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Seeking to accommodate more students and shifting academic needs, Stanford University is preparing to add nearly 2 million square feet of academic space, 2,500 student beds and about 500 units of housing for faculty and staff over the next two decades, according to a permit application that the university submitted to the county Wednesday.
The ambitious proposal is Stanford’s first foray into adopting a new growth plan since 2019, when its last attempt to update its General Use Permit collapsed after three years of public hearings. At that time, members of the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors and community stakeholders demanded that the university provide more affordable housing and stronger transportation measures to mitigate the impacts of its academic growth.
While it’s adjacent to Palo Alto and Menlo Park, the university is located on unincorporated Santa Clara County land, which means its growth is governed by a general use permit that must be approved by the county Board of Supervisors. The university’s existing permit was approved in 2000, and Stanford leaders say a new growth plan is needed to address emerging academic needs.
The plan calls for 1.8 million new square feet of academic and academic support space, as well as 150,000 square feet of “community-supportive space” to accommodate new recreation facilities, childcare and services that reduce vehicle trips, according to the application.
“Academic and academic-support space growth is essential because the fields pursued by Stanford’s faculty, students, and staff are at the forefront of addressing the world’s most urgent challenges and have enormous potential to improve lives both locally and globally,” the application states. “As these fields continue to evolve, they require new avenues of scholarly inquiry, new modes of collaboration, and highly specialized spaces that can support discovery, bring people together, and prepare students for the future.
“While Stanford renovates existing facilities when possible, some areas of frontier science and innovation require specialized spaces that do not currently exist on campus and cannot easily be created by adapting older buildings.”
While the new growth plan would stand out as one of the largest development projects in the county’s history, it doesn’t go quite as far as the doomed 2016 proposal. Stanford’s 2016 application had envisioned 2.275 million square feet of new academic space, 550 housing units and 2,660 beds by 2035.
The 2016 effort fizzled after the county added numerous conditions, including a requirement for Stanford to build more than 2,000 housing units and adopt a more stringent standard for calculating traffic trips. County officials also resisted Stanford’s attempts to enter into a development agreement that would lock in the county’s approval for future developments.
Some of these issues will likely resurface over the next year, as the university begins its journey through the county’s development process. As part of its new growth plan, which it calls StanfordNext, Stanford is once again insisting a development agreement. And the number of housing units it is proposing hews much closer to the earlier application than to what the county had insisted on.
Past differences notwithstanding, Stanford officials maintain in the new application that the new growth plan will boost both the university and the broader region. To sweeten the deal, the university is proposing to include in the new development agreement a $100 million fund to support regional affordable housing, transportation, education and other partnerships, according to the application.
“Stanford’s future and our region’s success are inseparable, and both have been in the forefront as we have developed this plan,” Stanford President Jonathan Levin said in a statement Wednesday. “StanfordNext seeks to create shared progress by advancing emerging research and transformative education over the coming decades while also helping address housing, transportation, sustainability, and other critical needs in our region.”
Some of the benefits of the growth plan would extend well beyond the region, according to university. Stanford Provost Jenny Martinez said in a press briefing that Stanford is a place of discovery, with faculty members on the frontiers of many different disciplines, including data science, medicine, environmental science, genomics, nanoscience and chemical biology.
“Both today and in the future, students and researchers need spaces that are flexible, that bring people together, that enable them to use new technologies, and that in many cases include specialized infrastructure and equipment. StanfordNext plans for these needs,” Martinez said in a statement.
Another goal for Stanford is to add more students. The vast majority of the new beds – about 2,000 out of 2,500 – is earmarked for undergraduate students, according to McNair.
“For students, it’s a transformative experience to come to Stanford and have the kind of education that brings together these different disciplines,” Martinez said. “We’d like to give this opportunity to more students over time.”
Stanford’s future and our region’s success are inseparable, and both have been in the forefront as we have developed this plan.
jonathan levin, stanford president
Stanford already guarantees four years of on-campus housing for undergraduates, and it houses more than 80% of all students, according to the GUP application. The university also expanded its capacity to house graduate students in 2020, when it opened Escondido Village, a complex on the east side of campus with more than 2,400 student beds.
These increased on-campus housing opportunities reduce the demand for housing in local neighborhoods and help ease housing pressure on the surrounding region.
The 2,500 new beds proposed in the application aim to “accommodate a gradual increase in undergraduate students and additional on-campus housing opportunities for graduate students,” the application states.
“These increased on-campus housing opportunities reduce the demand for housing in local neighborhoods and help ease housing pressure on the surrounding region,” the application states.
The proposed academic growth would be limited to the main campus, with about 1.52 million square of new development proposed for the “inner campus” area where most existing academic facilities are located. The central area around the Main Quad and Arboretum would get about 250,000 square feet of growth; the Lathrop district would see 20,000 square feet; and the area around Quarry Road about 10,000 square feet (see map). There would be no development in the foothills adjacent to the campus.
Stanford released its new application after nearly a year of outreach meetings where university officials solicited ideas from residents in surrounding communities. Several key themes emerged during these conversations, said Whitney McNair, Stanford senior associate vice president and StanfordNext project executive. Residents identified affordable housing as “the defining regional challenge and the central opportunity” and cited “traffic congestion and transportation” as a major concern.
McNair said that the new growth plan aims to address these concerns by retaining its existing “no net new trips” policy, which came out of the 2000 permit, and which sets a limit on peak-hour trips to campus. And unlike in the prior application, Stanford has identified a site where it plans to build the new workforce housing: a parcel near the intersection of El Camino Real and Quarry Road near Hoover Pavillion and directly across from the Palo Alto Transit Center.
These would include 84 units for “very low-income” households (those making up to 50% of area median income) and 63 units for “low-income” households (up to 80% of area median income), according to the application. The remaining would be offered at “missing middle” incomes, which are up to 150% of area median income.
When it comes to transportation, Stanford plans to retain the “no net new commute trips” policy but to focus on the “vehicle miles traveled” metric while removing any mention of “reverse commute trips,” a measurement that the application claims in redundant.
Notably, the university is preparing to install automated license plate cameras to monitor traffic levels on campus, obviating the need to install pneumatic tubes at cordons to count cars. The technology will be different from the type of license plate readers installed by Flock Safety, a company that has generated significant backlash around the country following numerous data breaches. Stanford had recently discontinued its partnership with Flock, and the GUP application states that the university’s transportation officials will only use APPR data for “parking and transportation program-related uses or to comply with University policy.”
The cameras would be installed at more than a dozen cordon locations, according to the application, including private streets around the campus and at entrances and exits for all parking facilities that the academic campus shares with Stanford Health Care and Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital.
Stanford also plans to advance transportation improvements such as new roundabouts, road extensions and a multi-modal transit hubs, according to the application.
With the application submitted, it will now be up to the Santa Clara County to review the materials before the Planning Commission and the Board of Supervisors hold public hearings on the growth plan. In his introductory letter to Jacqueline Onciano, the county’s planning director, Levin characterized the application as a plan to “to address housing and traffic needs, as well as other ways that Stanford can contribute to regional success.”
“We are proud to be residents of the county and region, and of the work we do at Stanford to provide world-class health care, academic programs, innovation, and community service that helps to make Santa Clara County a wonderful place to live and work,” Levin wrote. “Our StanfordNext motto is ‘Succeed Together’; we view this application as a step toward collective success.”
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