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A new seven-story, multifamily housing community is being proposed in the East Whisman area. Though massive by historical Mountain View standards, city planning officials say the proposal is zoning-compliant and consistent with the city’s vision for the largely undeveloped East Whisman Precise Plan (EWPP) area.
Proposed for 320 Logue Ave., the project would construct 366 apartments, according to project plans. The building would consist of a below-grade, three-level garage with 412 total parking spaces.
According to the project plans, the complex would be “conveniently located adjacent to the Middlefield VTA light rail station and planned open space (as part of Google’s development), as well as other nearby jobs,” and would offer “an important piece of the pedestrian and bike oriented neighborhood envisioned in the EWPP.”
The project is still in the early stages of the approval process, having only been seen by the city’s Development Review Committee (DRC) so far at a virtual July 20 meeting, which was not recorded or posted for public review.
At that meeting, committee members recommended that the developer make some minor changes, such as expanding plans for a multi-use driveway to allow different types of vehicles to get around more smoothly, and increasing the amount of landscaping along the side of the building that would face the VTA tracks.
While zoning compliance wasn’t discussed at the meeting – the committee is tasked with making recommendations on site architectural design, not adherence to the city’s zoning laws – Deputy Zoning Administrator and DRC member Rebecca Shapiro said the planner assigned to the project, Edgar Maravilla, has indicated that the proposal adheres to zoning standards in the city’s precise plan, which allows for high “bonus” densities.
Shapiro said the project is allowed to achieve a high intensity with a floor-area ratio (FAR) of 3.5 and, per the city’s review, the project complies with those rules.
Generally, any concerns related to zoning compliance of a proposed project would come up later once the project reaches the public hearing and decision-making stages, Shapiro said.
The project is also compliant in terms of parking. The precise plan includes parking maximums, meaning it doesn’t allow projects to have more than a certain number of parking spaces, depending on the number of housing units.
“The project is complying with those maximums,” Shapiro said. “The project plans include 412 parking spaces and the precise plan standard is a maximum of one space per unit for studios and one-bedrooms, and a maximum of two spaces per unit for two-bedrooms and up.”
The 320 Logue Ave. project includes a mix of 294 studios and one-bedroom apartments, 65 two-bedrooms and seven three-bedrooms. The 412 parking spaces proposed falls below the 438 maximum allowed for that mix of units.
The proposal also complies with Mountain View’s affordable housing requirements, stating in the project plans that it would include 15% onsite affordable units at 50% and 80% AMI (area median income).
While a housing development with this many stories and units is out of character in other parts of Mountain View, Shapiro said it’s in line with other projects that have been proposed in East Whisman. A recently approved development just a block away at 400 Logue Ave., for instance, will have a little more than 400 units, she said.
“The unit mix that 320 Logue has isn’t out of character,” she said. “There I believe are two larger residential developments (in East Whisman) that have already been approved.”
Even so, the project is still in the early stages of the review process and will have to go through a few more hoops before it can be considered for approval.
The project will return to the DRC for one final review “where we’ll see any changes that they were able to make based on our first review,” Shapiro said. That will be followed by a neighborhood outreach meeting, a public hearing before the Environmental Planning Commission and ultimately come before the City Council.
Shapiro added that the project also needs to go through the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) process, a major factor as far as timing is concerned. The precise plan already has an approved CEQA document, allowing most proposals within the area to go through a streamlined environmental checklist process, which typically takes around six months, Shapiro said.
“So the project is unlikely to be at the public hearing stage until maybe early next year,” she said.
Beautiful.
Lets fast track approval and get it built. No more waiting 10 years to get through the process.
Let’s do it, but in the Cuesta Park neighborhood. How does that sound? Is it fair that one neighborhood is constantly dumped on while others don’t do their part?
If you consider replacing old industrial buildings with shiny new ones to be “dumping.”
My only complaint about this project is that it’s not tall enough!
Let put new housing in all of the neighborhoods!
Also, yeah the Cuesta Park Annex is NIMBY Nonsense.
They need to build at Cooper Park. Save Cooper Park !! Ridiculous. Cuesta Annex….build on it. That land is doing nothing. If you want open space drive 10 mins to Los Altos Hills plenty of entrance pints to Rancho San Antonio trails. Cuesta residents just want a place they don’t have to bend over to pick up dog crap.
Great idea! And while we’re at it, let’s pave over Cuesta Park itself, and also Rengstorff Park too. Parks and open space are so last century. Just think of all the apartments that could be built there instead!
The Cuesta Park Annex is nothing more than an underused, glorified empty lot and would be an excellent place for housing. Far better than the current plan to shoehorn Soviet-style housing blocs into every inch of an already overcrowded area that has virtually no green space.
So sad to see Mountain View being destroyed with a young transient workforce living in studio apartments establishing no roots in Mountain View. They get Google on their resume and move on. Why are we enabling this!
i guess Leslie must have a dog (The Annex is a nice dog run)
YIMBY Cuesta Parkers know that The Annex would be an excellent place for some BMR (lower-income) housing built inexpensively with modern-modular multi-story technology. Berkeley has done it, the Council and interested residents saw presentations (and a trailered-in unit) several years ago on this concept.
The Annex is walkable to schools, hospital, 2 shopping centers and bus lines.
The MVWSD could do it (small-small-scale) on ‘just a bit’ of their underutilized dirt lot in the “heretofore untouchable” Waverly Park area. [SAVECOOPERPARK.com here’s talking with you / if Any YIMBY exist in that suburban-scape]
JPA – Joint Powers Authority: MVWSD – MVLA – Hospital District – City of MV
@Steven, thanks for your interest, but no I don’t own a dog. I have only walked on the Cuesta park annex once or twice. I am a huge fan of nature and greenspaces however. It saddens me when I see Yimbys advocating against the funding of new schools and parks, now we can see some of them actually calling for the DESTRUCTION of existing open spaces while they lobby to increase the population by 40%. I love both children and dogs, however, so I abhor Yimby advocacy to defund schools and parks by appearing at city council meetings to plead that developer fees levied to pay for these city services pose a “hardship” to developers. If the population grows by 40%, additional parks will be needed so that existing spaces are not overwhelmed. Enhancing the Annex as an extension of Cuesta Park would be an excellent solution. Man does not live by bread alone, and he does not live by housing alone either. Do you know how important parks are to those on the lowest ranks of the economic ladder? And where is the guarantee that any more than 12% of the units would be “affordable”? History shows that the lion’s share of units would be expensive, market rate units that would sell for a pretty penny because they are so close to beautiful Cuesta Park.
This 7 story residential project is smack dab in the middle of an office park area which has experienced quite a bit of recent development and which is poised to see still more new office growth. That’s the difference from the Cuesta Annex. Put the housing by the jobs, one would think. Not only that but the area is well served by nearby Highway 237, Highway 85 and Central Expressway. Many of the new residents will be commuting along those high capacity roadways. Beside that, there is this very expensive high capacity light rail line running by the area is well. VTA sorely needs SOMEONE to make use of this light rail line because no one is doing that now!
Not all locations are equally well connected. History shows that more Moountain View residents have jobs outside the city than do have jobs in the ample office development. This fact is likely to continue, so such new housing needs to provide service for commuters getting to their jobs outside Mountain View.
If the myth that the people will both live and work in Mountain View pervades, consider how very difficult it would be for workers in the MiddleField Whisman office complexes to get home to a residence at Cuesta Park! There’s not only no public transit, but the roads in between are second rate for commuting and they are already well loaded. Why put the houses at Cuesta Park? I see zero reason to favor that site. You’d really need to allow office development in the Cuesta Park area to have it begin to compete with Middlefield-Whisman like this.
The local ELementary Schools south of El Camino Real are also overloaded, even though there are proportionately more spots in that small part of the city for students now.