|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
In what has been described as a “beauty contest” between the world’s hottest tech companies and real estate developers, Google, LinkedIn, and others are expected to submit major expansion plans for Mountain View’s North Bayshore by 5 p.m. this Friday, Feb. 27.
Google is expected to propose an extraordinarily environmentally friendly, car-free campus for 10,000 employees that would be built over at least two blocks, west of Shoreline Boulevard and on the north side of the Century movie theaters and Plymouth Street.
Several City Council members said they got a peek at Google’s plans a month ago, meeting individually with company representatives. They described plans for amorphously shaped four- and five-story buildings, with a meandering running track under a glass dome. One council member described it as on par with the landmark architecture of Apple’s “spaceship” campus in Cupertino and another said the company is doing “everything they can to get cars out of it.”
If the project is approved, it could mean that there will be almost as many Google jobs in the city as there are homes in the city (about 34,000). It was recently revealed that Google has nearly 20,000 employees in Mountain View already.
Google and others will have to propose significant public benefits to build such large campuses. In a meeting expected to occur in late April, council members are expecting to be dazzled with presentations of office buildings designed by the world’s foremost architects, and lists of public benefits that will be hard to turn down, such as park space, transit infrastructure and bike paths.
Randy Tsuda, Mountain View’s planning director, said he expects proposals from Google and LinkedIn, and a few other property owners and developers.
As of the Voice’s Wednesday press deadline, it was unclear what LinkedIn will propose by week’s end, but last year the company proposed an eight-story building at the entrance to North Bayshore at 1400 North Shoreline Blvd., replacing several small buildings in front of the Century movie theaters. LinkedIn also proposed doubling the size of its campus on Stierlin Court. The projects were big enough to house 4,000 to 6,000 additional employees in total.
As for the other two North Bayshore tech company heavyweights, Microsoft recently submitted a proposal for a relatively small expansion on La Avenida around 150,000 square feet. It meets normal density standards and won’t require special consideration by the City Council. Intuit isn’t expected to propose another project after having gained approval for a major headquarters expansion last year.
Developers may have to compete for a share of the limited capacity for new office space in North Bayshore if the council sticks to its wish to limit the area’s office development to reduce impacts on traffic and local housing stock. The maximum amount of new space that’s been discussed for years is 3.4 million square feet. That’s enough to accommodate about 15,000 to 20,000 employees more, though a few small projects have already taken a good chunk out of that, reducing the amount left to 2.5 million square feet. Another limit on the capacity for new offices is a new “trip cap” designed to force employers to encourage alternatives to solo car commuting, or face prohibitions on new development if rush-hour car trips exceed specified limits.
Council member Lenny Siegel expressed concern that the 3.4 million-square-foot cap was never written into the North Bayshore precise plan last year, except for what would be allowed without a new environmental impact report.
While the new City Council has expressed an interest in zoning for housing in North Bayshore in an attempt to keep up with the new job growth, Google reportedly has been silent on the topic while presenting its office project to city officials, despite expressing interest in seeing a neighborhood of 5,000 new homes around its headquarters in North Bayshore.
“My impression right now is that they are focused on the office component because that’s the only thing they are allowed to do right now,” Tsuda said.
Council members noted that Google did not propose new offices in the core of North Bayshore along North Shoreline Boulevard. The council has discussed the possibility of zoning that area for new housing.
Council members said Google also presented plans to shift car traffic away from congested Shoreline Boulevard and onto Rengstorff Avenue, possibly with a parking garage near Rengstorff and Highway 101.
-
“This rendering shows the west side of the proposed Huff project. At ground level, the environment is newly restored. Employees will be drawn from offices to the outdoors, to work alongside waterways and under trees. Mountain View residents can walk or ride along green corridors, eat at cafes, shop, play in parks, or work in the public community gardens.” –Google image and caption -
“This rendering shows a restored natural habitat around Permanente Creek, near the proposed Landings project. You can’t tell, but a consolidated parking structure is hidden below this landscaped garden. By consolidating parking, traffic congestion is reduced in the area, making it safer and more attractive for people to walk and bike.” -Google image and caption -
“This rendering shows the northern half of the proposed Landings project. In place of parking lots and other underutilized sites, we will establish revitalized native ecosystems, including re-oaking and wetlands.” -Google image and caption
My take away from a fairly recent meeting in council chambers when a Google development executive addressed council, was that Google “supports the notion of housing in North Bayshore” but that was as far as Google was willing to go when pressed by a council member to get a definitive “yes” or “no” to the question — if housing units were allowed in the area, would Google build/own this housing? Google’s “we support the notion…” reply was a coy “no”. Google will not be building housing in North Bayshore.
Given the insane price and scarcity of real estate, why are we still building 4-5 story buildings in NBS? This is the perfect place to build some real densities so we can preserve our land for other things like parks, housing, schools, etc.
I’m trying to figure out where this new office will be located. What buildings or businesses are at the site now?
All these locations are currently occupied by Google and LinkedIn office buildings, right?
The current buildings are one-story and spread out over a good distance, making them inefficient for a companies that want employees to work closely together on large projects.
I hope we approve their development of the biggest, coolest, most forward thinking buildings ever with as much space as possible. In this way, we will be the center of gravity for everything south of the City, and even if Google leaves or diversifies, we will still have this incredible infrastructure to attract whatever the next hot thing is. If we don’t do this, they will find somewhere else to go and we will lose the energy, money and urban planning flexibility we currently have. And no, I don’t work for any of these companies; I work for a small company near San Antonio and El Camino.
“where” is almost right. This is all on existing space, but it could be anywhere there are buildings. LinkedIn is proposing to build down where the Laser Tag place is, but Google, Intuit, and Microsoft would be proposing to build new buildings where they already are, just bigger. You’re definitely right that these office layouts are straight from the 80s, when it was assumed everyone wanted to drive to an office building that was surrounded by giant parking lots.
This is the part that confuses me: “west of Shoreline Boulevard and on the north side of the Century movie theaters and Plymouth Street.” I really wish they had a diagram or map. I guess we’ll know soon enough.
I understand west of Shoreline. Does the north side of the Century movie theaters mean the space currently occupied by Sports Page and the other small restaurants? If they just meant the buildings on the other side of Plymouth, then why mention the movie theaters at all.
For a large project north of Plymouth, I wonder if it’ll stretch down to the Country Deli space.
Mercury News has a more detailed description of where all this development will take place:
http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_27599272/google-plans-giant-canopy-metal-and-glass-mountain
Google wants to rebuild on Huff. No big deal then.
My main concern is that those initiatives will attract even more people to Mountain View. Currently we already have a big gap between the offer of homes and the demand, by increasing employment around in approximately 20,000 new positions or more, the prices for renting and buying homes in the area will blow up sky high.
Our City Counsel should be worried about this important phenomena that is pushing out of the city people that leave here for many years, as far as two or three generations, working jobs that are absolutely necessary for our community, but that do not pay sufficiently for those families to sustain their homes.
Our City Counsel should demand plans from those large employers, to increase invest in building new homes to accommodate the growing demand they are provoking. Space for supporting new homes, schools, community centers and all necessary facilities to expand the city on a holistic sustainable way.
This should be our main preoccupation around those mega investments coming to our town.
20,000 new jobs, and that’s just in North Bayshore. It feels strange to say it, but that’s exactly what we DON’T need. But we will get it anyway, because the 3.4 million sf of new office space has already been approved by the last city council, and the new council can be expected to say “yes” to whatever Google desires.
And there’s that potential Google expansion into Moffett Field too…
So the next hot topic will be: Gee… now where can we put all that additional housing that these Councilpersons believe they were elected to provide, to remedy the “jobs/housing imbalance”? Those 5,000 units? Or maybe it should be 20,000?
Answer: It will go into your neighborhood, of course, unless you are fortunate enough to live south of El Camino, on the Los Altos side of Mountain View.
Ken Rosenberg wants a “world class city”. Mike Kasperszak has talked about the “Manhattanization of Mountain View”.
Good luck to us all.
Google blogged about their proposal: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2015/02/rethinking-office-space.html
Google is going to grow its business whether the city likes it or not. Telling them to stop hiring is naive. If the city refuses to let them grow in Mountain View, then they are just going to build office buildings in nearby cities like Palo Alto and Sunnyvale and our traffic problems will be the same even worse, since employees will have to commute longer distances to work and also shuttle between office buildings.
Our best option is to work with Google on improving non-car transportation options. Google buses are one option that is already working for them. We also need public transportation options, bike paths, etc. There are lots of things we can do, if we start working before the problem grows.