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As Palo Alto prepares to create a new residential community along San Antonio Road, city leaders are confronting a question that had dogged prior planning efforts: How much office space should the new neighborhood accommodate?
The focus on the debate is on what’s known as the CTI subarea next to U.S. Highway 101 and just north of E. Charleston Road. The CTI subarea, which is just south of San Antonio Road and which includes Commercial Street, Transport Street and Industrial Avenue (hence the name), is currently envisioned as a commercial hub, with buildings potentially reaching heights of 90 feet. In that sense, it stands apart from most of the broader planning area, where the city hopes to see a residential boom along with a host of transportation improvements.
The “core scenario” for the San Antonio Road planning area, which planning staff presented on June 8, makes a case for going big on office space at the CTI site. It envisions 750,000 square feet of office and research-and-development space within the subarea, which is currently dominated by low-density commercial and industrial buildings. The scenario calls for effectively replacing those buildings with a taller and denser office complex, a project that staff argued would keep employment steady and fund area improvements.
“Office development in the CTI sub-area was identified as a potential mechanism to improve project feasibility and fund public benefits such as parks and infrastructure,” a report from the Department of Planning and Development Services states.
Not everyone was thrilled about the idea. Even though the City Council voted 6-1 on Monday to advance the core scenario, council members urged staff to perform further analysis to ensure that the project doesn’t worsen the city’s jobs-housing imbalance. Council member Keith Reckdahl, the sole dissenter, argued that redeveloping the CTI site in accordance with the core scenario would have negative impacts on the neighborhood.
The question of how much new office space the city should encourage has hampered past planning efforts. When the city was putting together a new vision for a northern section of the Ventura neighborhood, the stakeholder group splintered over proposals from staff and consultants to include commercial developments as part of the growth. By the time the city approved the Ventura vision in 2024, most of the residents who had participated in the effort had dropped out of the process.
In proposing the commercial redevelopment at the CTI site, planning staff pitched it as a way to bring parks, retail and other amenities to the broader San Antonio Road area, which could see more than 4,000 units under the core scenario. Because office space is more profitable for developers, the city can allow commercial growth in exchange for fees that would fund some of the more popular amenities.
“Office does generate an economic return to developers,” Planning Director Jonathan Lait said at the June 8 meeting. “When we are asking for more third (places) or open space or retail areas that might not otherwise perform as well in this situation, or mobility interests or even more affordable housing, office isn’t going to solve all of that, but it’s going to help with our analysis to help us find out what levers we need to adjust to help us get there.”
While the core scenario proposed a commercial expansion in the CTI subarea, planning staff noted that other parts of the broader 275-acre plan area would see a reduction of commercial areas. Lait suggested that Class A office space is a “key part” of the planning area and insisted that staff is mindful of the city’s historically high jobs-housing imbalance.
“We’re not looking to make the existing situation worse, and we’re trying to find areas to improve it,” Lait said.
Reckdahl objected to this plan and argued that the city should focus on housing rather than jobs, both in the CTI subarea and in the broader neighborhood. He rejected the notion that the city should depend on developers’ fees to fund community amenities.
“We’d be much better off as a community paying for parks ourselves rather than letting someone have 4,000 jobs in a very small areas and give us very little money to pay back,” Reckdahl said.
Others were more open to having a large office complex in the CTI area next to the highway. Council member George Lu said staff’s proposal to redistribute commercial space in the San Antonio Plan is reasonable.
“To the extent that we are shifting some jobs and offices around, I think having Class A office space is generally good,” Lu said.
Because the CTI site is right next to the freeway, focusing office development there would have a less severe traffic impact on surrounding neighborhoods.
While council members supported the proposed core scenario, they urged staff to focus on jobs rather than square footage when considering increases or reductions in commercial space. Council member Julie Lythcott-Haims also made the case for more park space in the San Antonio area. The core scenario envisions a 3- to 3.5-acre park in the North Fabian area, the northernmost of the four subareas, along with 1.5 acres of outdoor space in the CTI area.
Lythcott-Haims said that the city’s standard for parks calls for 4 to 5 acres of space and urged the city to go bigger on parks around San Antonio.
“I’m so concerned that we do not create on the south Palo Alto border with Mountain View, next to 101, a set of neighborhoods that somehow feels ‘less than.’ We have to always be on guard for what feels less than,” Lythcott-Haims said. “This juncture is way too soon to make compromises around things that will speak to quality of life, perception of amenities and allegiance to the true character of Palo Alto.”
I thought we had a housing crisis. Not an office crisis.
How about putting the offices in a smaller area with bigger height limits? That would free up more land for residential.