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As 2025 comes to a close, the Voice team has been looking back at our top stories from the past year. Some of the most popular articles touched on perennial topics in Mountain View, like traffic and transportation plans, as well as debates over pickleball courts. Stories about Google also attracted substantial reader interest with the tech giant featured in four out of our top 10 headlines.
However, other stories were more specific to our current moment. There were several times this year when national news made a local impact, including a “No Kings” rally over the summer protesting the actions of the Trump administration, which was one of the largest demonstrations in city history.
Read on to see the list of the Voice’s 10 most popular articles of 2025. The results reflect the amount of time readers spent viewing our articles from Jan. 1 to Dec. 20.
10. Mountain View residents launch campaign to keep pickleball out of Cuesta Park, Annex
This summer, the prospect of the city installing pickleball courts at Cuesta Park or Cuesta Annex, an undeveloped open space next to the park, sparked pushback from some in the community.
Opponents argued that the plans would pave over valuable green space and that pickleball’s noise would disrupt nearby residents. However, pickleball players stressed the need for more court space, noting that the sport’s popularity has grown rapidly in recent years.
In the face of the community debate, the city ultimately said that it would explore new locations to build pickleball courts, including privately-owned properties that could be developed into publicly-accessible playing space.
9. Castro Street transit project will end vehicle traffic at Caltrain tracks in Mountain View
For years, the downtown Mountain View Caltrain crossing has been in a state of flux, with temporary traffic signs, roadway cones and other half-measures. At the beginning of December, the city’s Council Transportation Committee reviewed plans to finally eliminate all vehicle traffic crossing the railroad tracks.
The transit project would eliminate northbound traffic on Castro Street across the Caltrain tracks, instead diverting cars towards Shoreline Boulevard along West Evelyn Avenue. Southbound vehicles traveling on Moffett Boulevard are already blocked from crossing the tracks, a restriction that the city put in place during the pandemic. Bicyclists and pedestrians would still be able to cross the tracks at Castro Street, with the installation of upgraded bike lanes and crosswalks.
The plans are expected to come to the City Council for final approval sometime in 2026.
8. Google to pay city up to $703K after chopping down 800+ trees for terminated office project
Back in 2024, Google made news locally when it became public that the tech giant was ending its plans for a major office development in North Bayshore, dubbed “Google Landings,” leaving behind an undeveloped construction site.
This year, the Landings Project was in the news again when Google reached an agreement with the city over how it would make up for the more than 800 trees that were chopped down as part of the abandoned development project.
Google agreed to pay the city between $533,500 and $703,000 to install and maintain 678 trees throughout the city. The company has also already planted over 1,300 replacement trees at locations including Charleston Park, Shoreline Boulevard, Gatehouse and along the Stevens Creek Trail, according to a September report to the City Council.
7. Historic ‘No Kings’ rally draws thousands to El Camino Real in Mountain View, Palo Alto
This year saw some of the largest demonstrations that Mountain View has seen in recent memory, as thousands gathered to protest what they described as the authoritarianism and corruption of the Trump administration.
Back in June, demonstrators lined up along a 7 mile stretch of El Camino Real from Sunnyvale to Palo Alto for a “No Kings” demonstration. Organizers set a goal of bringing together 7,000 people for the event, but the turnout blew past that number. The total number of attendees was likely closer to 20,000 to 22,000, according to organizers.
The event was just one in a series of actions aimed at showing local opposition to the federal administration, including a second “No Kings” protest held in October.
6. Four vehicles catch on fire at Google parking lot in Mountain View
Four vehicles in a Google parking lot on the 1300 block of Shorebird Way caught on fire on May 1, causing an estimated $275,000 in damage but no reported injuries, according to the Mountain View Fire Department.
Officials attributed the cause of the fire to a Jeep Wrangler EV’s lithium-ion battery charging system. When fire crews arrived, the blaze had spread to two Teslas and a Honda parked nearby. Firefighters extinguished the flames with a fire hose, preventing them from spreading to other vehicles, fire officials said.
5. Sunnyvale man arrested by ICE, taken to El Camino Hospital for medical emergency
In February, a Sunnyvale resident suffered an acute medical emergency after he was arrested by immigration enforcement officials outside his home. The man was taken to the emergency room at El Camino Hospital in Mountain View, according to a press release from the Santa Clara County Rapid Response Network.
At the time, multiple ICE field offices did not respond to a request for comment. The man was later discharged and transported to an ICE detention center, but his family claimed that he was still in poor health and had not been allowed to fully recover before he was released from the hospital.
4. Mountain View faces housing uncertainty as Google looks to sell off Middlefield Park property
Google’s plans for office and residential development in Mountain View have long attracted significant local interest. This year, the tech behemoth drew attention when it confirmed that it was exploring selling Middlefield Park, a 40-acre site in the East Whisman area where Google had planned to build 1,900 homes, including a 2.4-acre land dedication to the city for roughly 380 units of affordable housing.
The tech company was considering potential buyers with expertise and resources to build housing at Middlefield Park, but declined to provide more details about its plans at the time.
The stakes were high for the city, which rezoned East Whisman in 2019 with the goal of creating a better balance of jobs and homes in an area that has largely been a sprawling office park. The city’s blueprint for East Whisman allows for 5,000 housing units.
3. Crowds flock to Google’s Mountain View campus to see rare bird
In more lighthearted news, throngs of people came to Google’s Mountain View campus in September after a rare bird was spotted. A pair of birders saw the dark-sided flycatcher at the Charleston Retention Basin on Sept. 17.
The small brown bird is common in parts of Asia, but not in the United States and this is the first time that one had been seen in California, according to the executive director of the Santa Clara Valley Bird Alliance.
2. Steins Beer Garden closing in March, making the future of Mountain View Oktoberfest uncertain
The news in February that Steins Beer Garden was slated to close caught the interest of readers. Citing rising costs and a decline in business coming out of the pandemic, the restaurant’s owner announced that he planned to close the business at the end of March after 12 years in downtown Mountain View.
The news threw into question the future of Mountain View Oktoberfest, a popular annual celebration that Steins spearheaded.
In the end though, Steins found a new buyer who has kept the establishment open. However, the Mountain View Chamber of Commerce has taken over leading Mountain View Oktoberfest.
1. Los Altos Hills family threatened with eviction from Midpen open space preserve
The Voice’s most popular story of the year was a long-form feature about a family facing eviction after living on the Rancho San Antonio Preserve in Los Altos Hills for half a century.
The Girouard family had lived at the Rhus Ridge trailhead for more than 50 years, acting as stewards of the land in exchange for the right to stay there. But that half-century arrangement was at risk, as the Girouards faced the threat of eviction by the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District, a publicly funded organization tasked with protecting and managing more than 65,000 acres of undeveloped land, including Rancho San Antonio.
The conflict galvanized the surrounding community, with an online petition calling for the family to be able to stay on the land.
After the Voice published its initial article in March, the Girourard family reached an agreement with Midpen, which called for the family to move out of their home at Rhus Ridge in June.
Facing budget crunch, Mountain View Whisman offers teachers $1K to give early exit noticeDecember 30, 2025 8:00 am
