April 27, 2005

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Palo Alto Online

Editorial: City should hold true to 'Mayfield agreement'

Despite last-minute concerns of some College Terrace residents who came late to the "Mayfield deal" discussions, the City Council Monday night should proceed with its long-awaited approval of the complex, multi-year agreement.

The simple reason for moving forward is that this agreement has benefits for just about everyone involved.

It provides badly needed field space in a $2.6 million development funded by Stanford, with the city picking up the incremental tab for a new type of artificial turf that is expected to pay for itself within several years -- saving water and maintenance costs, avoiding use of pesticides and making the fields more available for longer periods of the year.

For College Terrace residents, it drastically cuts the potential for development of the upper California Avenue site, with traffic reductions compared to either a new Research Park tenant or 30 housing units per acre allowed under existing zoning. Instead, the agreement would allow just 209 units -- or 12.4 units per acre -- on the 17-acre site facing College Terrace homes at the upper end of California. Traffic impacts will be correspondingly reduced, to the point of being "less than significant" on California and College Terrace streets, according to the environmental impact report on the project.

At the other end of California, additional housing will face El Camino Real and include between 50 and 70 below-market-rate units, depending on whether the Wells Fargo Bank property at California and El Camino is included.

From the beginning, it has been no secret that Stanford will get the right to build roughly equivalent replacement Research Park footage elsewhere in the sprawling commercial/office/manufacturing area once known as the Stanford Industrial Park.

That is why the $1 a year offer by Stanford to lease the six-acre former Mayfield School site at El Camino and Page Mill Road is not a gift but an exchange, a shifting of rights and obligations in a carefully balanced agreement that has taken months of detailed negotiations to achieve.

Despite some important tweaks, the core of the understanding is substantially unchanged from the June 2003 announcement. And the fact that the neighbors most directly engaged -- the elected officials of the College Terrace Residents' Association -- feel their concerns have been heeded is a strong endorsement of both the city's and Stanford's role in this lengthy process. Today's Guest Opinion reflects that perspective.

Not all residents feel that way, as the Guest Opinion in last week's Weekly clearly showed. Some would like to see additional efforts to reduce traffic impacts by running an access road out to Page Mill. But this alternative seems neither necessary, after careful reading of the impact reports, or possible, given the lateness of the proposal.

There is an impressive history to this agreement, and some significant side accomplishments that deserve recognition.

The history dates back to closure of the historic Mayfield School decades ago, which triggered one of the longest stalemates in history. Stanford wanted a hotel on the Mayfield site, which many professional planners concur would be logical. But the city zoned it for 260 units of housing to offset the city's chronic jobs-housing imbalance and housing shortage.

The stalemate ended in 2000, when the Palo Alto Unified School District decided it needed Terman Middle School back from the city, to which it had sold it years earlier. The take-back displaced the Jewish Community Center.

Stanford officials in 2001 tossed the Mayfield site into a three-way resolution -- the city, the school district and Stanford -- with the JCC slated to become part of a "community center" built on the site. But the JCC later pulled out in favor of owning its own land.

Nearly 20 months later, in June 2003, the basic terms of the Mayfield deal were renewed, but with soccer fields (instead of the JCC) and housing added to the mix. City and Stanford officials joined community sports backers in a joyous press conference outlining the basics of the deal that is finally coming before the City Council Monday night.

The underlying lesson of this process -- even if not perfect -- is that the "constructive engagement" philosophy of College Terrace's leadership and city officials has worked in the broad sense of building trust -- the cornerstone of mutually beneficial solutions.

The council action Monday night will underscore that lesson.

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