STANFORD: County calls for foothills protection Planning staff recommends 25-year growth boundary
by Don Kazak

Stanford University will get to build the academic buildings and housing it needs, but will have to stay out of the foothills for 25 years. That's the gist of one of the key recommendations of the Santa Clara County planning staff regarding the university's proposed plan to build 3.8 million square feet of new buildings over the next decade.

The county Board of Supervisors is scheduled to make the final decision on Stanford's development plans Oct. 31.

But the long-awaited county staff recommendations represent a watershed in the county's regulation of Stanford development and signals the county's intent to take more control over future campus development.

In the introduction of the report released Monday, the planning staff wrote that the county version of what's called Stanford's Community Plan "represents a major evolutionary change from the development decision-making processes previously employed by the county for Stanford. It reflects a more proactive than reactive approach to land use planning for Stanford."

The county is, in effect, drawing a line along Junipero Serra Boulevard and saying that Stanford can't build on the other side of the thoroughfare for what will likely be 25 years.

It was always clear that some sort of academic growth boundary could be imposed on Stanford by the county. Stanford, in fact, has proposed not building anything on most of those 2,000 acres for the life of the 10-year plan.

But Palo Alto and Menlo Park suggested long-term protection for the foothills, with environmental groups pushing for permanent dedication of the hills as open space.

The county staff recommendation differs from Stanford's proposal significantly in that the university had wanted part of the foothills where two thank tanks now exist to be designated part of its core campus.

The county planning staff, instead, excluded most of that area from core campus designation and included it in a proposed "open space and field research" designation. It also included the golf course in that designation.

"We're reading it and studying it now," Larry Horton, Stanford's director of government and community relations, said Monday morning about the county planning staff recommendations.

"We like that a lot," Peter Drekmeier of the Stanford Open Space Alliance said of the "open space and field research" designation for the hills, which had been labelled "academic reserve" by Stanford.

"But we'd like to see it made permanent. We're moving in the right direction."

"It sounds like they're heading in a good direction," said Palo Alto Mayor Liz Kniss. "No less than 25 years is acceptable, and we really said that they should stay within that (academic) growth boundary."

Stanford has proposed building up to 20,000 square feet of small academic facilities in the hills area near the two existing think tanks. And there is a separate application for the Carnegie Foundation to build a 20,000-square-foot think tank in the same area.

The county planning staff recommendations would allow Stanford to build some additional facilities near the two existing think tanks, but it's an open question as to whether that will include the Carnegie Foundation.

"It wasn't done to accommodate Carnegie," said county planner Sarah Jones. "We haven't made made our recommendation on Carnegie."

The county planning staff wants to also draw direct linkages between both housing and traffic, on one hand, and the academic buildings Stanford wants to build. It has suggested that if Stanford doesn't stick to a proscribed timeline for the proposed housing, then new academic buildings could be held up.

And while Horton and Stanford officials hadn't yet studied the plan in detail Monday morning, Horton did have a reaction to that recommendation: "We really are strongly committed to the housing. The only question is the appropriate linkage."

Similarly, the county planning staff is recommending that if the university fails to meet a "no net new trips" criteria for automobile traffic, approval of future academic buildings could also be held up.

The growth of the Stanford campus, as outlined by the county, has been substantial. Until 1960, for the first 70 years of its existence, Stanford built 4.3 million square feet of non-residential buildings. In the last 40 years, that number has virtually tripled to 12.3 million square feet, with another 2 million square feet of academic buildings proposed for the next decade.

The county planning staff is proposing that the academic growth boundary along Junipero Serra Boulevard not be considered for any change until Stanford builds an additional 5 million square feet of academic buildings. Under current trends, that would be about 25 years. The county Planning Commission will hold a public hearing on the county planning staff recommendations at 6:30 p.m. Sept. 7 in the Palo Alto City Council Chambers.

Copies of the county planning staff recommendations are available at the Palo Alto Development Center, 285 Hamilton Ave., and are available on the county Planning Department Web site: www.sccplanning.org.