The ‘heartbeat’ of Mountain View

Mountain View Voice Guest Opinion
December 15, 2017

As I meet with officials from neighboring communities, I am struck that they are not only impressed by downtown Mountain View. They tell me their favorite restaurants. Yet a narrative has emerged within our community that downtown is on the verge of self-destruction, that we should “pause” downtown development.
Downtown development is not piecemeal. It is processed according to the Downtown Precise Plan, which has been updated four times since 2000, most recently in 2015 when the City Council voted to further restrict ground-floor office uses.

To me the most important elements of that plan are:

• Encourage walkability
• Preserve the historic integrity of Castro Street
• Increase intensity near transit
• Protect adjacent residential neighborhoods

What’s more, it articulates a vision that I think most of us support: “Downtown Mountain View is the historic center and civic focus of the community, and the ‘heartbeat’ of the City. … Castro Street is the functional and symbolic center of the downtown. It is a ‘townscape,’ with pedestrian-scaled street spaces, well defined by attractive buildings and activated by the many people who live and work there.”

Though downtown — near our only regional transit lines — is an appropriate place for office expansion, any office development absent residential growth exacerbates the jobs-housing imbalance. That’s why I have consistently questioned it. Yet we must maintain our perspective. Even if currently proposed projects are built, downtown buildings will represent a small fraction of citywide employment growth. If our focus is on the jobs-housing imbalance, it makes more sense to focus our resources on the East Whisman and Terrabella areas.

Furthermore, it appears to me that downtown employment has boosted, not damaged weekday lunch business. On-site cafeterias appear to be the exception, not the rule. Many offices have take-out and catering, but the food comes from the restaurants. If anything, downtown restaurants are victims of their own success. So many people drive downtown to eat that it’s difficult to find parking at peak hours.

The city is working hard to solve the parking problem. We are installing a way-finding system to let drivers know where spaces are available; we are planning for shared parking; we are piloting valet parking and free Uber/Lyft rides for visitors within Mountain View, and finally, we are building underground parking. We are not increasing the amount of land set aside for parking, nor are we building more above-ground garages.

There’s more we can do to enhance our downtown. City staff is working on a Downtown (non-restaurant) Retail Incentive program. We can better protect the 300 block of Castro. We can convert the first three blocks of Castro (but not the cross streets) into pedestrian malls.

We are already working on an affordable housing project, with subsurface parking, on Lot 12 (site of the Game-Day Farmers’ Market). Lot 12 is a great location for senior housing. In fact, when the council majority went along with the hotel developer’s choice of offices on Lot 8, those of us who preferred housing essentially extracted a promise that we would move ahead with housing on Lot 12.

I fear that calls for a downtown pause will undermine our efforts to build more housing, both market-rate and affordable. Already one of my colleagues has suggested that we halt the Lot 12 affordable housing project.

My biggest fear, however, is that the resources for developing a new downtown plan will be taken from the East Whisman plan and the Terrabella study. In those areas, property owners and developers have joined housing advocates in calling for both new market-rate and subsidized housing. We have an opportunity, if we act before the economy experiences a downturn, to combat the housing shortage by planning for a mix of new housing types in those neighborhoods complete with retail, nearby schools, and transit.

A pause in downtown development means a pause in planning for housing, and that means more people living in vehicles, commuting long distances, and leaving the area.

I agree that there is room for improvement downtown, but we need to get our facts straight about current conditions and then focus on solving problems, downtown and throughout the community.