Council seeks to balance growth in East Whisman

With massive residential growth set in stone for the North Bayshore region of the city, Mountain View City Council members on Tuesday set their sights on East Whisman as the latest frontier for high-density housing and a balanced approach to the city’s jobs-housing imbalance.

City staffers are studying changes to the East Whisman Precise Plan that would open the door for developers to build 5,000 new housing units, along with as much as 2.3 million square feet of offices to accompany the growth. The vision for the area includes high density mixed-use development up to eight stories tall, with the highest density clustered around the Middlefield light rail station.

In order to achieve the mixed-use strategy for the area and reach a balance between jobs and housing growth — and avoid a torrent of office-centric development with no homes to go with it — city staff proposed creating a so-called “linkage” strategy that makes it gradually harder and harder to build office development in the area when a commensurate amount of housing has yet to be built.

If a developer wants to build offices in East Whisman when a paltry number of housing units have been built in the area, for example, they would be on the hook for more concessions, including increased public benefits and traffic mitigation measures, according to senior city planner Eric Anderson. The linkage strategy serves as an incentive for office and residential developers to partner and stay on track with balanced growth in the area, he said.

Councilwoman Pat Showalter said at the Feb. 27 City Council meeting that she liked the idea of a sliding scale aimed at balanced growth, and that it could serve as a discretionary control on development in the region, similar to the effect of the trip cap for North Bayshore, which limits growth based on vehicle traffic into the area.

“In the North Bayshore Precise Plan we had this very strict trip cap and it has led to all sorts of creativity about transportation improvements,” she said. “This is geographically really different. We don’t have one or two entryways to this area — there’s many of them.”

But the strategy could be a little tricky for developers to navigate, given that the lay of the land in East Whisman is so different than North Bayshore, said Councilman Chris Clark. Unlike North Bayshore, where a small number of property owners can take the jobs-housing balance into their own hands, East Whisman has a huge number of property owners who don’t have much of a say in regional housing growth.

“You have a whole host of ownerships,” Clark said. “It would be more difficult here, I think, for office developers to have some sort of control over whether or not housing is going to be built in roughly the same time frame on a parcel they don’t control.”

The specifics of the linkage strategy have yet to be hammered out, but council members largely endorsed the concept. City staff is expected to come back with a “range of potential economic and regulatory constraints” on development to strike a balance between new offices and homes. Mayor Lenny Siegel said he wasn’t too concerned about developers successfully staking out residential projects in the area, and that he knew of at least “four major parcels” where developers are hoping to build housing.

“I think it will actually happen fairly quickly if we enable it,” he said.

Even with this approach to development in the region, Mountain View resident Bruce Karney said he worried about the proposed balance between jobs and housing in the full build-out of the precise plan, which he said fails to address the city’s overall jobs-housing balance at a reasonable pace. He told council members that 5,000 new homes accompanied with 1.7 million or 2.3 million square feet of offices only improves Mountain View’s overall jobs and housing balance because the city’s jobs-housing imbalance is “so terrible” to begin with. Reaching a level of equilibrium shouldn’t have to be a goal that takes at least 30 years to reach, he said.

“The project as it’s now defined, even at the lower level of office space, to my eye appears to be not a step far enough in the right direction,” he said.

The study session also took a closer look at establishing a commercial- and amenity-focused village center at East Middlefield and North Whisman roads, as well as a lower density “transition area” that tapers down density as development in East Whisman approaches the established neighborhoods to the west. Council members suggested open space, ownership housing and flexible policies for including affordable housing within each project — provided that 20 percent of the total housing stock in the region is designated as affordable.

Councilwoman Margaret Abe-Koga recused herself during the study session because of her former employment at Synopsys — its offices are located within the East Whisman Precise Plan — which still presents a potential conflict of interest.

Is light rail viable?

The precise plan, as it’s currently envisioned, slices up East Whisman into areas with varying levels of density, with the tallest and densely packed mixed-use development clustered around the Middlefield light rail station. The assumption is that the transit-oriented development would put less of a burden on the city’s roadways because more residents and employees would opt to use the VTA light rail system instead of driving to and from work.

Anderson told council members that city staff, in mapping out the proposed zoning density, used what he called a “walk shed” to map out accessibility to the Middlefield station by people traveling on foot, and that density calculated in Floor Area Ratio (FAR) was reduced for properties deemed too far from the station.

But council members throughout the study session wondered whether light rail is getting a little too much credit for meeting the transit needs in the area, calling it slower and less reliable than the alternatives. Councilwoman Lisa Matichak called it inefficient, and said that the council “shouldn’t be counting on it” for public transportation serving thousands of new residents and employees.

Councilman John McAlister called the idea of light rail serving the transit needs of the future mixed-use neighborhood “ambitious at best,” and that many people may instead opt for employee shuttles. He said the only near-term VTA improvements for the area include more frequent light rail service at 15-minute intervals, which is expected to roll out later this year alongside the completion of the Milpitas BART station.

“Right now there is nothing other than trying to increase the intervals,” he said. “That’s all that they’re doing.”

Siegel said state legislators are designing new laws to encourage or even force cities to build high-density housing near transit, which he believes is a big opportunity for Mountain View to tap into state money to help finance the dense residential development planned in the East Whisman area. He said the city’s geography shows a clear incentive to build homes near major jobs centers, and the station could help bring the plans to fruition.

“Whether or not light rail proves to be a more effective way to get around after this is all built out, that might enable us to get some state money for transit-oriented development to pay for the housing,” he said. “Even though you and I know that we aren’t counting on those residents to use light rail.”

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