Editorial: Tough home stretch ahead for Stanford

With the draft EIR now complete on Stanford's plans for the next 10 years of development, county officials await final public input before fall decision.

Just as it is intended to do, the draft environmental impact report on Stanford University's proposed new "general use permit" lays out a host of issues and tradeoffs for the public and our elected officials to weigh during the next few months.

The purpose of an EIR is to clearly identify the environmental impacts of a proposed development, the actions that could be taken to lessen those impacts and the impacts that will remain significant even after possible mitigation.

The Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors, which will ultimately decide on Stanford's application, can approve it in spite of its impacts or require changes that it deems in the public interest.

Stanford is resigned to an unprecedented level of scrutiny by the county supervisors, in part because of Supervisor Joe Simitian's success at conveying to his colleagues the importance of Stanford land use issues.

With Stanford proposing to add over 2 million additional square feet of academic and support facilities and over 3,000 units of student, faculty and staff housing to the core campus area, the 10-year plan envisions almost twice the amount of development as in the past 10 years.

It is estimated that total development during the next 10 years could total 4 million square feet, or a 30 percent increase from what exists today.

While most public debate has centered on whether Stanford should be required to permanently set aside open space west of Junipero Serra Boulevard, the potential impacts from so much development on the central campus is deserving of more attention.

Not surprisingly, the EIR concludes that the development will degrade traffic flow at many signalized intersections to "F," meaning extremely long delays with queues that may block upstream intersections.

The report recommends continued aggressive trip reduction efforts by Stanford (through carpool and other transportation programs) and new turn lanes at two intersections. If subsequent required traffic studies show increased commute traffic, then improvements to 16 additional intersections is recommended. But the report cautions that these road improvements are subject to the decisions and funding by other jurisdictions and Stanford can only be required to pay their "fair share."

One appealing proposal in the EIR would link new academic construction to progress at developing the planned new on-campus housing, thereby helping to keep the number of new commute trips down. Essentially, a certain amount of new housing units could be required to be built concurrently or prior to new academic development.

But as we discussed back in November, the most controversial and speculative part of Stanford's plan will be the attempt to re-classify the golf course as part of the core campus area open to future development for academic purposes. Although no one at Stanford wants to talk about it, one can't help but assume that this change is desired as a first step toward the ultimate development of housing or academic buildings on some or all of this land, a potential major change in land use.

Palo Alto and Menlo Park city councils will be weighing in with their views of the EIR, and a public hearing will be held next Thursday, Aug. 3 in the Palo Alto City Council chambers.

After that, a final EIR will be prepared and the county Board of Supervisors will begin its process of deciding just how far it can reasonably push for concessions from a university used to having far more latitude than it appears it will ever have in the future.