News digest News digest (July 16, 2003)

$100,000 to Palo Alto Children's Library

The Palo Alto Library announced Monday that the Peery Foundation donated $100,000 to the Children's Library Fund. This gift puts the fund just over the half-way mark in their efforts to raise $1.3 million to expand and renovate the historic Children's Library.

A bond measure that would have provided $6.5 million to the library was narrowly rejected last November. Since then, fund-raising efforts have been fueled by an anonymous donation of $150,000 and pledge of $200,000 more if the coalition raises $300,000 from the community by the end of 2003.

The city has also agreed to contribute $1.2 million to the project.

The Peery Foundation, established by Palo Alto resident Richard Peery in 1986, has helped the coalition come even closer to meeting their goals. This fall the coalition will turn their attention away from major donors and initiate a community fund-raising drive.

-- Grace Rauh

Stanford goes dark

The entire Stanford campus briefly lost all electricity last Thursday afternoon, possibly because of a failed transformer at a substation.

Power went out at 3:22 p.m. and work began immediately at restoring electricity, which was completed by 3:40 p.m.

The outage did not affect Stanford Hospital. The failed transformer, called a potential transformer, caused a power surge that automatically caused the entire system to shut down.

-- Don Kazak

Oak Court project gets final funding

A 53-unit affordable housing project located near downtown received the last $7 million it needed from the state this month, and construction could begin as early as August. About $4.6 million of the money came from funds approved by voters for housing projects as part of Proposition 46 in November of 2002.

The City Council will review financing of the rental housing project on July 28. The project's developer, the Palo Alto Housing Corporation, hopes to complete the project by spring, 2005 at 845 Ramona St.

Prior to the state's commitment, the $18 million project -- which will house a range of low-income workers and their families -- got most of its funding from the city, Santa Clara County Housing Trust and other sources.

Once constructed, the Oak Court apartments will be one-, two- or three-bedroom apartments with rents ranging from about $500 a month to $1,300 a month. The apartments would each be approximately 800 to 1,200 square feet. --Bill D'Agostino