Tuesday night the Mountain View City Council unanimously approved Google’s North Bayshore Master Plan as well as a Development Agreement between the City and the tech giant, culminating nine years of organizing, study, and deliberations.
In 2014, a handful of us formed the Campaign for a Balanced Mountain View to address politically our area’s unfavorable and worsening jobs-housing imbalance. Our chief objective was to change the pending North Bayshore Precise Plan to include substantial amounts of housing in the section of Mountain View north of U.S. 101 that remains dominated by Google offices. Our candidates won election to Council that year.
In December 2017, the new City Council approved the Residential Update to the North Bayshore Precise Plan. Google and the City continued community engagement on the project. After too many delays, some of which resulted from mixed land ownership in the Precise Plan area, on Tuesday night the Council cleared the way for the construction of 7,000 housing units on Google property in “complete,” sustainable, car-light neighborhoods with homes, offices, retail businesses, parks, wildlife habitat, and a school. This plan, to be implemented over many years, is already serving as a model for redevelopment elsewhere in Silicon Valley.
The approved documents have shortcomings. Google reneged on its promise to include 350 affordable housing units in its market-rate housing developments. Some of us are concerned that there may be no way to require Google to continue its exemplary Transportation Demand Management program once the plan is built out. And a few years back the City Council abandoned the proposed Advanced Transportation System that was to connect Downtown Mountain View with North Bayshore.
Looking back, however, the adopted plan and agreement exceed the expectations, in quantity and quality, we had when we first proposed mixed-use North Bayshore redevelopment. It also cements Mountain View’s place as a leader in regional efforts to overcome our chronic housing shortage.
At Tuesday’s meeting, the overall Plan was supported by business, labor, housing, and environmental organizations. Credit goes to both City staff and Google leadership, as well as engaged members of the public, for creating such a comprehensive and imaginative plan. Google in particular deserves praise for winning over the subset of environmental organizations that initially opposed North Bayshore housing.
It’s not over until it’s over. As Council Member Showalter has said, “One can’t sleep in a plan.” It will take continuing public oversight to ensure that the development moves forward as planned. It will take substantial additional funding to build the planned affordable housing. And it will take advocacy to ensure that the rest of the Precise Plan, which includes other properties, is implemented in a timely fashion.
For now, everyone who worked for this momentous accomplishment should take a victory lap.