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The two buildings on El Camino Real in Palo Alto that currently house The Fish Market and a McDonald’s restaurant would be torn down and replaced with a seven-story residential complex with 380 apartments under a new proposal.
The Menlo Park-based developer Acclaim Companies has also indicated that it plans to rely on Senate Bill 330, which locks in the city’s development standards that are in place at the time of an application’s submission and which limits the number of public hearings that the city can hold on a proposed development. If approved, it would be one of Palo Alto’s tallest and most ambitious residential projects in decades.
The proposal for 3150 El Camino Real reflects a growing tendency by developers, both locally and across the state, to rely on new state laws to get around local restrictions that in the past would have doomed residential projects.
With a height of 84 feet, the development proposed by Acclaim would transcend Palo Alto’s 50-foot height limit by a significant margin, and its proposed density of 149 residential units per acre dwarfs the existing limit of 40 units per acre in the commercial zones. The city’s zoning code allows residential uses in service commercial (CS) zones on El Camino Real.
It is one of two large residential projects in the Barron Park neighborhood now going through the city’s review process. In October, the City Council discussed a development proposed by Oxford Capital Group to build two six-story apartment buildings at 3400 El Camino Real, the current site of the Creekside Inn. The new residential complexes would replace the hotel as well as the buildings that currently house Driftwood Deli and Market and Cibo Restaurant.
But while the Creekside Inn project was proposed under “planned home” zoning, which gives the council broad discretion to reject or modify the project, the new proposal from Acclaim is not requesting planned home zoning and is instead banking on state laws to significantly curtail the city’s powers to demand changes.
The state’s Density Bonus Law gives developers the right to seek waivers from development regulations, such as height and density standards and parking requirements. Acclaim is planning to include fewer parking spaces than would otherwise be required.
SB 330 also limits the city’s ability to request design modifications, provided the applicant has demonstrated that the project meets the city’s “objective standards.” With the application filed, city staff is now reviewing Acclaim’s submission to see if there are any deficiencies, Planning Director Jonathan Lait said.
“That’s where we are now. They’ll take that information, and they’ll have six months to file an application with the locked-in development standards,” Lait said.
Acclaim isn’t the only housing development in Palo Alto to rely on SB 330 for a residential project. Last summer, the council approved a 48-townhome development at 2850 W. Bayshore Road despite a recommendation from the Architectural Review Board to deny the project. The developer, SummerHill Homes, counted on SB 330 to limit the city to five hearings on the proposal.
The Sobrato Organization also cited SB 330 in its application for a 91-townhome project at 200 Portage Ave., near the former site of Fry’s Electronics. That proposal is now on hold, however, as the city and the developer are moving ahead with a broader development agreement that would result in 74 townhomes and require Sobrato to dedicate 3.25-acres of land to the city for development of affordable housing and a new park.
The Fish Market area is one of two Palo Alto sites that the Menlo Park-based developer has been considering for housing. In early 2021, the council gave generally good reviews to Acclaim’s proposed “planned home zone” project at 2951 El Camino Real, which included 113 apartments, on the opposite side of El Camino from the Fish Market proposal.
Despite the council’s enthusiasm, however, the project faltered after one of the property owners withdrew its support and construction costs escalated, company Vice President Gary Johnson told this news organization earlier this year.
Acclaim had also flirted with a different “planned home zone” project for The Fish Market site. In 2021, it submitted a preliminary application for a five-story development with retail on the ground floor and 129 housing units. Acclaim opted not to advance with that project, and the council never got to review it.
With nearly triple the units, the current project at 3150 El Camino Real is far more ambitious than what the developer was contemplating back then. According to plans that Acclaim submitted, the complex would include a rooftop garden lounge, a coworking area, a fitness area and a clubroom. It would also have a two-level underground garage with 443 parking spaces.
Of the 380 residences, 194 would be one-bedroom apartments. The complex would also include 95 two-bedroom apartments, 19 three-bedroom apartments, 14 studios and 58 junior one-bedroom apartments, which are studios with an additional small living space.
While the application does not state how many dwellings would be offered at below market rate, city law requires at least 15% of the new units (or 57 apartments) to be offered as affordable housing.
Acclaim did not immediately respond to questions about the project.
This map shows housing projects that have been proposed (in purple), approved (in green), deemed inactive (in yellow) and completed (in orange) in Palo Alto. Map by Jamey Padojino.
The proposal doesn’t seem to be available on the Planning website yet. It’ll be interesting to see it when it arrives. Given the recent studies showing that high-rise residential construction currently doesn’t pencil out in either San José or San Francisco, what makes this one different? Maybe you could make it work if the units are very small and very expensive, provided there are enough people willing to pay for that. Definitely a risky bet.
Another cracker box lining ECR, without enough parking, etc. Rinse, lather, repeat. And now we can’t even have a McDonalds? What does Palo Alto have against fast food? Nobody cooks any more. The 1200 people who will occupy the space will have to walk to CalAve to eat. Oh, ffs.
BTW, every time I pull in to that McD’s entry-way, it’s a nail-biter. People go too fast in that part of ECR, and I put my blinker on and everything, yet still always expect to get practically rear-ended to get my Happy Meal. There is a woman who works the counter there who has the patience of a saint, Front Line Essential Worker deserves and AWARD and you want to put her on the unemployment line? I hope the residents don’t have any kids or old folks visiting. There is nowhere to go there except to get run over trying. The thought of putting a high-rise at that location makes I wish I lived in Manhattan. It has more going for it than Palo Alto. Whyyyyyyy can’t we build anything to the WEST of ECR in all of that WIDE OPEN SPACE????
I don’t use either of those restaurants often, but both are popular and busy. What are we doing in Palo Alto? We are losing affordable, popular venues and it is getting hard to find somewhere to replace some of the old favorites.
We are being forced to shop on Amazon and it seems we will soon be forced to use Uber Eats and get cold food delivered to our doors because it is the easier option than driving to find somewhere new.
Is this indeed the future of Palo Alto living?
Yes Bystander that’s what we’re coming to. Putting up ugly boxes that all look the same, with the same “amenities” (Chinese made crappy materials and workmanship) with no allure. No defining architecture — looks like they are using LEGO plans. I’m not even sure if what has gone up in the past few years is earthquake safe — we shall soon see. Ugly, ugly, ugly, and no grocery store nearby, no doctor’s office, no way to get in or out without getting nearly killed. City Council is licking their chops, though. I’m sure somebody’s getting a hefty payoff for this proposal. Imagine with climate change, how floods are more prevalent … just look at 300 cars trying to evacuate that building all at the same time. GEEEEEZUZ. We are already saying we underestimated the power of the last storm, and developers are giving NO consideration to future climate change. 15% “affordable” apartments mean 2 studios will be filled with six poor people sharing 500 square feet of space, if the studios are even THAT large. I just can’t even contemplate the squalor that is expected of service employees.
More pollution and crime. No thanks
Lots of empty complaining here from @MyFeelz and @Bystander. You don’t want those restaurants closing, you don’t service people living in spaces and you don’t want apartment buildings being built.
What’s your solution to that? Where do you expect service people to live, exactly? There isn’t enough land for everyone to live in single family homes. And SFH in the area are much more expensive to rent/buy than apartments.
Personally, I’d much rather live in a cramped apartment than on the street, and I’d much rather walk to Cal Ave for lunch than have my street lined up with homeless campers.
The simple arithmetic is that the city(and entire peninsula) has way too many jobs and not enough housing, and new housing being built makes things somewhat better. If you have a problem with that feel free to leave and make room for others.
Why do most building projects proposed or built over the last ten years or so in the Bay Area all look mostly the same? Especially along El Camino? Same overall “boxy” style, same flat roofs, same drab colors, same additional “boxes” protruding out of the central box or boxes–what gives? Why have architects given up on variety? Why do they rarely try to fit into the surrounding style, or just build something with a modicum of grace or appeal? And how can anyone at City Hall refer to “objective standards” with a straight face? Architecture is inherently subjective, and the so-called “objective standards” are actually highly subjective, extremely rigid, obsessively detail-oriented guidelines that have been passed into law in order to allow developers to build with as little oversight as possible.
Jeez
I think it looks pretty good, and not too boxy. It compares favorably with its nearest neighbor (Palo Alto Square). And it certainly will help the city with its housing requirement.
Good to see a TALLER project, even though I would prefer even more height and more underground parking. Let’s make all new projects a MINIMUM of seven stories.
This is why I voted for a Republican governor. First time I have voted for a republican in my entire life. Newsome just wants Developer money for his Presidential bid.
I understand the housing imperative, but this is rather sad. Apart from transportation and parking issues, the construction of another generic high rise will further erase what remains of our distinctiveness. After all of these years, I still mourn the loss of the Old Pro Quonset hut. I haven’t had time yet to mourn the absence of Fry’s. Now they want to blow up the Fish Market. If Gryphon Stringed Instruments ever closes and its site redeveloped I’m leaving.
It’s very hard to make a profit building dense housing in much of the US, and especially in the Bay Area. The Terner Center’s tutorial ( https://ternercenter.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Hard_Construction_Costs_March_2020.pdf ) is great for understanding the general issues, and the recent report to San José’s City Council ( https://sanjose.legistar.com/View.ashx?M=F&ID=11354036&GUID=9DF41030-6776-4149-B101-CEF385FD8BD9 ) is a good description of specifics (“…the results from the 2022 report show that development is extremely challenged in all areas of the City. No scenarios assessed in the report were shown to be feasible.”)
Buildings look the same and don’t rise above 6 or 7 stories because that’s what it takes to stay cheap enough to turn a profit. Terner: “Type I projects, which are typically over 5-7 stories and constructed with steel and concrete, cost an average of $65 more per square foot than other types of construction”. To make a project “pencil out” you have to use low-cost materials and standardized construction (to minimize labor costs). This is particularly true if you want to build housing that’s affordable.
You’ll never get everyone to agree on architectural style, but plenty of people dislike the current designs. There was a good article about this in the NYT recently ( https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/20/realestate/housing-developments-city-architecture.html ).
It’s all part of the PIMBY movement to keep us Prisoners in our own back yard by taking away all stores and restaurants we used to frequent. Keeps us out of our cars and helps some bureaucrats and politicians raise more money for their next political campaigns.
Great thing wee don’t need sales tax revenues. Truly sensible to ignore the more than 200,000 tech layoffs. And such a pleasure to be able to ruin our communities and our own finances to house highly paid techies.
Anyone else looking at the Common Sense Party as an alternative>?
Great to see more housing which the place desperately needs!
If the area so desperately needs housing, please explain why there are so many For Lease and For Rent signs all over the place. Thanks in advance.
Developers support the City Council campaigns, therefore, they get to build. This will bring in more traffic that we don’t need.
The reason why there are For Rent signs is probably because every place is so expensive. The only way it will reduce is if there are more options.
happy to see multi-unit housing put up along ECR. Menlo Park has added lots near Santa Cruz Ave, and I imagine the local business will be benefiting from the local customer base for years to come.
I hope the city council approves but works to make Page Mill and ECR better situated for pedestrian traffic. This can be a boon to small businesses in the neighborhood if you can make it walkable.
YES!! High rise housing is the future. But there need to be plans for support services, community spaces, and better public transport. Grocery stores, restaurant, and hair/nail salons will probably benefit, so we don’t need more of them. But we need more variety of shops locally: books, toys, gifts, clothes, outdoor gear.
We really must stop acting like the pandemic didn’t happen. Remote work has allowed people to find quality of life they want elsewhere and many will not come back, especially if we continue to allow the built environment to destroy quality of life. It is a LIE that building willy nilly will magically produce affordability in a job center like this. Other places with quality of life we used to have will and have become job centers and that’s fine.
Two major problems we have an opportunity to address right now: Too much office space. The pandemic changed that permanently. Not enough affordable housing (a much older problem).
We do not want to become the place people commute to 2 times a week or month, or the office park no one wants to come to at all, and we were already headed in that direction BECAUSE OF allowing builders to destroy quality of life. The disruption was a pandemic, but earthquake or other disaster/recession disrupt similarly.
Allowing unfettered development does not solve these problems, they make it worse. We have a right to control over preventing our community from being an unaffordable office park filled in with tall unaffordable beehive housing with inadequate infrastructure. (PIMBY mindset, love that.)
We need to figure out how to incentivize converting office space to housing until there is balance. And we need to push for the hard conversations to regionally do more than just window dressing (or creating lottery spots) for housing affordability, and the conversation can’t just ignore supply and demand or treat poor people like they don’t deserve economic opportunities to move up.
In the meantime, proposals like these are damaging and tone deaf. Recent state mandates probably violate constitutional and other legal rights of charter cities in California and deserve serious legal pushback, especially given how Covid changed everything
https://www.law.berkeley.edu/files/Albuquerque3_-_Foundational_Aspects_of_Charter_Cities.pdf
I think that there are a lot of things to commend about this project. I like the height, because it is far better environmentally to build taller than outwards. I like that it is set up like a community, which rooftop gathering area, fitness facilities, meeting rooms, working space, and other shared spaces. I love that trend and think it is more future-proof than isolated cubes.
At the same time, I strongly believe that City Council needs to create policies, plans, ordinances, and requirements demanding use of ghost houses and empty office space. Although City Council (still!) does not keep track, many believe that Palo Alto has a larger percentage of empty SFHs than most other similar towns. Additionally, there are numerous empty/unfinished/unleased/etc office buildings due to layoffs, WFH, economy conditions and so on.
Palo Alto should embrace the strategies of similarly situated cities and pass a material and significant tax on ghost homes and buildings. For residential, the framework is arguably already in place. It is a violation of residential zone requirements not to use buildings for residential use. Currently, zoning fees — which remain unenforced and thus all the revenue uncaptured — are $500 per violation per day, or $182,500/year ($183K per leap year). Perhaps enforcing this existing fine will force owners of empty homes either to utilize them for housing or else sell. That can be done without changing the law.
With empty office buildings, similar code provisions exist. For too long we have allowed developers to leave buildings empty. Because they make so much money on appreciation, they often do not feel compelled to rent their empty spaces. We can use code enforcement to force them to lower their rents to meet market, to sell, or to convert their bldgs to housing.
From an environmental POV, it is usually better to re-use existing buildings than build new ones. It is shameful (& more perks to developers) that we do not do that.
I will not miss McDonalds!
Poof! So much for nostalgia and memories! The Creekside Inn was where we stayed for a couple weeks after we arrived in Palo Alto in early January of 1961, after I accepted a job with Philco’s Western Developmental Labs. We later rented a 2 bdrm duplex unit on Alma Street (3153) , and then moved into the home we bought, and that I still live in, on Ross Road in June of 1963. I’ve eaten at Fish Market dozens of times and bought their clam chowder and sour dough bread for take out numerous times. We often bumped into people we knew when we went there while waiting for a table. I’ve only eaten at Cibo’s a couple times but I always liked their down home American menu. McDonalds got some of our business in their early years in that location, until others opened up closer to us, and Jack-in-the Box became a tough competitor that I leaned towards on several occasions. Driftwood Market was my favorite place for a big sandwich with potato salad, cole slaw, or other sides. It was also the place I ordered platters of food from for my wife’s (Garnet) memorial service reception. They catered it and served it.
I will reserve most of my thoughts and comments on all this new proposed development until I hear from how our city council members, especially our new council members, weigh in on it. I think the proposed development could cause massive traffic congestion on ECR. I’m anxiously waiting to see what the rent rates will be and how they plan to accommodate the very low and low income workers who serve us every day. Mandates can’t be allowed to work one way, only for one group…the developers. C’mon all you politicians…we know who funds your campaigns, but for once, be truthful and support the people you say you want to support when you’re running for office. Read the 10 Commandments, and live by them! If that’s too difficult to do then you don’t deserve the positions you seek, which often times turn out to serve so few…and the wrong ones, for the common good!
This project proposal should spur construction of a pedestrian path on the easement connecting El Camino to the Bol Park Bike Path. The City should look for other opportunities to enhance the benefits of the project in this sort of win-win fashion. There is no reason this cannot be a very nice finished product where lots of people can live close to work and transportation. My concerns here have to do with quality of life for the new residents and their neighbors. Parking needs to be adequate, sidewalks wide, ingress-egress smooth, etc. It is incredibly sad that the new state laws appear to encourage developers to ignore these sorts of common sense considerations.
Allen, developers love density because they make more money per square foot of land. Of course it costs more to build a bigger building safely (the suggestion to loosen building codes is frightening), but you have to look at profits from sale or rent of the units which the report from which you quote does not do (although it does mention that economies of scale reduce costs). More units=more revenue and better profitability. No one can credibly claim a proposal “does not pencil out” if they do not reveal how much they plan to charge for what they build. Most of us would gladly accept these parcels of land and demonstrate how to make a mint off of them in the way that John Arrillaga and other mega millionaire real estate barons have done!
@Rebecca Eisenberg,
Research has shown that low-rise housing is more environmentally friendly than high-rise housing, when you consider the life-cycle of the buildings and how people use them. You can show a benefit in theory of high rise but when researchers looked at how people actually used buildings, they found that 4-stories was the optimum. Other research points to somewhat higher, but that’s in evaluating what’s best for a big city like Paris–which, by the way (low-rise density like Paris) is more environmentally friendly than high rise building.
https://theconversation.com/cities-and-climate-change-why-low-rise-buildings-are-the-future-not-skyscrapers-170673
This is also not taking into account urban heat sink effects and damage to infrastructure and high-rise buildings from predictable warming events in the future.
But we’re not a big city. Do we want to be? This is a huge country with a number of cities that are still on the decline despite the pandemic reshuffling. Our infrastructure was already pretty compromised before the pandemic. We’ve gotten a breather. San Francisco and SJ housing and office markets, by the way, have had relatively high vacancy rates and declining rents. Are they affordable? (no) It’s possible the cat’s out of the bag and they’ll never recover so long as the cities continue to pay no mind to quality of life.
Development shouldn’t continue for the sake of development–the built environment must be factored in. And what will happen if people continue to choose to stay away and leave because we don’t factor in quality of life–people used to make the sacrifices to remain despite the costs for the quality of life–or people choose to use the housing here like dormitory housing so they can live somewhere else with higher quality of life and use this place like an office park. Neither serves the interests of the community.
Affordability is not a side effect of building building. We must work at it overtly.
Someone must have taken exception to my description of the recent newly built apartment complexes as being formulated by using LEGO plans. In high school I had a little part time job for an architect, making copies of blueprints. (High concentrations of ammonia that will probably lead to an early demise.) After seeing so many building plans of all kinds, I fell in love with architecture a bit. As I grew older I traveled and saw some of the buildings that were shown in huge books that the architect I worked for used as inspiration. With so many examples to choose from, the foundation and the skeleton of buildings are very similar. But the outside flair, and the interiors full of useful and attractive amenities, seemed pretty easy to incorporate. What’s missing from the latest developments here are architectural elements that make each building unique. The sameness of these latest offerings are drab and lack things that make your eyes pop. Those added features can be incorporated for the same price as going without. So it seems a shame to go without, when Stanford Land prides itself on being a cut above.
@Jonathan Brown: “…you have to look at profits from sale or rent of the units which the report from which you quote does not do…”
Re-read those reports more carefully; they do take this into account. If you think about it, they have to, otherwise no conclusion is possible.
Developers do love density — if you can rent 400 sq ft apartments, you can rent two of them for more than double what you can get for one 800 sq ft apartment. That’s why the average apartment in Manhattan is both smaller and more expensive than the average apartment in Palo Alto. But for all this to work, the market has to support it. That’s currently not true in either San José or San Francisco, as the studies explain. Whether it’s true here remains to be seen.
Land price is more complicated. If a developer wants to buy land, then the purchase price of the land goes up if it can support higher density, and that causes the eventual rental prices to rise to match. (Patrick Condon’s book “Sick City” shows the math in detail.) If a developer already owns land, like Sobrato in Ventura, the tradeoffs are a little different but the conclusions don’t change as much as you’d like.
Because most of the cost is in materials and labor, new dense housing has to be smaller and more expensive, otherwise it’s not profitable. If it’s not profitable, investors and developers simply won’t build, and there will be a long-term shortage. That’s why simplistic supply-and-demand arguments are wrong.
I’m curious to see how the developer thinks they can make this project work. Several other dense projects have been abandoned in the past year.
Are there really 380 people clamoring to live in a complex such as this? Those who qualify for the “affordable” units will be locking themselves into a housing obligation that claims the lion’s share of their income. And those who can easily afford this housing would be able to get far more for their money elsewhere. I would very much like to know what it is that this developer and others know about housing demand that encourages them to build like this. Are jobs coming back to pre-pandemic levels? Is there going to be an effective, reliable transit system that supports the transit needs of those living in this type of under-parked housing? And what is the current vacancy rate in Palo Alto? Unless inhabited by people who like to live in the dark, Alto Locale (corner of Page Mill and El Camino, so not far from where this huge complex will be) appears to be significantly under-occupied. How do developers turn a profit on largely empty buildings?
Dear Silver Linings: Thank you for the article, which I found very interesting, and have bookmarked (along with the actual study, which I found even more useful) for future reference.
Perhaps you can explain this part to me, however: “Our findings show that high-density low-rise cities, such as Paris, are more environmentally friendly than high-density high-rise cities, such as New York.”
The difference between Paris and NYC is apt, because NYC is an *island* while Paris is not. I fully agree that in general, too high density can create stressors on resources (although see., e.g. eco-fiction such as _The Water Knife_ and Becky Chambers’s _Record of a Spaceborn Few_ for counter-examples to this assumption: yes I know truly sustainable and renewable residential buildings don’t exist yet, but these books provide fantastic thought experiments for ecologically stable dwellings). With NYC having strict boundaries for space, the city cannot expand like Paris can. There is nowhere to go.
Additionally, I question how the expansion caused by the need for more shorter buildings will enable us to fulfill our other requirements to save our planet, including our need to dedicate at least 50% (and some say as much as 2/3) of habitable land to wildlife. We cannot sprawl without taking habitat.
That is why I continue to believe that we should explore tax and other legal tools to slowly force the redistribution of private property ownership from the hands of the few to the hands of the many. Over the past decades, property ownership has increasingly concentrated in the hands of fewer people & organizations. Many of these wealthy few hoard land. Zuck and Page do not need 100 homes each, for example, and don’t need Prop 13’s regressive “protection.”
A more progressive system of taxation-like that in France-coupled with Paris’s public (social) housing opportunities, could provide more space for people without taking habitat from wildlife, and improve quality of life for all.
I just saw this: “I think it’s hypocritical to be against Castilleja expanding while favoring urban high rises across town.”
Why would you find that hypocritical? Castilleja is a *business*, not housing. It employs 150 people, which now may double to 300. Its 450 students are more similar to employees in that they arrive every morning and leave every afternoon.
I oppose the expansion of commercial development like Castilleja in our residential neighborhoods and the city generally because businesses like Castilleja increase the jobs-to-housing imbalance. Castilleja also intends to destroy our only bike boulevard in North Palo Alto by placing an entrance to its teenager-only-underground-parking garage on Bryant, subjecting the several hundred students who use Bryant daily, as young as age 4, to the danger of being hit by a teenage driver rushing to be on time to school.
The underground garage also will cause grievous harm to the environment by the destruction of several irreplaceable mature trees, and the pouring of concrete-one of the worst greenhouse gas producers.
Commercial garages & workplaces like Castilleja have no place in a residential neighborhood, which is why they are prohibited by our zoning code that City Council flagrantly violated to avoid lawsuits from Castilleja’s billionaire backers. There is nothing to like about Castilleja’s bullying, arrogance, and irresponsible behavior. Hard to imagine why you would like it.
There is a difference between development and *sustainable* development. I encourage you to learn about the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals, taught in every developed nation other than the US:
https://sdgs.un.org/goals
https://www.globalgoals.org/
and even
https://developers.google.com/community/gdsc-solution-challenge/UN-goals
That hopefully will help you understand how many of us in the sustainability community approach questions of development: does it further sustainability goals or impede them?
I lived in Palo Alto for many years as a renter and loved it. Fish Market was part of ‘my’ time, along with the Varsity Theatre ‘downtown’, the Fry’s, and other spots not yet slated to be taken down like Watercourse Way. Change is inevitable, for sure. The question that I hope folks will think deeply about is what do you want to change into? Imho housing that looks like an office building isn’t going to make Palo Alto into a place that’s walkable and fun for residents. But that’s for those of you who are living in PA to decide. Good luck!
Why are any of you saying these housing projects will be good for the local businesses? Just as at this proposed mega-development, they will be destroyed one after another.
Good neighborhood serving small businesses and restaurants used by Ventura and Barron Park residents such as the Driftwood Market and Sandwich Shop – just as here the Fish Market Restaurant – will be wiped out by housing developments, not enhanced by them. And they can’t survive years of construction if offered space in the new building.
So we will have more housing but we will lessen the services to those living here.
@Jon Castor – we have, sadly, slipped past the time during which it matters what folks want Palo Alto to change into. And this is true throughout California. Sacramento has passed myriad laws that pave the way for thoughtless change. The excuse for this was increasing housing but the legislation ignores multiple realities, including the significant impacts of the pandemic which include work from home and job loss. And housing quotas are based on RHNA numbers that are absurd and badly in need of adjustment.
Some will say this is a self-inflicted wound and in some ways this is true b/c we elect the legislators who create these nonsensical laws. There was an effort to stop the legislation but Scott Weiner and others like him basically created a tsunami of housing related laws. The problem the wave of legislation supposedly sought to remedy isn’t one bit fixed, but developers are delighted. No doubt many elected officials are, too, when their campaigns receive donations from those who benefit from legislation like SB30.
Bay Area rents are now below pre-pandemic levels as per the SF Chron today and jobs aren’t coming back so creative and the layoffs continue apace and have already topped 200,000 in the last two months. Companies are cancelling their office leases and business travel continues to tank.
So smart communities are working to convert offices that have stayed vacant for years to housing. Seems like a no-brainer to me, maybe not to all the politicians and lobbyists who keep pushing their irrational and destructive policies and refusing to revisit them for 8 -EIGHT!!! — in the face of economic change and reality.
Why can’t Palo Alto start doing the sane instead of destroying more and more local businesses and restaurants?
More housing – yes. To say that we are overdue doesn’t even begin to cover it. I live in Barron Park and support this project. (I’m also a lifelong Palo Alto resident who supports changes to our wonderful city.) Hoping that it makes it through reviews.
Shocked that an elected official should say this.
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That is why I continue to believe that we should explore tax and other legal tools to slowly force the redistribution of private property ownership from the hands of the few to the hands of the many. Over the past decades, property ownership has increasingly concentrated in the hands of fewer people & organizations. Many of these wealthy few hoard land. Zuck and Page do not need 100 homes each, for example, and don’t need Prop 13’s regressive “protection.”
This is called communism.
We should be very wary of anyone with these types of views and my opinion is that everyone is entitled to buy a home although they may not be able to afford to buy a home exactly where they want. Hard work, saving and going without luxuries are the way it has been done in my family. Old fashioned perhaps, but it works. And for those of us who scrimped and saved for years, we are now able to afford to live in a home that we worked hard for and should be able to continue to live in it without fear of socialists wanting to take it away from us with high taxes and communist ideals.
PS Messed up my edit to the above, but hope you get what I was tying to do.
I just realized that I made an editing error in my last post. I wrote “if you can rent 400 sq ft apartments, you can rent two of them for more than double what you can get for one 800 sq ft apartment”. The word “double” shouldn’t be there. I apologize for the confusion.
If you’re curious about rental rates and sales prices used in feasibility studies, a good place to start is the San José study I mentioned earlier ( https://sanjose.legistar.com/View.ashx?M=F&ID=11354036&GUID=9DF41030-6776-4149-B101-CEF385FD8BD9 ), Attachment A pages 9 and 10.
Average size of unit “will be 846 square feet,” from yesterday’s PA Daily Post on p. 18.
I think that size is more than a SRO crackerbox, (uggh), but it will help to see the FULL range of sizes of units. And how many of each.
Project location seems feasible.
Please do not underpark it, though. Fantasies of virtue-signaling planners and politicians (for underparkinf) may not match the realities of tenants and their everyday lives.
Most people agree the biggest problem isn’t strictly the amount of housing, but its cost; and that the priority should be, as the Weekly once put it, “the most critical need: affordability by non-highly paid workers whose presence enriches our community” (https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2016/03/18/editorial-the-housing-fallacy ).
If we want to use well-heeled market-rate projects to fund below-market-rate (BMR) housing via the city’s 15% inclusion-rate ordinance, then one of the loopholes in projects like this one is the definition of “below market rate.” The City ordinance defines BMR as “moderate income” and below (https://codelibrary.amlegal.com/codes/paloalto/latest/paloalto_ca/0-0-0-77749 ). However, the City, County and HCD also define “moderate-income” as 120% AMI, which as of 2022 is $141K for a one-person household (https://siliconvalleyathome.org/resources/finding-affordable-housing/ ) in Santa Clara County.
$141K is twice the starting wage of a PAUSD teacher; it’s what a brand new BS Computer Science grad makes at a tech company. Using the County/HCD 30% formula, a 1Br unit that rents for $3,500/mo qualifies as “below-market-rate” under our existing ordinance. This is ridiculous: $3,500 for a 1Br unit in Palo Alto is prevailing market rate or even above, and there are plenty of such units available already here, for folks who can afford them.
If the City is serious about using inclusion rates to actually house our “non-highly paid workers whose presence enriches our community,” then we need to drop the 120%-AMI tier from our BMR-inclusion ordinance.
“If the City is serious about using inclusion rates to actually house our “non-highly paid workers whose presence enriches our community,” then we need to drop the 120%-AMI tier from our BMR-inclusion ordinance.”
Of course they’re not. Why would they go against the deep=pocketed pro-density Yimby / developer lobby that so strongly supports market rate housing and demolishing rent control aportments and that funds the “top vote getters” who waste everyone’s time at every City Council meeting demanding that we go into a rotation for mayor and vice mayor.
The first thing that came to mind, the seagulls flying overhead there, circling their restaurant of choice. A small thing, but special to see while driving along an increasingly soulless El Camino Real.
There are so many reasons to support this project! I wish we could all get past the dated notion that somehow we can magically lower rents without building housing. All major housing studies done recently (importantly, let’s focus on those that are peer reviewed) have concluded that building more housing does indeed reduce rents.
More dense housing of all types also offers mobility for folks who want a bigger/smaller residential unit by providing actual choice. Basic principles of economics tell us that more choice = more competition = lower rents. I personally would love to sell my house and rent a small apartment or buy a small condo (while staying in Palo Alto where I can keep my friends close and live car-free), but there literally aren’t any.
“There are so many reasons to support this project! I wish we could all get past the dated notion that somehow we can magically lower rents without building housing.”
Rents have ALREADY fallen as reported today — and for the last few months! I wish people would start doing their homework before destroying our community. Start following the news!
Rent Prices Decreasing in Bay Area Cities (KRON) https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/rent-prices-decreasing-in-bay-area-cities/
Apartment Rents Fall again. Tech layoffs ccould weaken market more )SF Chronhttps://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/s-f-apartment-rents-fell-again-tech-
layoffs-17757376.php
Home purchase prices continue to fall in the Bay Area except in one county (Sonoma)
@Rebecca Eisenberg,
Why do you think the only choices are between sprawl and high rise? That assumes everyone has to cram into a fixed handful of locations. If you think that, you’re living in the past as if the pandemic never happened. It’s not even healthy for democracy.
Many cities across our country today pay bonuses for remote workers to move there. And rust-belt cities revitalizing and becoming tech hubs, with plentiful affordable high-quality-of-life housing. Many companies see some form of hybrid workforce as the way of the future. Remote work allowed a huge increase in the number of disabled workers entering the workforce. It allows labor cost savings, too.
In the meantime, we have a maxed-out infrastructure. We SHOULD convert office space to housing, and we should focus on addressing affordability for traditionally low-wage workers–but building more high-cost rental housing will not mean people live nearer their jobs, that’s a pipe dream. (Hong Kong never became affordable no matter how dense, has 87% transit use yet commute times equal to Los Angeles-people cannot live near their jobs even there
https://www.newgeography.com/content/003300-hong-kong-s-decentralizing-commuting-patterns )
The pandemic showed that when given a choice, many people will leave places that have been densified to the point of hurting quality of life. For example, I know people who moved to Central CA from SF in order to afford a quality of life not possible in SF, despite SF having a high vacancy rate currently. They commute to SF a couple times a month for work. Is this what we want? To be a transient office park?
I fail to see how the point about Manhattan being an island is relevant. Manhattan built up as a metropolis in another era. This is a vast nation. We do not have to choose between sprawl or high-rise, and we don’t have to hoard all the jobs.
@Brian: I agree that the project looks good. Have you ever seen an architectural rendering proffered by a developer that doesn’t? Those images are perfected to appeal and sell the project. A lot of the housing that Evergrande built in China was probably considered attractive by many. But much of it sat empty. If we are sincere about protecting our environment, shouldn’t we include unnecessary development on the list of things that do irreparable harm? I am not suggesting that housing is not needed, but I am suggesting that we start integrating our various goals. Demolition and construction are significant hits on the environment. Concrete is an especially big negative. Change and progress will always require some actions that are not carbon-neutral but we need to factor that in when approving projects and figure out a way to make certain what is being built is needed. Spec building should not be allowed. Maybe a fee schedule that assesses fines for each unoccupied unit.
Our legislators have proven myopic when it comes to housing legislation. It is past time for that to change. And we voters need to look skeptically at candidates who say “I’m for housing” without filling in the blanks about infrastructure, vacancy, affordability, parking, transit, etc. Everyone is for housing; that’s a given. But in this valley of innovation it seems a little ridiculous that instead of coming up with innovative, effective answers to the housing conundrum we focus almost exclusively on adding projects like this one that Acclaim is proposing.
With the Midtown fire closing more useful and neighborhood amenities, we are losing our character. I suspect that condos will replace the building and any ground floor retail will be bland and without the outdoor seating area that had Mediterranean ambiance.
Wow to hear the statements from Rebecca Eisenberg is chilling to say the least is communism the new progressive way? Are all private property owners evil? Using taxation as a hammer to enforce destructive change? Couple that with your soft on crime comments regarding the Apple store robbery no wonder the quality of life is deteriorating for residents whatever happened to a balanced approach? Unfortunately anyone who voted for SB-9 giving up local control to Sacramento got what they deserved.
To Rob, the above post.
No like buttons, but Amen, Amen, Amen to your comment.
Is anyone else considering impacts of the two proposed Barron Park neighborhood projects on school enrollment. Are there estimates for how many school age children they would bring to the Barron Park/Ventura part of town? Barron Park Elementary has the lowest enrollment in the district despite significant efforts over the years to sustain its existence as a public school. Barron Park and Ventura neighborhoods feed into Fletcher Middle School, which also has had difficulty keeping enrollment up.
“Is anyone else considering impacts of the two proposed Barron Park neighborhood projects on school enrollment”
Or on our water supply and rationing? Oh, silly me. New residents never flush, bathe, drink water etc.
Or on our electrical grid? Again, silly me. Costly fiber and forced conversion matter so much more than reliable service.
So, not even worth considering? Don’t tell that to Palo Altans who care about schools–just about everyone I’ve known here.
This is what happens when you don’t upzone residential areas: you lose commercial locations
There is something sad about the McDonald’s, one of the few remaining community spaces in Palo Alto to close (not to mention the only McDonald’s north of San Jose with outdoor seating, afaict), especially considering that fast food chains are severely deprioritizing dining rooms at the expense of drive-thrus going forward. (Hint hint: a drive-thru ban, as other cities like Minneapolis have enacted, would be extremely good)
Is upzoning residential areas going to produce more water?
And since the hundreds of thousands of tech layoffs were allegedly to allow the tech companies to “right-size” to focus on AI to “disrupt” to lots of industries/professions so companies can cut costs and fire even more people, has anyone started planning to provide housing for the bots since they’ll be the only ones left working. If not, why not?
The developer Acclaim’s website reads:
OUR PROJECTS ARE FREQUENTLY EMBEDDED WITH ENTITLEMENT, REGULATORY, HISTORIC, AND POLITICAL ISSUES. IT’S WITHIN THIS CONTEXT THAT WE EMBRACE THE DEVELOPMENT PROCESS AS A MEANS OF UNLEASHING CREATIVE COLLABORATION.
Perhaps Mark Johnson, Acclaim’s CEO and local Los Altos Hills resident, can explain to us how Acclaim is “unleashing creative collaboration” here.
Sounds more like unleashing a steamroller against Palo Alto residents with zero collaboration.
@Rebecca Eisenberg
Your comment “many believe that Palo Alto has a larger percentage of empty SFHs than most other similar towns” is interesting, but unless you have evidence, it doesn’t usefully contribute to this discussion.
BTW, “many people believe” is one of a Trump’s favorite phrases.
@Local, as is “some say” which is increasingly used to denote someone making unfounded / unsupported claims.
Assemblyman Marc Berman enthusiastically voted Yes on SB330, which Acclaim is using (aka exploiting) to build this project.
So if you like this project, be sure to thank Marc for making it possible:
– assemblymember.berman@assembly.ca.gov
@Online Name
I apologize for my quick response above to your post. You were not minimizing the significance of my concern but including it in the set of concerns that you have about the proposals.
Here’s where I was going with my question: could the positive impact of having more students generated by these projects be enough for Barron Park and Ventura families who count on strong nearby public schools to offset other impacts of increased housing density on El Camino Real?
An excellent question that someone more aware of the school situation than I should address.
The “stack and pack” housing shoved into Palo Alto makes huge profits for the developers who, for the most part do not live next to that dense housing. Then you have more traffic and the impact on the schools and infrastructure, for which our residents pick up the tab.
Make no mastake, it is all about the building trades and the big developers. You cannot build yourself out of the law of supply and demand as we live in a small area bounded by the Bay and the Santa Cruz Mountains. Do you really want Palo Alto to look like downtown Redwood City?
Oh, and put another few lanes on Highway 101 and that will solve the traffic problem.
The artists rendering of this monstrosity is so full of falsehoods that it is laughable. Lots of happy strollers out front, three cyclists passing by, trees along the walkway, only a few cars-all so happy and picturesque. Just short of mass housing nirvana!
What a joke, when will anyone ever see strollers along this stretch of El Camino or anywhere else near these monster apartment complexes? Never is the answer, these places are dead zones, only the occasional walker who has to get somewhere near there may be sighted. As for cyclists, one is really taking their life in ones hands trying to go along ECR! Try it sometime, it is so rough and full of potholes it will bend your rims in five blocks and the traffic is really no fun.
This is what our SCC Democratic party and others have foisted upon us, Marc Berman voted for this so the developers he represents can force feed these monster projects wherever they want and we have to take it and like it as Humphrey Bogart told Peter Lori when he slapped him around in the Maltise Falcon.
The only fix for this is passing the local control initiative that may get on the ballot next year. Nothing else will save our communities.
On Friday I came down 280, exited Page Mill Road, with intentions of turning right on ECR. It was rush hour, and the bottleneck took 15 minutes for me to get to the corner to turn right. That’s where they want to build a monstrosity. When the place I want to go is right there on the corner (YES MCDONALDS) getting there is a nightmare. So let’s imagine a couple of years of construction (think, ECR going North, in Menlo Park, trying to get to the Big 5 Sporting Goods store) going on here in Palo Alto. We have very little infrastructure. No sporting goods stores. Very few fast food restaurants. You can’t even buy underwear in PA unless you’re at the mall. Now the City wants to take down MORE drive-through restaurants and replace it with studios, without telling us how many sf, (probably around 400), 1 brs (probably around 500)and 2 brs likely 700 sf. And one huge unit for the manager, to skew the average sf. And they want to build it on a very busy corner. There will be very little impact on local k-12 schools because unless they’re planning on putting a crossing guard at every corner of the building, it won’t be safe for children to live there. I know Ms. Eisenberg won’t miss the McDs but I have NEVER seen it without a line of customers. That’s revenue for the City. Granted, it won’t line their pockets like a developer will with campaign contributions, but PA shouldn’t be pandering to developers anyway.
What I see Palo Alto trying to achieve is being strictly an upper echelon bedroom community, with very little to offer those sleeping here. They need to accommodate the janitors who work for slave wages, but even they won’t be able to afford these overgrown storage lockers.
I keep forgetting, I have a 500 square ft storage locker, have had it for years. Every now and then, someone moves in on the lane where mine is. Of course it’s illegal. But if I had to choose between shelter and food and car upkeep, I would choose the 500 square feet for $60 vs. $1600 for a door that locks from the inside. It’s a no brainer. If the City was really civic-minded and wanted to help the homeless, they could build a storage facility instead of “apartments” that are smaller than storage lockers, and make them REALLY affordable. $60 for 500 square feet is probably affordable in almost any income bracket, and it would help keep the city clean. The reason why RV dwellers and grocery cart pushers have so much “junk” is because it’s not junk. It’s stuff everybody needs to try to patch a life together out of nothing. We stuff our houses with all the same things homeless people are toting, but it’s not impacted by the weather. Our stuff and our lives are no different. We just have safe doors with locks and windows to air out with windows that also lock after closing. Every time it rains like today, imagine carrying all of your worldly goods in a grocery cart, and try to keep it dry so it will function when you need it.
Building more apartments DOES NOT LOWER THE PRICE OF RENTS. Lower rents lower apartment rents. Pretty simple.
“On Friday I came down 280, exited Page Mill Road, with intentions of turning right on ECR. It was rush hour, and the bottleneck took 15 minutes for me to get to the corner to turn right. That’s where they want to build a monstrosity.”
What I see Palo Alto trying to achieve is being strictly an upper echelon bedroom community, with very little to offer those sleeping here.”
But lots to offer the deep-pocketed students/parents who don’t even sleep here.
And wait until years of Casti construction backs up traffic on Embaecadero amd ECR. Pretty soon there will be no way to get across town — or anywhere — in a reasonable amount of time.
Spewing exhaust while fuming is Palo Alto’s idea of “traffic calming.” No wonder Mental Health is now such a key priority,.
I suppose this does come under the heading of south Palo Alto. Talking to people who lived near and used Bills, Philz, AJs laundromat and dry cleaners and Palo Alto Fine Wines & Spirits, there is now a gap in Midtown after the fire. That part of town has lost a coffee shop, a breakfast/lunch restaurant, a liquor store as well as useful retail, but has also lost a community space where neighbors could bump into neighbors while they grabbed a coffee on the go or sat for brunch. Most of the people will now drive sometimes out of town, to get brunch instead of walk or bike to their community coffee spot.
Communities need community space. Whether it is MacDonalds or the Fish Market, Philz or Bills, liquor or dry cleaning, the question has to be asked about what is happening for residents of south Palo Alto?
Turning Palo Alto into a dormitory will not help community. Building pack & stack housing will not help residents who live here. Empty office space shows that the number of workers who may want to live here is dwindling and with them the need for janitors! If we don’t have a MacDonalds, do we need to be concerned about housing fast food workers?
This has to be looked at much more deeply. Residents who are forced to get in their cars for what they had been walking to get isn’t helping anyone’s quality of life. Palo Alto is gradually losing its soul, and whether it is by over building or by fire at 4 local businesses, the dormitory feel is pressing down like an ominous feeling of doom.
To Tecsi, etc: There are many ghost houses here, but we don’t have the capacity to count exactly because our City does not keep track. We are left with anecdotal unscientific observations: E.g., my immediate neighborhood (Old PA) is virtually half-empty in the summer (I know this for sure having gone door to door while campaigning). Every Halloween, fewer and fewer homes had residents living there to offer candy.
Why no data? Decades ago City Council vowed in the Comp Plan to create a rent registry of rented and empty homes, along w/landlords. The Council has not begun to do that despite countless opportunities. This is why Palo Alto is one of the few cities of its size not to tax landlords *at all.*
Lack of a renter registry also will make it extremely difficult to put in place any of the important measures to replace gas-burning appliances with electric appliances. Only owners, not renters, generally have the ability to swap out appliances, and we are mostly renters. Based on PAUSD surveys, showing that as many as 70% of public school children live in rented homes (including my own), and City Council’s own commissioned surveys, it is believed that at least 1/2 of our residents rent rather than own. This means that 1/2 of residents cannot swap out appliances, and the City has no means to contact landlords. How will this get done?
Accordingly, all we are left with is “many people believe” because Council is decades overdue on creating a rent registry. Don’t blame me. I like data.
As to accusations of communism, that is bonkers. The US Constitution clearly states that the justification for taxation is to redistribute wealth. If you don’t like that, you can move to …???
Many are not old enough to remember the 1970’s when a middle class salary was sufficient to support a family. Back then, the tax rates topped out at 90%. Now, if you advocate for an additional 2% on people making more than $50 million/year, you are a communist. We need to re-set our expectations. If we want the quality of life we seek, we have to pay for it, with the biggest burden on those with the greatest capacity to pay.
Ms. Eisenberg it’s interesting that you should bring up the protection for renters that are dependent on the promise of getting the City to compile a landlord registry OVER 20 YEARS AGO. And still, there is no registry.
Now, the city wants to build … what … 6000+ more rental units filled with people who have NO RECOURSE against unfair evictions. Getting the landlord registry is not as difficult as it might seem. You do it by knocking on doors, much as you did during your campaign. But it’s actually closer to the old-style census, which identified every single address by enumerators who walked every single block in the city limits.
I’m a bit of a genealogy buff. The US Census, up until and including 1940, listed residences per type — owned or rented. Now that’s gone. But I’m sure if the city REALLY wanted to protect renters like they promised 22 years ago, they could assemble a group of volunteers to go from door to door to ask if it’s a rental. But many people don’t open their doors these days.
Used to be the county clerk made property information public. Not now, not here in Silicone County anymore, where property information is privatized thanks to our overabundance of Celebrity Dot Com Residents.
So, because we can’t identify landlords that the city could then offer the incentives to go all electric to, guess what? It makes it look as if the City is discriminating against renters. And until they DO get that landlord registry certified, that’s exactly what’s happening. Those that have, get more. Those that have little, have no resources to get the data they need to advance a peg higher on the social ladder.
Another thing the City could do is put up a website, just a generic “Type Address Here” and “CHECK BOX IF YOU ARE A RENTER”.
Heck I’m not even giving it my best brain efforts and I can think of more ways than a guy who clears $500k a year, “managing” the City. I need a raise.
Personally, I am sure the government knows which addresses are rented and which are owner occupied.
In this world, everything is known about us. If you think you have secrets, think again!
Not only is there not a renter’s registry but there isn’t a business registry either that tallies the number of employees which makes managing parking, housing targets and the way Palo Alto negotiated the business tax — which brings in a pittance vs the Gas Transfer Tax and gives the city the right to KEEP overcharging us.
Methinks PA — right here in Sillycone Valley — doesn’t bother with numbers and/or accurate numbers if they’d undercut staff claims. See also conducting traffic surveys at the lightest possible times vs during rush hours.
MyFeetz writes “Heck I’m not even giving it my best brain efforts and I can think of more ways than a guy who clears $500k a year, “managing” the City. I need a raise.”
My standard joke is “send that check to my Swiss bank account” after years or decades of pointing out the obvious and wondering if it’s incompetence or malice or both.
As for trick or treaters, nobody I know has had them for at least 5 years and people routinely share photos of their well-lit entranceways on FB with jokes about the missing kids and what they could do to make it more obvious that they welcome kids.
It’s a sign of the times, not an indication of city population or ghost houses.
Oh I’m having another brainstorm, thanks to Bystander. Ouch, my head is literally exploding like Jiffy Pop! Why don’t we just have the Franchise Tax Board create a spreadsheet of all of the residences in our zip codes who claim the California Renter’s Credit? So simple. Just extract the zip codes and the addresses will follow.
Just because the public isn’t allowed to know who owns a rental property doesn’t mean the City can’t demand that information to compile a landlord registry. Getting landlords to volunteer that information … well … after 20 years of “trying” it’s clear landlords don’t want to comply with City ordinances. Especially if they want to jack the rent up and nobody wants to move.
The theory that more rental housing brings prices down is false. When a new building goes up, those rentals are always higher because it’s “new”. Makes sense. But what happens is the Fair Market Rate becomes based on the NEW construction, not the old. Thus, if a ramshackle teardown that gouges tenants where they have no options to move, when a new building goes up that’s close by the OLD building raises their rent to “compete”. Still lower, but only slightly. Right now a “without cause” eviction is subject to City ordinances that put the burden of relocation on the landlord who wants tenants out for no good reason. But it’s unenforceable. Because the City can’t figure out how to create their own landlord registry. Many people don’t know the ordinance exists or how to go about implementing it. If it was working, EVERYBODY would know about it and use it.
One thing to keep in mind, if you are a renter and you are evicted for no cause, the ordinance is STILL there, and you don’t need a landlord registry to sue for relocation expenses. The failure on the city’s part of not having a registry is that you can’t create an ordinance and then fail to notify those who would be affected of their responsibility. A landlord can say they didn’t know it existed.
PS when the Fair Market Rate is sky high after building 6000 new rental dwellings, NOBODY will be able to afford to live in Palo Alto except for Stanford students, lawyers, doctors and Dot Com Celebrities. And that’s just the way they want it.
Agree with the comments about traffic and grid lock coming back – its getting pretty bad now particularly on El Camino.
Some housing at this location makes sense. I just hope Council defends our fifty foot height limit. Low rise buildings are part of Palo Alto’s charactertistics as a nice suburb to raise a family. Blowing through the height limit to 85 feet is horrible. Hopefully people will wake up and take notice! Projects like this is what spurred cration of the height limit in the first place.
I think if the headline of this article said “Developer looks to demolish McDonalds, build 380 apartments” people would be packing the meetings to voice their dissent. But the Fish Market being the noun in the headline, a lesser known restaurant and NOT a franchise with millions of restaurants, keeps the dogs from baying at the moon.
Ever been to the original McD’s in Downey? That, and the house where the Carpenters lived are absolute musts if you are ever in the area. Not that these are must-see destinations, but the point I’m making is that Downey has twice the population as PA, and half the size, and they can still manage to preserve buildings that reflect some kind of legacy.
What kind of legacy is Palo Alto creating? Stack and pack housing (quoting Moctod) on a street humming with cars all day and night, with Stanford Land sitting peacefully in the quiet trees and lush meadows, golden hills and presiding over the peasants that are living in RV’s on the streets where they work to serve the elite. Palo Alto and Mountain View, touted as the gateway to Silicon Valley, brings shame on their communities by thumbing their nose at the most important residents: front line essential workers.
I’m so tired of seeing all of the squalor we allow residents to live in, in the name of ignorance is bliss. Or just blatant greed and lack of compassion. The day of atonement is near, in the manner of flood, howling wind, stifling heat, devastating rain, and the next I think is pestilence. Those living in RV’s can roll away. But those confined with golden handcuffs don’t have the same luxury! The meek shall inherit the earth, eh?
More crime, more noise, more pollution. Why?
Please don’t take away the views of our beloved foothills and coast range like Mountain View has.
A strange situation is taking place in which developers are carving out “rights” for specific developments but they somehow do not happen. It was noted in the papers that the Google village next to the San Jose train station is not going to happen that quickly as planned. But the land has been cleared in part in preparation for building. The Fry’s site is in limbo and does not seem to move forward. A recent opinion piece on HSR in which the land has been bought and cleared but nothing happens.
I hope that decisions can be made and executed more quickly so that we are meeting some city wide goals imposed by the state.
Don’t worry, Anne. You can get a penthouse apartment, if your income falls into the category you will need to get in the apartment lottery.