The truth is that any new development always increases parking problems. Regardless of whether there are 1 or 2 spaces per unit, there will always be visitors, nannies, house cleaners, overnight guests, daytime guests, etc. as well as delivery vans for Amazon or for furniture.

Any of the recent (10 years) new developments have seen parking impacts on local streets. Residential or commercial areas will see impact of parking for these new housing units.

I am not against new housing, I am just being realistic.

Several key points. Most importantly, the sites being included in the RHNA are the sites the group thinks are most likely to be developed in the next 8 years. Regardless, Stanford can bring a development proposal for this site to city council at any time.

In addition, this site is public facilities, which means it can only be developed for the greater good. Thus Stanford's proposal to include office space and market rate housing does not meet that criteria. Instead it should be 100% below market since it is Public Facilities zoning. Also, staff recommended waiting and gave grade separation as one of the reasons. I do think given how strategic this site is, it should be carefully designed to maximize its value to the community.

The advantage here is that the site has one owner who is a willing builder of housing in the next 8 years. Many of the other sites are going to be more difficult to entice builders.

RHNA is looking for housing across all affordability levels. The city does not have to make all of its new housing for the lowest income level.

Once the state Sue’s the city for an inadequate RHNA plan, the city will have to beg Stanford to develop this site. The city has more leverage now than it will later when the state really has it under the gun.

This as a great location for housing. Go up to Redwood City - huge apartments next to the tracks at the shopping center. It looks really well done. A new developement now in process at Woodside Road and Industrial. There are tracks that go down to the end of the bay where there will be a ferry system connecting with SF, Oakland, etc. That development supports the new SU campus in RWC. Every other city is building major structures near the tracks and stations- we are behind the times.

It seems dumbfounding not to utilize this site for high rise housing. High rise will block no housing views, cast no shadows on anyone's dwelling, or impinge on any persons privacy. People who live there and work downtown can walk to work, those who work at Stanford can bike, use Marguerite shuttle, or walk to work, and those who work at a distant site can take bus, Cal Train, or Marguerite to work. The need for auto parking should be minimal and help our desire to decrease the use of fossil fuels. The city council and any groups involved in housing issues should reconsider their opposition and not delay in utilizing this site.
Birt Harvey

A residential site situated near the CalTrain station seems reasonable though it could get noisey with the passing trains.

The only thing going out there is MacPark and no real epicurean seriously dines in a chain establishment.

It was grotesque to hear Randolph Tsien insult fair housing practices. The current escalation, out of this Universe rental housing costs and he gripes of a potential scourge of city center full of “HUD” families and having an unsightly “public housing project” In his opinion the potential idea was like that of “Buena Vista Mobile Park”. I am appalled he’s on the HEWG committee and should be removed, immediately. Report his obvious personal prejudicial and clearly, bigoted comments about poor people who have life circumstances preventing single home ownership — it’s unbelievable he was selected to serve Palo Alto RHNA cycle and sits at the HEWG table. Again, GS does not list upcoming HEWG meetings for public commentary for added public participation. Apparently Net Zero, sustainability, and climate change is somewhere else — 2500 multi family homes at ROLM GM area in the direct path of sea level rise and flooding is okay for local R1 NIMBYS. Look to East Petaluma. Hugely built out in late 1960’s 1970’s with new public K-12 schools, strip mall shopping centers — it floods from upper San Pablo bay river water.

So where will all the commuters and other train travelers park if the station parking lot becomes housing?

We’re will commuters park? In their driveways . On the East Coast suburbs commuter rarely park at train stations, they walk to home or take a bus or someone picks them. Since when does one commuter get one designated car slot for all day parking? The argument that because one commutes by train that individual w a carbon fueled car is rewarded a “free” parking space at a rail station is really absurd . Even in Oakland’s Bart station commuters pay for parking. Now yellow safe bike lock up storage boxes sit empty at Cal Train station. I will absurdly suggest converting those to sleeping boxes for affordable housing. Apparently car parks are more important than the 50 year in the making housing hole . Perspective is 20/20. Apparently parking a car that sits empty yet is a size to seat 5 people is superior to housing one individual w no car needs.

Hey Shallow Alto, did we not just have a discussion about affordable housing on the story about the NYT op-ed? You can talk the talk all day, but until you walk the walk, you are not credible.

If you would like your property values to stay high, you should consider making affordable housing available to those in this community who help educate and care for your children, staff the local stores, and do the low-paying-but-necessary jobs that nobody else wants to do. Just because you might work at some fancy buzzword company and make a lot of money does not mean you are somehow more important or valuable. Life is not a zero sum game, and in fact, the fact that ANY of us are here at all is a complete accident since our conception depended entirely on whichever sperm made it to the egg first.

This housing proposal just plain makes sense, and the opposition to it from city council is downright embarrassing.

"If you would like your property values to stay high, you should consider making affordable housing available to those in this community who help educate and care for your children, staff the local stores, and do the low-paying-but-necessary jobs that nobody else wants to do."

That sounds like a threat. I'm sure you didn't mean it that way, did you? I'm sure you're telling the residents of Atherton, Los Altos Hills, Portola Valley etc. the same thing, aren't you?

"Just because you might work at some fancy buzzword company and make a lot of money does not mean..."

The key word here is MIGHT. Not all PA residents are wealthy and/or are working.

You sure make a lot of unfounded assumptions. How about lobbying the companies pushing the gig economy to pay living wages? How about lobbying the "fancy buzzword companies" to stop hiring contractors -- often foreign contractors -- who outnumber full-time employees and are paid less and get no benefits while the community is forced to house them and put up with all the congestion resulting from adding tens of thousands of new people?

Check out all the recent successful lawsuits against buzzword companies like Facebook and Google for their discriminatory practices! They still have enough money and clout to fund the YIMBY's, PAF, Peninsula For Everyone, etc etc. and their lawsuits and their pr campaigns.

Housing at two sites seems to have plenty of support, so that's promising. And the same number of RHNA sites has to be identified whether or not the Transit Center site is used, so it's not a showstopper if we don't use it to meet the RHNA target.

Hamilton Hitchings mentioned that grade separation is an issue. How many of you are aware that one of the ideas for grade separation Downtown involves closing Alma at Palo Alto Ave, then building an underpass at Everett Ave? That would have a massive impact on what could be built at the Transit Center. Conversely, approving a large housing structure at the Transit Center now could rule out that grade-separation option, and possibly others that we know nothing about. Waiting a little while before deciding what to do with the site seems reasonable to me.

I don't see how anyone can plan anything near train stations until Caltrain and HSR have finalized their requirements. The University Train Station is the busiest, I believe, except for San Jose and San Francisco. Train platforms are supposed to be lengthened - sometime. After Palo Alto spent millions designing grade crossings in South Palo Alto, it all ground to a halt because Caltrain said they really didn't favor any plan that did not provide for 4 tracks, even though that decision is yet to be made. I don't think the situation is any different for the area around the downtown train station.

I agree that it is a perfect spot for housing. I don't think any more offices should be built until we have reduced our housing imbalance to at least to 3:1. Let's get HSR and Stanford together to come up with a plan. In the past, HSR wanted increased parking. Who knows what they will want when they get their infusion of money from the latest federal infrastructure bill.

@Online Name: I was not aware that making observations about how communities generally work was considered a threat. Without the people who perform essential-but-not-highly-paid jobs like teachers, grocery store workers, gardeners, the people who collect your trash every week, your Starbucks barista, etc., how will this community function? If Shallow Alto is populated by only homeowners and these homeowners do not want to teach their own children, work in a grocery store, do their own yard work, drive a garbage truck, or make their own coffee, who do you think is going to commute 4+ hours per day to work at some low paying job in a town where they are not appreciated?

You seem to have never worked for a fancy buzzword company. I have worked for some fancy buzzword companies and I have learned that most of the people I worked for and with are actually very bad at their jobs. I signed an NDA so I can't say the details, but surely storing a private key on the same physical device as the data being protected by said private key is a horrible idea, yet this is happening.

Your logical reasoning skills also seem to be pretty bad since you claim that our community is forced to house thousands of foreign contractors who are paid less and get no benefits. If these foreign contractors are paid less, how can they afford to live in Shallow Alto?

Perhaps you should familiarize yourself with the general requirements for obtaining an H-1B visa, which is the type of visa that many foreign tech workers possess. The H-1B requires at least a bachelor's degree and its intent is to help US employers find skilled workers in specialty occupations when the supply of qualified US workers is too low to meet demand.

Since you seem to be pretty good at making inane comments on the internet, you obviously know how to use the internet. Did you know that using the internet to look up factual information is really a thing?

Regarding the Caltrain plans: I do not know the entire plan, but I do know that Caltrain has already started their electrification project. If they were going to increase the number of tracks or move tracks around, they probably would have done that before starting to install the electrification equipment.

@blah: "If they were going to increase the number of tracks or move tracks around, they probably would have done that before starting to install the electrification equipment."

Unfortunately, those are separate projects. Electrification is already underway (though delayed and suffering cost overruns). The new 4-track segments are part of the 2040 Service Vision ( Web Link ). If I understand the Caltrain documents correctly, management believes they'll need the new segments, but they haven't decided exactly where those segments will be built.

"Perhaps you should familiarize yourself with the general requirements for obtaining an H-1B visa, which is the type of visa that many foreign tech workers possess. The H-1B requires at least a bachelor's degree and its intent is to help US employers find skilled workers in specialty occupations when the supply of qualified US workers is too low to meet demand."

Its intent is to help US companies boost their bottom lines at the expense of US workers just like the gig economy companies spent HUNDREDS of millions of dollars lobbying to deprive their workers of living wages WHILE charging restaurants 30+% and while DoorDash's CEO is the 2d highest paid in the US.

Web Link

Facebook pays $4.75 million in discrimination suit that favored temporary visa holders over U.S. workers for jobs

Web Link

The Department of Justice has sued Facebook, alleging it discriminated against U.S. workers by reserving positions for temporary visa holders, the agency announced Thursday.
The DOJ alleged that Facebook did not consider “qualified and available U.S. workers” for more than 2,600 positions with an average salary of about $156,000, according to the release.

[Portion removed.] If the H-1B visa program was intended to "help US companies boost their bottom lines at the expense of US workers", why is the DOJ—whose job it is to enforce the laws of the United States—suing Facebook for allegedly discriminating against US workers?

[Portion removed.]

You might try researching the big Silicon Valley institutions like Stanford, Silicon Valley Leadership Group etc. who've lobbied long and well to CAP the compensation of foreign workers to give the companies using them an advantage.

Or how about the lobbying expenses of DoorDash, Uber, Lyft, etc who are all contributing homelessness and shifting the costs of to taxpayers?

You may have heard about the cost-savings from outsourcing and using gig workers?

We need LESS housing, not more housing. Pollution, traffic, noise, all get worse with more housing.

Ryan said we need less housing. Actually we need less people. That would go a long way to solving a heck of a lot of the world's problems. Including housing, climate change, parking, noise, pollution - all mentioned in the comments.

Well now down to some concerning issues - property tax, schools, fire and police. Will Stanford as usual try to avoid property taxes as they're doing on their former auto row project on ECR in Menlo Park. Thus insufficient funds for schooling all the new kids, not enough funds to cover additional fire and police needs just to name a few of the things property taxes pay for. Also the possibility of 8 to 15 stories high - can the ladder trucks handle that. Also the impact of these tal buildings on local climate - blocking and changing cool air flow from the bay.
The Big Four weren't called the Robber Barons for nothing. And at least one of them is still around.

Let's continue to pave over all the parking lots and destroy any view of the sky or hills. Why bother to live here at all, just turn it into a nasty high-rise city devoid of open space and any measure of livability and make it a mess of high rise concrete. All these people that want this kind of housing, go move to where it already exists. Move to SF and live in that squalor.

We live in a time of massive extinctions, destruction of the worlds ecosystem and pollution of the air, water and land. It is time to discuss the real issues of the day - encourage population control the underlying reason for all of the problems on the earth, encourage less consumption and building and live with what is present since this makes less pollution. The developers should not ruin life for everyone else!

I'm with Marie up above. We have zoned for too many jobs, not enough housing. We need to go all in for housing if we are going to have a sustainable community. How many new office buildings have been built in the research park in the last 10 years? How many office jobs downtown, and at Stanford? This is a great location for large, dense housing. Creates an opportunity for easy commutes, and will add life to downtown PA.