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With the pressure on from the city’s biggest companies, a new “precise plan” for Google’s neighborhood got a jump start Tuesday when the City Council decided to fund various studies on the impacts of new development with $450,000.
Community Development Director Randy Tsuda said Intuit, Google and Microsoft are among the big-ticket companies looking to build in Mountain View’s office park north of Highway 101. But there’s just one problem — the city’s zoning regulations are unclear because of an ongoing general plan update.
“It’s hard to tell people, wait, wait, wait while we figure out what we want,” said council member Tom Means.
There are 40 other precise plans, a sort of area-specific blueprint, that need updating in the Mountain View general plan update, and Council member Laura Macias and Mayor Jac Siegel questioned the need to give North Bayshore priority.
“It’s almost like this is undercutting the general plan and making assumptions prior to its completion,” Siegel said.
Council member Ronit Bryant acknowledged remarks from Tsuda that the council had already given lots of input on its wishes for North Bayshore, but said she was concerned about the unresolved question of whether to allow housing inside the office park, as Google has requested.
It would be good to know when the General Plan is scheduled to be completed and how long the staff expects it to take to complete the N. Bayshore Precise Plan.
My guess is that any precise plan will take > 1 year, so there would be time for the finalized General Plan to be an “input” to the Precise Plan … even though the G.P. isn’t currently complete. The public input phase for the G.P. ended long ago, so I assume that the individuals who are writing it know fairly clearly what the final document will say.
Hope they hold the plans to dormitory style housing for all the Googlites.
Old Joe Stalin would have loved Google… and Mountain View.