County staff to Stanford: Add more housing

County - do not require Stanford to build more housing for SEIU employee staff. Your own EIR says that would be worse for the environment (more net trips) and not meet the application's mission (educational).

More housing means more traffic and means more unpaid students for PAUSD. The county should not force Stanford to build more. This does not benefit our residents or our students' education.

I just wanted to point out a typo in this sentence:

"Simitian said that is a function of state law, which limits the ability of the county's ability to address school impacts as part of its environmental-review process."

I think you meant to remove "the ability of" since you have the word "ability" later in the sentence.

Feel free to delete this comment once you've fixed the typo. :)

The County is considering imposing millions and millions of dollars of costs on PAUSD and many more students. Stanford is tax exempt. The County knows this. The County plans to force students into PAUSD without the County paying for it.

I was at the meeting last night. Many there were very happy that the county is requiring Stanford to build a minimum of 1,600 + housing units on Stanford campus with - if I read the handout correctly - at least 40% of those units designated affordable housing. And then PAUSD wants a guaranteed amount per student from Stanford that lives in that housing. Clearly, with conditions like those, the goal is to force Stanford to back away from doing any development.

Decrease the amount of non-academic square footage from 2.275 million square feet to 1 million square feet for this 2018 GUP.

"Decrease the amount of non-academic square footage from 2.275 million square feet to 1 million square feet for this 2018 GUP."

Ironically, this could be what Stanford prefers. The logic would be that this process has been a nightmare for them, with far harsher conditions than they expected (and badly managed by them, but that's another story). They might decide to try their luck again in 5-7 years - Simitian will be gone and they can try a different approach (e.g., work out a deal with the schools in advance).

This would actually be bad for Palo Alto, which would need to fight this whole battle over again, and would be in the hands of some future North County Supervisor, who might not be a Palo Alto resident.

My view is that community has done its job, and now it's time for the elected officials (Simitian and the other supervisors) to finish theirs and get a long-term deal done that actually mitigates Stanford's growth. Good luck!

I suggest that Stanford start using the dish area for housing. The “gimme, gimme, gimme” attitude of Palo Alto towards Stanford is revolting. Time for joe simitian and his nanny state way of thinking needs to go. How about simitian seeing that Palo Alto actually do something to address their housing shortages- something that have not done for decades. But far easier to try to milk the Stanford cash cow.

It may be useful to remember how obscenely wealthy Stanford has become.

"2018 fiscal year, which ended June 30, but said that it was $26.5 billion at the end of August." Web Link

Why mention the endowment? You think you're entitled to grab some of it because it's there? Because some people gave money to Stanford for other purposes?

The endowment is to fund education for the underprivileged who can't afford to attend Stanford, to fund university operating expenses and to carry on the educational mission of the university, among other things, not to fund employee housing.

I think bringing up the endowment is relevant since Stanford is dragging their heels about complying with the EIR, as other developers are required to do. This simply points out that Stanford can't claim they can't afford to mitigate the impacts of what they want. Remember, Stanford has no unilateral right to any expansion. Also keep in mind that, unfortunately, their expansion plans as proposed are intended to have a negligible impact on the number of students they educate despite the huge and qualified applicant pool that Stanford turns away every year.

Mrs. Stanford's stated intention when she funded and founded the school was to give a free education to the boys and girls of California. How ironic.

"bring an estimated 9,610 new people to the campus, according to the environmental analysis for the GUP."

That depends on what what the count was based on.

Was it based on the current (although outdated) building code which estimates only one office employee per 250 sq ft which the impacts of commute traffic and parking needs are still calculated? Which developers love.

Or based on the new reality of multiple employees in that space using powerful laptops? In which case that 9,610 number could be easily be double or triple. That's a huge difference.



Developers love the outdated "standard" that is used because it vastly underestimates the impact of commute traffic and number of parking spaces needed.

Video of the meeting is now available on YouTube:

Web Link

Stanford has focused on building housing for faculty and graduate students. However two groups critical for its research and teaching missions, post-docs and lecturers, respectively, seem to be largely forgotten. The majority of Stanford employees report that the cost of housing is, by far, their greatest challenge to continuing to work at Stanford. Yet, unlike either graduate students or faculty, post-docs and lecturers are largely ineligible for subsidized housing. Perhaps a portion of the proposed 1,600 units of below-market housing on Stanford property could be dedicated to individuals in these two essential, but largely forgotten, groups of its employees.

PAUSD notices that they have large Stanford student population only when they hope to milk Stanford for money. It would cost NOTHING to align the school district spring break with Stanford's break. Yet it seems PAUSD does not care about Stanford parents left behind when their children are free to go on short vacation exactly one week after their parents had a break at Stanford.
I have a feeling that the district tries to force its way rather than to offer cooperation and community building.

Stanford STAFF are even lower on the totem pole and are forgotten and hurting.

Web Link

"PAUSD does not care about Stanford parents left behind when their children are free to go on short vacation"

Here's an idea - maybe Stanford should align its spring break with PAUSD? Or at least come to PAUSD and propose aligning calendars for the benefit of shared families?

The idea that it is incumbent on the public schools, a government agency, to research a local employer's break schedule, without anyone at Stanford even coming to propose that, shows the bubble that Stanford people live in.

In the last few years Stanford has bought approximately 30 homes in College Terrace, most of which are unoccupied for two or three years before being torn down. In the interim wish they would lease these homes to to graduate students or post-docs rather than leaving them sitting empty.

Stanford is no longer just a university. It is an educational industrial complex, actually a small city.

Its employees range from university administrators and faculty (including doctors at the Medical School) through graduate students (teaching assistants) and a wide range of different categories of staff including clerical, nursing infrastructure maintenance, building maintenance, landscape/gardening . . . etc. Many of the higher level employees live on campus and some of those lower on the list live on campus. But it does not currently house all the people who have jobs on campus.

Stanford proposes to drastically increase the number of people who will work there. But it does not propose to house them all, thus putting the housing and traffic burden on the surrounding communities. Stanford is thus adding un-housed jobs. So why is Stanford not subject to the ABAG rules and the latest attempts - SB 50 and the CASA compact - to demand that cities add large amounts of high density housing?

Does google house all their employees? Facebook, oracle, salesforce, Safeway?? (see where I'm going with this?)

"Does google house all their employees? Facebook, oracle, salesforce, Safeway?? (see where I'm going with this?)"

And what a wonderful world it would be...especially if they could all reside in Palo Alto!

It seems that most locals have forgotten, or never knew, that both Paly and Gunn High Schools are on dedicated Stanford land. There's also been a decades-long decline in the numbers of grad student families with children, which was part of what encouraged the enormous multistory graduate housing in-fill of Escondido Village.

Also overlooked is the amount of Stanford growth that does not pertain to the main campus. Stanford's new North Campus in Redwood City is targeted for transfer of a large percentage of non-academic departments. See: Web Link That separate campus, in a different city and county, won't be well-served by housing expansion on the main campus. North Campus is not currently linked by a regular shuttle to the main campus because non-academic operations won't rely on that kind of physical connection. So, how aware is Supervisor Simitian of such realities; he has to know; North Campus has been in the works for nearly a decade and a half. Maybe, this proposed housing construction uptick is a goad for Stanford's expansion in a separate county?

"Most locals have forgotten, or never knew, that both Paly and Gunn High Schools are on dedicated Stanford land"

That's an urban myth, and was never true, though many still believe it. Paly and Gunn, as well as Nixon and Escondido, are on land *purchased* by PAUSD from Stanford, mostly in the 1950s and 1960s (the original Paly site was purchased around 1920). They got around Stanford's prohibition on selling land by utilizing eminent domain. Eminent domain requires "just compensation" (check the Fifth Amendment: "...nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation") which equates to "fair market value," so there was no special bargain involved.

Check any GUP related map or ask the school district (or Stanford) - you'll see these sites are PAUSD owned and operated, and have been for 50+ years.

Stanford should be encouraged and allowed to build high-rise buildings (over 20 story) to accommodate housing, preferably with mixed use and underground parking.

The SAME should be encouraged and allowed for all of Palo Alto.

@PAUSD owns schools sites. You are correct that because Stanford cannot sell land, the way they went around it when school sites were identified, they used "eminent domain." But, it was "friendly" eminent domain meaning that Stanford accepted nominal compensation for the sites since they had to be compensated, but nowhere near the FMV of the lands.

@Crescent Park Res - so we agree the school district does own the land. That's good, since there is the persistent myth that they do not.

Do you have any data to support your view? Given that the land could not otherwise be sold under the trust, and the deed contains a reversionary interest, I would think fair market value would be pretty low, much, much lower than a fee simple commercial property deed. Since the compensation paid wasn't truly nominal (like $1), I expect it was in fact FMV. But if you have data showing how the price was calculated, that would be interesting.

@PAUSD owns the schools. Stanford could have leased the land to PAUSD and retained ownership. But, they didn't. So, simply look at what the county values anyone of the lots on which Stanford does lease land to an entity to see what the FMV would be. Given that enrollment continues to decline at PAUSD - and will continue to decline as long as our senior population continues to increase. I would hope that, if Stanford does end up providing land for a new school on the West Side of campus, that they lease it to PAUSD for some nominal amount instead of setting up another eminent domain. That way, when the school closes, instead of PAUSD leasing it out (like they do with Pine Woods), Stanford can use the land for something else.

@Crescent Park Res, thanks. If you find any data to support your view, please share. Hopefully it would incorporate the reversionary interest, as that seems like a key feature. And of course, this would be for land values in the 1950s.

I agree, it would be great if Stanford offered to lease land to PAUSD at a nominal rate - I'm sure they would welcome it. So far they have offered nothing at all, according to the school district.

@PAUSD owns the school sites. Honestly, after the mis-information (PAUSD absorbs $8M in annual costs to educate 160 students on Stanford land who live in tax exempt housing! Not true! Even with their own numbers of $20K per child, that's more than double) and hyperbole ($20K per student!) that some of the school board members put out there, they've lost all credibility with me. Seriously. It's sad. They used the "Trump Way" instead of a community-based approach method to have a focused, rational discussion about this matter. They've created division in our community instead of unity. I do not think they are good role models for our children. Next election, I will remember all of this.

Is there any body in Palo Alto less competent than the school board? It is easy to understand why Stanford had trouble talking with them. Now that the process has exposed the duplicitinous of PAUSD, there is a better chance of a reasonable deal.