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A pair of downtown parking lots will be rebuilt into a high-end hotel and office complex as a result of a City Council decision on Tuesday, Nov. 27. The project was approved in a 5-2 vote, with councilwomen Margaret Abe-Koga and Lisa Matichak opposed.
Originally pitched about three years ago, the development by the Robert Green Company calls for a five-story Joie de Vivre hotel with a new restaurant, bar and cafe to be built along Hope Street, just a block from the city’s downtown transit center. On the opposite side of the street, the developer would construct a four-story office complex, about 52,000 square feet in total.
As part of the negotiations, the developer promised to build a new underground garage that will provide 385 spaces, 225 of which will be available to the public. City staff pointed out this would be an increase of 76 spaces over the two parking lots currently in use.
Speaking for his company, Robert Green Jr. described the new project as an attractive destination that would “activate” properties not being used to their full potential.
“We developed a project that we think the city will be proud of,” he said. “We tried our best to create a classic design, something that will reflect the different features of downtown Mountain View but also something sophisticated.”
For its supporters on the City Council, it was a win-win deal — the downtown area will get more free parking while the city gets a lucrative new source of revenue. Early on, the city would receive about $330,000 in rent and taxes each year, but that amount is expected to steadily increase. Within 30 years, the city is expected to receive about $6.8 million annually. All told, over the 55-year lifespan of the deal, city officials estimated the city would net about $292 million.
Yet parking remained a sticking point for city officials as they considered the plan. Members of the downtown preservationist group Livable Mountain View spoke out against the development, alleging it was downplaying its parking needs. A study assessing the parking needs was released only a few hours before the meeting. Speaking for the group, Mary Hodder estimated the hotel and offices would actually need 214 additional spaces to avoid spilling over into the public lots.
“We don’t have the transit infrastructure to support the kinds of parking estimates that we’re making,” she said. “We don’t want to see hotel staff or office workers utilizing those public spaces, and we don’t see what will happen if that does occur.”
Some of those concerns were taken up by Abe-Koga, who implied the compromise wasn’t actually as good as it seemed. The deal includes an agreement for the city to forgo a portion of the hotel (transient occupancy) tax to subsidize the public parking. Eventually, the hotel will pay the full amount. Abe-Koga pressed the city’s finance staff to explain how much money the city would forego in taxes to make the project work. The answer: $7.8 million.
“That’s over $100,000 a parking space — I’ve never heard of anything like this amount,” she said. “We’re being asked for quite a large subsidy … but there’s other hotels who aren’t asking for this.”
Abe-Koga and Matichak said they could not support the project, in part because it was an office project that would worsen the city’s jobs-housing imbalance.
Yes, it would have been nice to build housing instead of offices, agreed Mayor Lenny Siegel, but he said the project was still worthwhile. He was skeptical the hotel and office would create the parking nightmare that opponents were envisioning. He pointed out the project was situated right next to the transit center. Caltrain and ride-sharing services should reduce the parking demands of the project, he said.
“An enormous amount of time and energy has been spent working out these details,” he said. “I think we’ve done a pretty good job addressing these issues.”
The project is expected to be completed in late 2021, according to the Robert Green Company.
Is it me? Am I the only one who misses the livable feeling of old MV? I appreciate the conveniences of development, and am not arguing that there should not be any development, but it is almost impossible to go into downtown MV anymore. Parking, traffic, crowds; I can’t see how adding more would make it any better !
This madness for us long time home owners. I am hoping that this project can be reversed in early 2019 by the new city council.
The old Ciry Council should have postponed the vote for a couple of months.
I live in Mountain View and for years I enjoyed a nice walk downtown at least once a week to dine out, but now I rarely venture downtown anymore. It’s simply too crowded and chaotic for me. I don’t enjoy trying to walk down the sidewalk while constantly needing to either step on the edge of the curb or brush up against the side of a building in order to allow groups walking 3+ abreast to continue along without breaking stride. Kinda rude, imho. Whatever. Maybe I’m sensitive, but the crowds and chaos bother me enough so that I now opt for downtown Los Altos instead…nice restaurants, plenty of nice shops and ample free parking. Oh, and no worries about getting mowed down on the sidewalks. It works for me.
Enjoy the chaos you are creating city council, it’s because of this chaos – which I believe some term “vibrancy” – that I have opted out of spending my money downtown.
This will help liven up downtown. I’m all for it.
was this approved by the old city council? The one having two of its members replaced? They really should not have voted on this until the new members are seated. I mean, whatever happened to the voice of the voters?
Lenny is delusional if he thinks hundreds of hotel and office workers are going to take public transit (an inefficient patchwork of trains, busses and light rail). ALL of his high density plans endorse “parking-lite” (aka not enough!), just let the adjacent neighborhoods deal with it. This is s bad plan and our lame duck council members should not be able to vote on it. I completely agree with Mary Hodder. The developers always get their way. That had better stop in 2019.
You Boomers are going to gleefully ruin the planet with climate change, and you don’t care one bit since you’re the most selfish generation. You’ll be gone and leave a ruined planet to your kids and grandkids, and you prefer that to getting out of your cars. History will not judge you kindly.
So tired of the attitude of “old mountain view” no change, no progress, fear of what’s new. As a new resident of the city (coming from SF) it’s disheartening to see so many people longing for “the good old days” of things being sleepy and boring. Change can’t come soon enough.
Welcome to our future. Please dress in skinny jeans and wear your man bun. Don’t forget Apple watch 4 fashion accessory and talk about stock options. If you are over 50 you lost the old town to business, tech, and millennials. Sell and move to sleepy towns in the back waters of California where you will be much happier. Mountain View city council is working hard to get rid of you old farts.
The more “high-end hotels” and offices Mountain View builds, the more residents get pushed out. Downtown is slowly becoming a destination for visitors, not for residents. Visitors don’t want Fishscapes and they sure don’t want Bierhaus.
I could be wrong, but it seems that the best place for new offices and hotels would be next to the freeway to minimize daily commuters from clogging up city streets.
Also I would replace some or most of the parking lot at Shoreline movie theaters with park and ride lots so people could park as soon as they get off the freeway, and ride a shuttle to the North Shoreline office buildings.
What do others think? Should MV be approving ANY new office developments until the jobs/housing imbalance is less lopsided? Do we need more luxury hotels and if yes, which offices should they be closest to? Is the new development and other developments approved by council in synch with the outcome of the extensive visioning process from a few years ago?
And finally, could we please get past the name calling and personal insults to boomers, individual council members, etc above and stick to a constructive conversation about what decisions we would like to see from council?
It’s nothing new that a developer and property owner — the latter, in this case, being the City of Mountain View — wildly understate a proposed development’s impact on parking. Also not new is that the shortsightedness and recklessness of certain MV city council members led to them sugarcoating — and ultimately endorsing — this project.
The new council can’t be installed soon enough! Let’s just hope they possess enough spirit and integrity to look more critically and thoroughly at major projects like this.
Reader from Waverly Park, it’s not name-calling, your generation was born on third and think you hit a triple. You bankrupted our country, passed Prop 13 to enrich yourselves, and have caused climate change while still refusing to get out of your cars. Plus you elected Trump. Yours is the selfish generation that has left the country and planet worse than you found it. Stop complaining about parking amd fix things.
Incredible! Seigel and Showalter STOP!!
All votes should be postponed as we voted them out!!!!
Abe-Koga and Matichak are the only Council people who are watching out for MVers! It seems that the fact that we booted Seigel (which to oust a sitting Mayor is extremely rare), should shock them into reality, but no same old mind-set.
Save our MV! 76 parking spaces with all the workers, etc. ridiculous.
See, all these Boomers care about are their precious cars. Your greed and laziness has doomed future generations, and you still don’t get it!
@Grumpy Minority:
Any other doomsday predictions, wild generalizations or tired cliches you want to trot out here?? If not, you’d better go hunker down in your bunker for the end of the world as you know it.
Climate change denial is precisely why you generation will not be remembered kindly. You had the chance to avert disaster, but instead put yourselves first and saddled your children and grandchildren with a world that will be less habitable.
Another sucky move.. yeah.. the reason why old timers of mountain view liked the quiet little town.. is because we moved to mountain view for that very reason. if you want poop and garbage, go to SF. now it comes here.. yeah.. why live here? the wine festival.. nah.. bad.. getting worse.. newbies who like it are on our list of people we find annoying.. hehehe.. what a great night life we have here.. you can’t get food after 10pm..? really enjoyable..
Let me guess, mvresident, the infrastructure you think we need more of is to support cars. Your generation is killing the habitability of the planet, and all you can think about is supporting more cars. Allowing more people to live in Mountain View rather than drive in from Pleasanton, San Mateo, and San Jose will improve traffic. Continuing to force those people to live outside of Mountain View makes the problems worse, but you’re far too simple to understand that, so you’ll fight to the death for more parking spots.
You and I are going to pay for it with our unearned wealth in the form of property taxes, as we should. Hope that helps clarify things. Also you really are simple if you think we need a subway system in Mountain View, but, then again, you were opposed to BRT on El Camino and taxes for funding VTA…
I think BRT failed simply because VTA was involved. VTA has a clear and traceable history of failures on big projects, and when they botched the first attempts at it in SJ, they lost all credibility and confidence for their plan. VTA killed BRT, by trying to do it themselves. That’s also when people began to question the amount of money they were getting and what they were doing with it. VTA still needs massive reform and leaning out some of the bloated areas.
Hey, fake Radical, post under your own name rather than my username.
So, as you can see, I also have used Radical as a posting name, besides you and the other guy. You should register it and log in so people know it’s you if that’s important to you, otherwise pretty much anyone can and will use it when they want.
Wow, the grumpy posters don’t seem to realize one thing: you own a house, not the neighborhood.
Sigh. Just whats lacking.
Welcoming the changes over here. They days of small town Mountain View ended when Google moved in in the late 1990s.
No way, MV’s small town-ness ended in the 40’s and 50’s. That’s when they started ripping up most of the farms to build. People who did that and moved in years ago now blame Google, but the residents of 1930’s small town MV blamed the home builders and influx of new residents as their farming town went away.
It has been changing ever since, like everywhere else.
Any place that is as it used to be in the 50’s is likely either a museum town
or a dead-end town with no reason for kids to stay.
The new thing now is business office domination by a single corporate monopoly which bid up the price of land unnaturally. Nothing about which to rejoice. Sacrificing downtown shops and service businesses to still more offices is wasteful. Its a drop in the bucket compared to what Google snapped up as the price rose.
“which bid up the price of land unnaturally”
What does this even mean?
@What changed:
Excellent point. There are some very aggressive, well-financed collaborations of developers and property owners with nothing to lose and everything to gain by doing whatever’s necessary to get their way with city hall. Developers’ deep pockets are made deeper by them cozying up to landowners and, together, pushing through projects that the city is unprepared to thoroughly vet or, as we’ve seen, just unwilling to reject. This creates fertile ground for land prices to jump. It’s not clear when the bottom will fall out from underneath their business model — and it will — but until then, expect their gravy train to keep on rolling.
“It’s not clear when the bottom will fall out from underneath their business model — and it will — but until then, expect their gravy train to keep on rolling.”
The business model of successful companies buying adjacent land to grow into? Yeah, definitely wonder when that business model will bottom out.
Do we really want more people going in and out of the City knowing how horribly congested the traffic has become? Do we really want to continue putting in these big buildings in causing more traffic and changing the style of the City?
Yah, I don’t really mind.
Another City Council downtown parking space shell game. How many ADDITIONAL parking spaces will that hotel and office complex require above the existing number of downtown parking spaces??? I’ll bet it’s a heck of a lot more than a mere 76 space increase that the developer CLAIMS. Where will the overflow park??? One guess. Residential streets in Old Mountain View. I hope that the new City Council revokes the permit for this debacle after Lenny and Pat are history. Since they are lame ducks, did Lenny and Pat recuse themselves from this vote, or are they too shameless?
As a supportive response to above comments, my wife and I long ago stopped going to downtown MV & Palo Alto and now go to Los Altos and Menlo Park for recreation and shopping instead. They both seem to have a far better commitment to put neighborhood quality of life above unfettered, useless over-development. As for Sunnyvale? “There is no there there.” Target is our only target destination.
@The New, most people in MV bought ere because we DONT want the SF vibe. So now you move here and want to change it to what YOU want?
That said, things are definitely changing. And most aren’t opposed to living in a vibrant, diverse, interesting area. But the problem is the complete and utter lack of infrastructure to support all this growth. It’s insane. It needs to be addressed. Either we need to stop development or we need to add huge budgets for infrastructure. Can’t most of us realize neither is going to happen. We’re just going to Jeep getting unfettered growth with absolutely NO infrastructure to support it.
Again…..INSANE. A city gone wild on its “high” from corporate growth, potential tax revenue and developer influence.
Hate to burst your bubble there Grumpy but no, if we’re going to continue this growth then we need MASSIVE change with subway systems, double tiered trains, crazy stuff. I’m not opposed to it, just wondering who’s going to pay for it?
And thanks for adding to the discussion with the really positive “you’re too simple”, that really encourages dialogue and a feeling for coming up with solutions.