Loud opposition to Mayfield project Loud opposition to Mayfield project (September 24, 2004)

Monta Loma residents consider housing plan an election issue

By Jon Wiener

A controversial plan to add high-density housing at the site of the former Mayfield Mall met with more resistance from neighbors Monday night.

More than 140 residents packed the Monta Loma Elementary School's multi-purpose room for a public meeting, hosted by city staff to get comments from the neighborhood. Those who did not want to quash the project out right all said they would like to see it drastically scaled down.

Hewlett-Packard is seeking to sell the 27-acre site where it had offices until 1986 to Toll Brothers, a developer that wants to replace the offices with 600 to 800 residential housing units. But residents of the surrounding Monta Loma neighborhood have said the large-scale project will drive down the value of their one-story single-family homes, create traffic problems and increase crime.

Benjamin Drive resident Gloria Jackson circulated a petition to leave the site zoned for commercial activity, which would effectively end the housing project. Her husband John Stepp said they expected "just about everybody" in the 1,000-home neighborhood to sign it. Jackson said Wednesday she had gathered 75 signatures at the meeting.

"There's a general feeling that it's hopeless, that resistance is futile," said Stepp.

Four current city council members and all but one of the candidates in this fall's election attended the meeting, which turned rowdy for several minutes early on.

Despite a request from the city's community development staff, residents were reluctant to break into small groups to provide feedback on aspects of the project related to street circulation, parklands, housing type and density.

Local resident Scott Rafferty created a stir by demanding a chance for the group as a whole to discuss the project.

"We have not had the same access to our own city council that Toll Brothers has had," said Rafferty, as he brandished a copy of the petition and received loud applause from the majority of the audience.

Elaine Costello, the city's community development director, argued that the project was in keeping with the city's goal of providing more housing. A 2003 housing study conducted by the city concluded that Mountain View needs to construct about 3,500 new housing units over the next five years to keep up with population growth.

"What's unusual about this (sentiment) is council wanted the community to have the opportunity to comment on this before any plans were on the table," said Costello.

Mayor Matt Pear, up for re-election this fall, eventually had to shout over the growing clamor after Rafferty accused him of hiding from the residents. A visibly angry Pear denied Rafferty's allegations and emphasized his weekly office hours.

When the meeting finally did break into smaller discussions -- at which point half of the residents left -- city planner Lynnie Melena had to enlist the help of Council member Nick Galiotto, also up for re-election, in calming tensions and asking people to join one of the groups.

The groups all reported they would like to see the density of housing kept as low as possible. The surrounding neighborhood has a density of six houses per acre, compared to 25 per acre in the Toll Brothers plan.

Kathy Fitzpatrick, treasurer of the Monta Loma Neighborhood Association, asked on behalf of her discussion group why Toll Brothers had not proposed any sort of compromise on the density issue since revealing its proposal at another contentious meeting in early July.

The environmental planning commission is scheduled to make a recommendation on the rezoning request at its Nov. 3 meeting, the day after the city council election. Fitzpatrick said the council candidates have been going door-to-door in the neighborhood in recent days, and that their positions on the future of the Mayfield site will determine how the neighborhood will vote.

E-mail Jon Wiener at jwiener@mv-voice.com.

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