Council agrees to pursue housing in East Whisman

One of Mountain View’s office-heavy jobs centers could be an epicenter of new housing, after City Council members Tuesday night voiced broad support for re-zoning parts of the East Whisman area for residential growth.

The Sept. 6 meeting marked the first of several scheduled study sessions on the East Whisman Precise Plan, part of a larger strategy to increase housing throughout the city.

The area is roughly bounded by Highway 101, North Whisman Road, Central Expressway and the city of Sunnyvale and is currently zoned for light industrial and does not allow for residential use.

The key question at the council meeting wasn’t whether to add housing to the area, but where it should go and at what density. Also part of the discussion was whether additional office growth should be allowed in the area as well — an idea that was not embraced by a majority of council members.

Mayor Pat Showalter said allowing residential development is important in light of the housing crisis in the Bay Area, and that the majority of residents who attended the community workshop meeting on the precise plan in July overwhelmingly supported residential zoning.

“We heard loud and clear from the people at the workshops that they were very interested in housing,” Showalter said.

Council member Mike Kasperzak, who was absent but sent in written comments, said he supported taller, denser housing along Middlefield Road, Whisman Road and Ellis Street that should feel more urban than suburban. At the same time, Kapzerzak added that he doesn’t see the need to add more offices beyond what’s allowed in the existing precise plan, and questioned whether new businesses coming into the area provide a significant economic advantage to the community.

Other areas to be studied for housing won tepid support at best. Council member Lenny Siegel said he supported studying housing north of Maude Avenue, but worried that air traffic from nearby Moffett Federal Airfield could make it an undesirable place to live.

“I’m concerned about noise levels,” Siegel said. “I don’t want to create a situation where, if there’s increased usage of the airfield, there’s a problem five or 10 years down the road.”

Council support for housing stopped short of extending south of Highway 237, an area council members feared would be isolated from the rest of the community. A number of the lower-density offices south of Highway 237 are occupied by smaller companies and startups, which council members argued should not be displaced by changes in the zoning.

Council member John Inks, who did not lend his support to the residential-heavy vision for the area, said he was worried that re-zoning for residential could quash existing and future office developments. Inks suggested that more outreach be done with local business owners on where housing can be put.

Wally Singleton, workplace planner for Symantec, said company officials are concerned about losing development entitlements for 130,000 square feet of the company’s campus if the new zoning precludes office development. Symantec acquired the company Blue Coat Systems in June, and faces adding about 500 employees at a time when the city is considering squeezing down office growth in the area, Singleton said.

One of the big concerns facing council members was whether a new neighborhood in the East Whisman area would feel like an isolated pocket of residential buildings, rather than a neighborhood connected to the rest of the city. Vice Mayor Ken Rosenberg said he was concerned that housing along Ellis Street would feel like an island surrounded by office buildings, and residents would be forced to leave the area to enjoy parks and other typical neighborhood amenities.

Senior city planner Lindsay Hagan said the change will have to happen over time, and that the hope is that standalone residential developments will eventually reach a critical mass. There’s also significant housing growth planned south of the precise plan area, which could connect to form a larger community in an area currently dominated by industrial buildings.

“The intent and interest is to get enough volume of residential land use where it could, in fact, create enough units to encourage that kind of urban neighborhood,” Hagan said.

Despite the interest in creating a more urban feel to the area, school board member and council candidate Greg Coladonato told council members that he didn’t see a lot of support in the community workshop for massive high-rise buildings that would make the area look like downtown San Jose. Several members of Mountain View’s Environmental Planning Commission talked about residential buildings as tall as 10 stories, Coladonato said, which he felt would not be a good fit for the area.

“I don’t think we need to go higher than five or six stories,” he said. “That seems too intense for the neighborhood.”

A portion of the precise plan area is affected by the large groundwater plume contaminated by trichloroethylene (TCE), a Superfund site bordered by Middlefield, Ellis and Whisman roads. Siegel argued that it should not pose a major barrier to building housing in the area. There are strategies for avoiding toxic vapor intrusion in homes, he said, including building ground-floor garages and retail to provide a buffer between residents and the carcinogenic chemicals beneath the soil.

“As far as I can tell, there’s no serious obstacle to building housing on any of the areas we’re looking at,” he said.