|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
The future of California Avenue and what to do with the Fry’s Electronics property will be the topics of a neighborhood workshop hosted by the City of Palo Alto tonight, Feb. 12.
The first in a series of public forums, the workshop is a chance for public input on future land uses in the California Avenue Concept Plan, an area bordered by El Camino Real, Alma Street, Cambridge Avenue and Lambert Avenue.
The California Avenue area is one of two targeted for revisions to the city’s comprehensive plan — the other is for East Meadow Circle and Fabian Way — which guides development throughout the city and would address growth projections through 2020.
In August 2007, the Palo Alto City Council voted 6-2 to designate nearly 110 acres within a half-mile of the Caltrain station as a “Priority Development Area.” The designation was created by regional groups, including the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG), to identify areas that can accommodate “smart growth” housing. Smart-growth principles include sighting housing near retail centers and public-transit corridors.
Options under consideration include a new police building, higher-density housing or mixed-use planning.
The meeting takes place from 7 to 9 p.m. at Lucie Stern Community Center, Community Room, 1305 Middlefield Road, Palo Alto. For information, contact Roland Rivera 650-329-2541 or roland.rivera@cityofpaloalto.org. The project website is www.paloaltocompplan2020.org.
So, wait–Fry’s is for sure closing? Is that a done deal?
Are they moving within Palo Alto or just going away (and taking their tax reveneus with them)?
Sorry, I’m behind, can someone please fill me in? Thanks!
Is this the same type of meeting, run by the same crowd, that had a meeting recently for the Fabian/East Meadow Circle area a couple of weeks ago.
I suspect the city is hiding its true agenda, but has a new way of trying to get neighbors’ input before announcing their plans. I think it smacks of being devious.
I imagine that they want more high end shopping and high density housing but are afraid to announce it. It is up to us, the community, to make sure they know our feelings that we don’t want more housing, we don’t want high end shopping, and we do want amenities we can use, large grocery stores, frys, etc.
(from Crescent Park, near downtown)
I agree that we don’t need high-end shopping, but for young professionals or seniors high-density housing with walkable grocery stores, restaurants, parks and good public transit would be perfect. We have to stop consuming our open space and agricultural areas, reduce driving, and make more efficient use of our limited resources.
High-density housing plus high-density retail would make sense for California Ave. Increasing the density makes the area more pedestrian-friendly and reduces the need for driving. The Caltrain station can serve as a transit hub. We really need to replace that dark, narrow, crime-attracting pedestrian tunnel with something more inviting, however.
California Ave. has always been the more affordable shopping district in Palo Alto and it should remain that way.
How does high density housing reduce the need for driving? Don’t most of the residents in the high density housing drive to work somewhere?
It’s already hard to find parking around California Avenue… would adding hundreds more people make it easier to drive or park there?
Oh by all means, build to house another 20,000 people. Why not? Class sizes of 60 are totally doable! Traffic? Heck, once we get our flying cars, no problem!
Agree w/ YouShouldNo
And Fry’s isn’t the only company there. We need that space.
The whole point of high density housing is to put housing and jobs and retail within easy walking distance of each other. If the NIMBYs limit housing near people’s jobs, then there will be a lot more cars on the road. Palo Alto has much more jobs than housing, so limiting housing is going to increase cars, not decrease them.
Why don’t we have a honest City Council that will honestly say “Developer (Contractors) Lobbyists , Developer (Contractors) donate to us and we will approve!!!!”
It would be great if the City Council learned a new word – NO or new phase – DISAPPROVED….
There is no sane reason for this PROBLEM except MONEY, MONEY, MONEY and not caring about the people of Palo Alto or ANY of the other communities …..
Sarah,
“The Caltrain station can serve as a transit hub. We really need to replace that dark, narrow, crime-attracting pedestrian tunnel with something more inviting, however.”
I’ve lived here all of my life and I don’t ever remember hearing anything about people being attacked or robbed in that underpass. I think you have good points, but it’s silly to be affraid or fearful.
You must have been out-of-town last fall. There were at least half a dozen robberies in or around the California Ave. pedestrian tunnel during a 2 month period. There were several long threads about it in this forum. The police finally arrested a guy who lived nearby on Alma Street. These street robberies may have directly led to the recent resignation of the last Palo Alto police chief. They were a big deal.
Even before this arrest, I have read regular newspaper reports about robberies in that tunnel. They were not frequent, but at least one or two every year or two. If they were in the newspaper, they should be in the police crime database as well. The victim was usually a commuter walking to/from work or the train, but a little earlier in the morning or later in the evening than the rush hour.
Wasn’t that the University tunnel?
There were a couple of robberies in the University Ave tunnel, but many more in and around the California Ave tunnel.
I am so sick of losing my stores! As to housing, you should know that for every person who moved to Palo Alto because of a job in town, two families move here to put their kids into school. Here’s the plan: Own a house for the K-12 years and then sell it to pay for college, all the while saving what you can for retirement and investing like crazy. It is the Bay Area development planners who think we need more housing, low priced, dense, and otherwise.
But I think that cities keep all the sales tax they collect, while property tax is filtered through Sacramento and a good bit is skimmed to equalize the education of children in poorer communities and to be used by state government. Commercial/sales taxable property is more versatile than residential taxable property except to pay for schools. But the devil’s always breathing down your neck because residences are full of children who need us to pay for schools.
AS to the robberies in the pedestrian tunnel, tunnels are always a risk. People have been assaulted in the underpass at University while coming and going from the transit station. Security or police at tunnels is the answer there. And can’t we clean up an area without chasing out the tenants and building new buildings?
My thoughts on high-density housing include high-density parking. Research ages ago concluded we could not get Americans out of their cars. Cars provide spontaneous mobility, drayage, status, privacy, peace and quiet, a home (away from home or not). Read the section about guys and their cars from Catcher In The Rye. Salinger had it right then and it hasn’t changed. We NEED lots of parking with everything we build. We will always have idealist walkers and bicyclists, but we will also always have drivers. Not building parking for them will not discourage them; they’ll just double-park on the streets and sidewalks or in your driveway.
Same question as clueless above. What’s up with Fry’s? Why is city council discussing what to do with the property?
I had another thought on redeveloping California Avenue. For all that is said about density promoting walking, we must remember our Chamber of Commerce. They are busily refining their project “Destination Palo Alto.” As they promote “walkable Palo Alto,” people are driving in from all over the Bay Area to walk Walkable Palo Alto. And we have many people driving to work in Palo Alto who took the train before the Baby Bullet removed a lot of the local runs. California Avenue gets very few train stops any more. Getting off the train in Mountain View or University Avenue is a nuisance if you work in the Stanford Industrial Park/Veteran’s Hospital area. There are no connections or they are very hard to meet. A friend now drives in from Morgan Hill.
California Avenue a transit hub? How are you going to pull that off with all of the housing that now abuts the train depot? California Avenue is not even a baby bullet stop, and high-speed rail might be coming up the peninsula some day. Palo Alto also needs to decide whether the trains are going to run above ground or below (not practical due to the high water table).
I think the idea behind “Walkable Palo Alto” is that people who live or work in Palo Alto will walk to local stores and restaurants and spend their money in Palo Alto.
Regarding the California Ave. Caltrain station, trains still stop there twice an hour on weekdays, which should be plenty convenient for commuters who know how to read a train schedule. The Caltrain web site lists 2 free shuttle busses that meet all the commute hour trains, including one that goes to HP and the Stanford Industrial Park area. I think these shuttles are funded by employers, so they can easily add more shuttles if their employees need them.
This article might explain why the council’s plans with Fry’s Electronics:
==========================
“Fry’s Electronics: Retail and Housing Do Battle
Fry’s Electronics, Palo Alto’s one “big-box” store has one of the stranger retail locations in the city. Located down
a side street from El Camino Real, it relies on a 25 sq. foot sign (soon to be 50) and its reputation to draw
customers. But draw customers it does and the electronics giant has become very important to Palo Alto as one of
the top tax-revenue generators in the city.
Its location is strange for a reason—this area was supposed to be housing—the City Council first said so in 1984.
So when Fry’s first located here in 1991, it was a gamble. The city’s zoning plan called for the area to become
housing in 1999. In a vote that favored tax revenue over housing, the City Council allowed Fry’s to stay until 2019.
Then in 2006, they wiped the 2019 date off the books completely—plus they gave Fry’s a bigger sign.
Those owning houses around Fry’s have been furious, saying that they bought homes there under the agreement
that the nearby property would revert to residential use in 1999 (presumably that would raise the value of their
homes as well). Now, they claim the city is flip-flopping because of the $500,000 in tax revenues that Fry’s
generates annually.
It certainly shows what tax revenue can mean to a city, even one as posh as Palo Alto. Fry’s may not even stay
(they don’t seem particularly concerned what the council says regarding its site) and now that the land is open for
mixed-use, Palo Alto could be left with another retail store it doesn’t want—a Safeway or Walmart that produces
far less tax revenue.”
================================
http://www.paloaltohistory.com/fryselectronics.html
Replacing Fry’s electronics with housing? A terrible, silly idea. Just as bad as the ousting of Hyatt Rickey’s.
Build housing on the abandoned office park sites we have in this town, not on prosperous money-generating retailers.
The NIMBYs always have the loudest voices.
Can’t they just compromise? Maybe use some of the Frys sales tax money to build a park as a buffer between Frys and the houses that pre-date Frys.
You can put housing and jobs and retail within easy walking distance of each other, but the people living in the housing will drive to their jobs somewhere else and the people working at the jobs will live somewhere else and drive to their jobs to work. For example, there are lots of jobs in Fremont and in San Jose, yet most people living there drive to somewhere outside of those cities to work.
What percent of the people living in Santana Row work there?
More housing will bring more traffic and more parking, there is just no way around it. You cannot compel people to work within walking distance from where they live. Even then, many would drive. Our transit systems provide sufficient support for neither the majority of workers nor residents.
But traffic isn’t the biggest issue. How about Schools? Water? Crime? Noise? Parks? Programs? Refuse? Recycling? All these are currently overburdened and putting housing and retail and jobs in walking distance of one another doesn’t change that.
“Our transit systems provide sufficient support for neither the majority of workers nor residents.”
So, let’s fix the transit systems. Palo Alto is going to grow; you cannot stop population increases. We have a responsibility – as do our municipal neighbors – to house people closer to this region. That means that every municipality has to do its part. As for Fry’s: Fry’s is in a dying business. Circuit City, Good Guys, etc. etc. are going down the tubes, or have already failed. There’s not a thing that Fry’s sells that I can’t find cheaper, online, with far better service and returns policies. Fry’s is here because we’ve made it cheap to be here. Fry’s will be gone altogether, or rolled up into another company before you know it.
Mixed use – retail and small housing – would work great at the Fry’s location.
Fix transit, THEN we’ll talk about more housing. We have no “obligation” to overcrowd our school, our roads, our city services, our quality of life, our property values, for more dense housing. If State of California values dense housing in our town, they they need to show us the money for inner city transit and schools. First.
If Fry’s leave they should turn that space into playing fields, a sports complex, a school, or better yet, a grocery shopping center.
NO MORE DENSE HOUSING
The Mercury-News says this meeting was pretty exciting:
http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_11696375
The police had to be called to keep order.
‘Near Brawl’ is over the top reporting. More like a lot of yelling.
Sanford was rude by interrupting a called upon audience member who was asking a question.
Lets drop this and focus on what is next in terms of meetings and how we can get the City to listen and understand everyones input.
Not surprised by Doug Moran’s actions as reported in the link above. He is notorious for not brooking any kind of dissension with his opinions.
Maybe it is time for Forte to get a restraining order.
We don’t need to lose Frys, but I take the point that it might die due to internet competition. We must not let them go because they are about the only retail in Palo Alto that Palo Altans use apart from grocery stores.
Now, interestingly, I don’t think groceries will ever lose out to internet competition. A couple of different schemes have been started, but it takes too long to buy groceries online unless you just buy the same stuff each week. Even then, the instant gratification of going out to buy what you want to cook for dinner that evening or need for tomorrows school lunches, will never mean that groceries are going to be bought online.
This means that local grocery stores and mega grocery stores (not necessarily the same thing) are really important to neighborhoods. We have quite a few neighborhood stores, but they are all in the niche market, with the exception of Midtown Safeway which is too small with too little parking and too little choice.
We really do need to think about mega grocery stores. The only people I speak to who do not like big grocery stores are seniors who are still living the way they have always done. With respect to them and their opinions, it is still true to say that within 10 years there will be fewer of them around in Palo Alto and we should be looking at what younger members of the community need and use rather than the seniors.
We are a very diverse population with diverse tastes. It would be wonderful to have one grocery store that can cater to the various tastes we have with plenty of imported and ethnic products as well as the best variety of staples we all use, with a good butcher, deli and inhouse bakery that actually bakes bread. Add to this somewhere to sit and drink a coffee with a friend, or eat a sandwich bought from the deli before buying a few groceries and heading back to work or the next place on our errand list. Why should Palo Altans have to drive outside Palo Alto to do this? It just doesn’t make sense.
“Smart-growth principles include sighting housing near retail centers and public-transit corridors.”
Maybe all they need is a good pair of binoculars, then they could see the housing better.
Resident–you say “Why should Palo Altans have to drive outside Palo Alto to do this?”.
Simple, because the Palo Alto process discourages businesses from opening in town. Look at Alma Plaza–we could have had a retail center with a large grocery store. However the NIMBYists took charge and the city council sat on the matter and now 10 years later we still have nothing. Same will happen with Edgewood Plaza.
No company wants to spend 10+ years dealing with the naysayers and leadership-lacking council in PA.
AW –
I agree we need better transit.
What is our responsibility and that of our neighbors to house people closer to this region?
What is the origin or moral authority behind that responsibility?
I don’t see it. There are plenty of other places with more space, air, water (and apparently, common sense).
Are we so arrogant to think that we have made the only good place in the world, and therefore need to share it with anyone who wants it?
It’s not really ours because you can’t really own land?
People who have changed the economies of the world are here and have created wealth and therefore are obligated to bring more housing?
Too many whites and asians for the number of African Americans and Latinos living here?
These aren’t compelling. There is a huge cost to overcrowding – to many people the cost is so high that they are leaving their homes of decades or generations.
Overbuilding is not always progress.
Smart growth is having enough housing near where people work.
Shorter commutes = less traffic and less pollution.
If you want to reduce the population density, then you have to start by reducing the number of jobs in town. Nothing else will work. Currently, Palo Alto has too many jobs compared to the number of houses.
People are moving to Palo Alto because of the schools. They are not moving here because they work here.
They are not going to buy a cramped townhome in Palo Alto to use Caltrain. They are not going to buy a cramped townhome and give up their cars because they will still need a car to buy groceries and other shopping, and for recreation.
Look at the parking problems on the old Rickeys Hyatt. Those residents want to park in the street even though they have 2 car garages.
Who doesn’t have sense here? The city who approves, the developers who plan, and the residents who buy these homes, are all at fault. The idea that build them and they will sell is only true because they want Palo Alto schools. Otherwise, they will buy elsewhere and commute. Those that buy for the schools, are going to have to drive their kids to school across town and then commute out of town to their jobs.
Why can’t everyone see this obvious truth?