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Uploaded: Wednesday, January 23, 2013, 4:43 PM
Google pitches big plans to a hesitant City Council
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by Daniel DeBolt
Mountain View Voice Staff
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| Google wowed the City Council on Tuesday with its most detailed presentation yet on its North Bayshore development plans, but council members were hesitant to embrace the company's plans for a bridge over Stevens Creek.
David Radcliffe, Google's vice president of real estate and workplace services, presented conceptual plans for a network of greenways for biking and walking around Google's headquarters and said he was "excited" about the possibility of using Google's self-driving car technology to operate its shuttle system. He said Google is planning the most environmentally friendly buildings anywhere, using 60 percent less energy than a standard building and 80 percent less water.
As illustrated by a map Radcliffe presented Tuesday, Google now owns or leases most of the office buildings in the city north of Highway 101 and is gradually transforming the area. A new 1 million-square-foot Google campus on adjacent NASA Ames Research Center property is set to begin construction this year. It will have the highest rating for environmental design, -- platinum, according to the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) program, Radcliffe said.
"While we may do the best we can with LEED, we may go beyond that," said George Salah, director of real estate and workplace services. "I don't know anyone else who is doing that, including Facebook."
A bridge to somewhere
Radcliffe urged the council to allow Google to begin a required environmental study for the pedestrian and shuttle bridge over Stevens Creek, connecting headquarters to a new NASA Ames campus that is expected to house as many as 4,000 employees when it opens in 2015.
"If we delay even by a month or so, we miss that critical summer period in 2014," Radcliffe said. Restrictions only allow bridge construction during dry periods between May and October. "We will be missing opening in 2015 and delivering the project sometime into 2016."
Council members clearly thought Google was trying to rush things.
"I believe we had agreed to hold off on moving forward with this (bridge study) until we finished this transportation study, which is coming out Feb. 5," said member Margaret Abe-Koga. "We are talking about two weeks."
A majority of council members said the transportation study would allow council members to decide what alternatives should be considered in the bridge environmental study, such as whether the bridge should be made accessible to regular auto traffic and whether it should be moved down to La Avenida -- an alternative Google's John Igoe said was worth studying. Google has proposed it for the end of Charleston Road where a large egret colony lives in the trees.
"Perhaps La Avenida is the preferred location," said Shani Kleinhaus of the Audubon Society. "That means the analysis begins there, not where Google wants it."
"We have a lot of talking to do on what we want in North Bayshore," said council member Ronit Bryant.
Google wants to grow "up, not out"
"One of the best weapons we have in the growth of our company is proximity," Radcliffe said. "Having our employees shoulder-to-shoulder is critical to our success."
To that end, Radcliffe said Google plans to build densely -- "up, not out, as we say" -- and make room for park space and wildlife areas on properties that it owns near Stevens Creek and the Bay wetlands.
Radcliffe said the goal is to create an "urban center," something that is "very consistent with the general plan you adopted last year," he told the council.
"The general plan update contemplates another 3.7 million square feet of development in North Bayshore," Radcliffe said. Google plans to build nearly 1 million square feet on the empty lot known as "Charleston East" next to its headquarters at 1600 Amphitheater Parkway.
"The remaining 2.7 million would come from razing existing buildings and building new," he said.
"If we took down a 100,000-square-foot building with 0.3 (floor area ratio), we could build 300,000 square feet on that property," Radcliffe said, explaining how the general plan allows for higher densities. But to create parks space and buffers for wildlife at the edges of North Bayshore, "We might ask for 500,000 and knock down 200,000 square feet somewhere else. That would help save areas like the Charleston detention basin."
Self-driving shuttles
With all of the development that could come as Google potentially doubles in size in Mountain View, there's plenty of concern about traffic on the only two roads into the area, Shoreline Boulevard and Rengstorff Avenue/Amphitheater Parkway.
Council member Mike Kasperzak asked Radcliffe if Google had any interest in a personal rapid transit system for North Bayshore, a system of computer controlled vehicles that move on tracks or rails. Such a system has been suggested as a way to connect the downtown train station to Google and NASA Ames.
"With any fixed rail system, once it's put in place it's very hard to move," Radcliffe said. "What I'm really excited about is a shuttle program enabled with the technology from our autonomous vehicle program. Basically, a PRT system without the rails. I think that's the future for North Bayshore."
"We believe technology is a big part of the solution to this problem," Radcliffe said. "We are trying to solve this on a global level, not just on a local level."
Radcliffe said the most difficult employees to get out of their cars are those that live 10-15 miles away. "We are really trying crack that nut," Radcliffe said. "We are not sure PRT is going to get those people out of their cars."
As for people who live within 3-5 miles: "We can get those people on bikes," Radcliffe said.
A network of greenways
Google's famous bicycle sharing system may see huge boost with a network of new parks and green-ways Radcliffe presented Tuesday. A map showed two major bike and pedestrian paths running east-west through North Bayshore, one running through the middle of 1600 Amphitheater Parkway and Charleston East out to Stevens Creek, and another running parallel through Google's buildings south of Charleston Road. Two large parks were shown, one south of Charleston Park and another on Shorebird Way. Both were connected to the greenway system, forming a car-free loop for Googlers on foot or on bike.
"You are lucky to have this problem of a corporate citizen wanting to expand their campus and do so in a responsible way," said Corinne Winter, director of the Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition. "It seems to me the interest on the part of Google to really do this in way that benefits Mountain View and complies with the general plan is spectacular."Are you receiving Express, our free daily e-mail edition? See a sample and sign-up for Express.
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Posted by gcoladon, a resident of the Slater neighborhood, on Jan 24, 2013 at 2:15 pm
gcoladon is a member (registered user) of Mountain View Online The bridge Google proposed looks like an excellent design to my untrained eye, well situated far away from the ecologically sensitive Bayshore, and by far the most bike and pedestrian friendly bridge I have ever seen.
It certainly makes a lot more sense to me to have such a bridge between large employment sites on the north side of 101, rather than having employees use 101 to get between those two areas. That seems like a really bad outcome.
One small improvement I might like to suggest, is to make bike and pedestrian access to the bridge from the Stevens Creek Trail good enough to not require a separate levee crossing further north, as Google proposed.
I hope a Council majority ends up approving the beginning of an environmental study soon after the February 5th presentation of the Transit Study.
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Posted by Ed Mussman, a resident of the Gemello neighborhood, on Jan 24, 2013 at 2:25 pm After reading this..it reads that we will have not a Disneyland here but Googleland. They are looking at the future of their complexes and having their brightest minds working to make this work for them and our city...we will need to give and take and reading what they are suggesting in the future works for me. I hope the council get well read with their proposals and come up a plan that works with Google and Mt View soon. Good luck...glad we have Google in our "Town".
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Posted by vkmo, a resident of the Cuesta Park neighborhood, on Jan 24, 2013 at 2:26 pm Yes, I am not a Google employee nor a shareholder. But let's go ahead with the Google plan. Google is a nice addition to the city. They have the bucks to do a GOOD job!!! Let's go with them and their plan. Better here than in other nearby cities...
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Posted by Steve, a resident of the Sylvan Park neighborhood, on Jan 24, 2013 at 2:37 pm Allowing Google employees direct access between buildings make a great deal more sense than requiring them to exit the N. Shoreline area, travel 101, then reenter it a block away. Surely we're all in favor of reducing traffic, instead of making it worse?
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Posted by No to Google, a resident of the Old Mountain View neighborhood, on Jan 24, 2013 at 3:24 pm This is a boondoggle and is inappropriate for our city discussing a major company in social media for special treatment (All my rich friends are saying social media is about to collapse via the dot com fiasco). Your cars are dangerous, not that they will cause an accident, but that an accident to them could happen and the car goes out of control. Automated cars are decades out to get the entire population going. The rails idea is a great way to step up the idea.
Sounds like our former mayor has an innovative brain, higher and more capable than a major corporation that has no product. Go figure.
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Posted by former MV resident, a resident of another community, on Jan 24, 2013 at 4:38 pm Would the bike and pedestrian paths that google wants to build be for everyone, or just 'googlers'? If just the latter, I say forget it!
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Posted by beelia, a resident of another community, on Jan 24, 2013 at 4:55 pm Hundreds of senior and low-income people live in North Bayshore in the Santiago Villa Mobile Home Park, which is bordered by La Avenida, Shoreline, and Space Park Way. As a long-time resident of this park, I have become increasingly nervous about how Google's expansion might affect me and my neighbors.
I hope that Google will take care to ensure not only the welfare of that colony of egrets at the site of the proposed bridge, but consider whether or not the alternate bridge site at La Avenida might have a negative impact on its human "colony" in Santiago Villa. If I were biking from the proposed La Avenida bridge to the Google campus, a short cut through the mobile home park would make perfect sense. But if hundreds of Google employees took that route daily, it could turn our quiet neighborhood into a noisy thoroughfare.
I can't help but be concerned about the huge footprints that surround us. I am a Google shareholder, and work in high tech myself, so I do want the company to keep growing. But I am worried that our little neighborhood might be noticed only when at some point, we are in the way of some big future development plan - perhaps a new street linking Charleston and La Avenida? Could it be a good thing that it's Microsoft, not Google, that resides on the southern side of La Avenida?
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Posted by Greg Perry, a resident of the Cuesta Park neighborhood, on Jan 24, 2013 at 5:48 pm
Google is blowing smoke when they tell you their shuttle program will get most people out of their cars.
Look at their parking lot at 2:00 on a weekday. It's not full of bicycles. If you let them "build up, not out", you will turn 85 and 237 into a parking lot.
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Posted by Mr. T, a resident of the Cuesta Park neighborhood, on Jan 24, 2013 at 6:57 pm Does the city council think they have studied this better than GOOG? This is a formidable company and does it's homework. I trust GOOG more than our MTV politicians. GOOG won't do anything self destructive, they are smart.
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Posted by Ex-Googler, a resident of the Shoreline West neighborhood, on Jan 24, 2013 at 7:04 pm Be glad Google isn't threatening to move their HQ to Austin like Apple. The concerns expressed by those living in the area are valid and should be addressed proactively, and I think Google is amenable to it.
They want to move fast to attract more talent to the area. As a past employee I can attest to the sincerity of purpose of the founders and employees to build a responsible campus. For example, providing plugin electric cars for faraway meetings and lunch for free.
To No to Google, the self-driving cars have been operating on the he streets and freeways of California for two years accident-free while testing. There's still more testing to do, but they've proven themselves capable of driving safely among regular cars. Plus they can operate at better MPG than humans. This is the future, but it's around the corner.
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Posted by Otto Maddox, a resident of the Monta Loma neighborhood, on Jan 24, 2013 at 7:16 pm Funny how all that land out there used to be the dump.
Now we're terrified of building a bridge.
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Posted by No Wifi, No Way, a resident of the Jackson Park neighborhood, on Jan 25, 2013 at 6:44 am From a duplicate thread:
Posted by WIFI-user, a resident of the Jackson Park neighborhood, 7 hours ago
I'm a little worried about Google keeping a driver-less system running smoothly,, taking into consideration that they can't even keep their citywide wireless internet system (Metro Wi-Fi) working properly.
For much of 2012 the WiFi system has been introducing bad data packets to a lot of users (complaints can be seen on the Google/Wi-fi forum), making it impossible to upgrade PC software components like JAVA or Antivirus definitions. Now for the last few months I can't even get better than a slower-than-dialup speed of 1kbps or less, if I can get logged on at all.
I'd like to see them fix/upgrade simpler systems like this and making them reliable before attempting to send robot cars scooting about town.
Posted by No WIFI No Driverless Shuttles, a resident of the Cuesta Park neighborhood, 2 minutes ago
I second what the above poster states. The Wifi system has become a joke with a complete lack of support or updates to what's going on. I can imagine their driver-less shuttles creating all sorts of havoc.
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Posted by Deb H., a resident of the Old Mountain View neighborhood, on Jan 25, 2013 at 6:47 pm Not mentioned in the article: the bridge plans include a real Stevens Creek Trail exit at Charleston Rd., a cleaned-up exit at Crittenden, and public restrooms at both the Charleston Rd. and Crittenden Rd. exits. These are huge benefits for all recreational users of the trail, not just bike commuters going in & out of the area.
Also, for beelia - a resident of Santiago Villa attended the Study Session and spoke in favor of the bridge & trail improvements.
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Posted by Mr Advice, a resident of the Blossom Valley neighborhood, on Jan 25, 2013 at 9:09 pm let Google do what they want to better our town, they already paved our streets with Gold!! Google $$$ Money owns this town.
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Posted by Reality, a resident of the Old Mountain View neighborhood, on Feb 25, 2013 at 10:09 pm I'm baffled why a progressive population and city board is so resistant to change. Google is literally changing the world every day, but the folks moving at country-time to get Google's plan approved are stifling their progress. Google has only made a crappy 1980's business park into a landmark and you are slowing them from making it a state of the art (AND GREEN) model corporate campus.
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