nice urban street as opposed to walking past parking lots,” Jess said.
The minimum parking requirement for the site is 209 spaces, but the project requested a permit to reduce parking to 192 spaces, based on its proximity to multi-modal transit options, which staff supported.
Overall, the commissioners commended the hotel design, which meets green building standards and provides community benefits. But Yin and Cranston expressed deep misgivings about the proposal to remove 15 heritage trees, including numerous mature redwood trees, from the site.
“The heritage tree ordinance is not for these kinds of trees. We go after smaller trees that meet the ordinance, but these are enormous and they’re in clusters,” Cranston said, adding that it is difficult for a redwood tree to remain viable on its own if the cluster is cleared.
An arborist report analyzed 47 trees within and around the project site, identifying 30 as heritage trees. The project plans to remove 15 heritage and nine other trees due to construction impacts, the report said.
A city ordinance regulates the replacement of removed trees. Heritage trees are supposed to be replaced at a 1:2 ratio and regular trees at a 1:1 ratio. But the site cannot accommodate 39 new trees, according to the report.
The developer is planning on 30 new trees instead. After 15 years, the canopy would be at 36.4% full growth, a slight increase to its existing condition, the report said.
The developer will pay a $750 lieu fee for the unreplaced trees, said the city’s Principal Planner Diana Pancholi.
Both Cranston and Yin said this amount was inadequate.
“I just wish that the value of these trees was considered during design,” Yin said. “Because as a lot of people have said, they’re not easily replaceable. In fact, the value of my front yard tree, which is 10 feet tall, was $3,000. So, we’re not even replacing it properly, not that I even believe replacing it is equivalent, but we can’t even do that.”
Complicating the issue is the East Whisman Precise Plan; it stipulates that the front façade of buildings need to be located within 20 feet of sidewalks. Many mature redwood trees line Ellis Street’s sidewalks, putting them in the pathway of any new construction.
One public speaker urged the commission to save the redwood trees, framing it as a moral imperative. The city emphasizes sustainable neighborhoods and climate resiliency in its strategic priorities and should follow what it preaches, she said. She also described the importance of redwood trees as carbon sequesters, absorbing two to three times more carbon than the proposed replacement trees.
Clark said that, on the contrary, redwoods are often controversial because they consume a lot of water. What’s more he said future expansion of the city’s recycled waste water program – the purple pipe network – would likely lead to irrigation using water with salinity too high for redwoods.
“As environmental stewards, we need to think about the long-long term and creating a canopy and a diverse set of more native species that will thrive in the environment that we have today and in the future,” Clark said, while noting that he was not advocating for the removal of the redwood trees.
Ultimately, the commission recommended the project, with a motion for the developer to modify the design plans to accommodate the mature redwood trees.
When asked about this possibility, Jess responded that it would be difficult to make significant changes to the hotel and the paseo, where some of the redwood trees are located, but there was potential leeway by the office building.
With her dissenting vote, Yin said the motion did not go far enough to preserve the trees.
“A concern is that this is one of the few developments on Ellis, the first one, it is going to set a precedent,” she said. “If we allow for these redwoods to go with this one, every other development following will do the same. And then where will that street be?
“We’re working hard to try to tree all our streets with mature trees. We have one here, and we’re diminishing it,” she added.
The project is tentatively scheduled to be heard by City Council on Nov. 7.
Always concerned about the loss of trees but never enough to say no to developers.
It’d be nice to see some consistency in how the City views redwood trees.
City didn’t have any qualms (and even support from Sierra Club and Audubon Society) when it allowed removal of 200 trees (many redwood trees) in Shoreline
https://mv-voice.com/news/2016/10/25/an-eco-dilemma-save-redwoods-or-build-bike-lanes
Quote from one the Council Member in 2016 about the redwood trees:
“We talk about removing invasive species — well, they are an invasive species.”
There were more than 200 redwoods destroyed in North Bayshore/North Shoreline area….there were many, many clusters of enormous trees on Pear and La Avenida that were cut down for new construction. I just don’t understand why the city can’t just say ‘No more large redwoods to be cut down, building designs just have to work around the trees that are there.’ It has been made way too easy for designers to just make their plans than apply for the trees that are there to be cut down. People should drive down Joaquin, Huff, and Alta between Charleston and Plymouth and view the magnificent redwoods on those streets or go down Charleston towards Stevens Creek area and see the other magnificent redwoods clusters slated to be killed for the future Google construction. These are trees that can never be replaced, never. “The heritage tree ordinance is not for these kinds of trees. We go after smaller trees that meet the ordinance, but these are enormous and they’re in clusters,” Cranston said, adding that it is difficult for a redwood tree to remain viable on its own if the cluster is cleared.” That cluster he is talking about is its “family group” and scientists have shown they “talk” to each other “help” each other. I have lived out here in North Shoreline area for 13 years and have watched the destruction of these trees and still failed to understand the reasoning behind the city’s decisions in granting their destruction. I myself think most of the decisions that have granted the removal of these trees were a big mistake as the city will never have trees of that kind ever again once chopped down.
Redwoods don’t naturally grow in the flatlands. They were planted by an earlier generation of developers.
It is inaccurate to call redwoods within Mountain View an invasive species. They grow here because they were planted, not like weeds. It is true they would not have likely grown here on their own, though, but now that they are here as large mature trees, we should value them appropriately. If a 10 year old tree costs $3000 to purchase and plant, maybe, at a minimum, a 70 year old tree should be $21,000 as in-lieu fee? I think higher since there is a compounded value to them and clearly they cannot be replaced in any our our lifetimes.
On another note, is no one concerned about having a parking 200 space parking garage entirely enclosed within the hotel? What if there is a vehicle fire in that space – how do firefighters access it and where does the heat and smoke go? Think of the 10,000 gallons of water it seems to take to put out an EV fire!
@rossta, same could be said of eucalyptus, they were planted by folks at some point, more likely because like redwoords they are fast growers.
I love redwood trees but it’s hard to understand why sierra club,audubon and City okayed removing 100+ redwoods in Shoreline in 2016 and now there is a problem with removing a handful of them in Whisman area?
@SRB Eucalyptus spread wildly and grow fast, like weeds, so they actually are invasive and non-native.
And even more recently (this year?), Mountain View approved the Google Master PLan for North Bayshore (see: https://www.mv-voice.com/news/2021/11/23/googles-north-bayshore-megaproject-could-take-30-years-to-build)
“Another eye-popping number in Google’s master plan is how many trees need to be removed to make way for new buildings and new roadways that will redefine North Bayshore. A grand total of 2,586 trees will need to be removed, according to city staff, or roughly two-thirds of all the trees in the master plan area. Many of them are large, mature redwood trees covering large swaths of the tech park, including large roadway medians and surrounding single-story offices.”
The handful of redwood trees from the hotel’s project seem to be hiding the forest of redwood trees that the City had no qualms removing at Shoreline.
Would someone please tell me why we’re building more office space when we have so many vacancies and lower demand due to telecommuting? We need housing, not office buildings!
As several commenters have pointed out, the city’s policy regarding redwood trees is a confusing mess. No one should be surprised that developers propose what’s convenient for them and plan to muddle through somehow. In other words, you get what you ask for.
Trees are not important in Mountain View. Pleasing developers are. That has been the case here for decades so get use to it. We’ve already passed the point where every speck of available land has been developed and now they are tearing down perfectly good residential and retail structures to keep building offices and residential high-rises and making profit at our expense. Mayfield mall and Old Mill are long gone and the last traces of the San Antonio Shopping Center mall are doomed. El Camino is being turned into a canyon with 3 to 4 story or more buildings going up right up to the roadway. Most don’t know how much nicer living in M.V. was back then, but if you lived here in the 1970s and 1980s and saw what was once here and what was lost, you know.
Generally, city redwoods I understand, are not the Best timber. But anyway – why not at least have a 10% Harvest and Reuse policy for mature redwoods. Sure can make A LOT of public park benches with one redwood (check out many half-timber ones in Cuesta Park).
This ‘sequesters’ the Carbon into wood that is useful. And growing More Trees will then sequester More Carbon.
“The developer will pay a $750 lieu fee for the unreplaced trees,” according to the developer. Is that a typo? $750? That’s probably less than a one-night stay at the proposed hotel. My God, the city should get a backbone. But it’s whatever the developer wants, the developer gets. Shocking, just shocking.