Our Town: Stanford's new era
by Don Kazak

Since we are allegedly in a new millennium (some of us believe that will start next Jan. 1, but never mind) it's appropriate that Stanford is entering a new era. The starting date for the new era could be marked as Aug. 7, a few weeks ago, when the Santa Clara County planning staff released its long-awaited recommendations on the university's 10-year development plan for the campus.

Or, future historians may decide the new era really began the evening of Jan. 25, 2000, when Supervisor Joe Simitian gave fair warning that the new campus plan will be determined by the county, not the university.

A disclaimer goes here: The following paragraph is not accepted as fact by Stanford officials, although nearly everyone else seems to agree on it.

The reason this is a new era is that the county never scrutinized Stanford's development plans much before. Stanford was pretty much able to do what it wanted to do, not that many people were paying much attention in 1988, the last time the county renewed the general use permit for Stanford's core campus.

But a lot has changed in the last dozen years. Traffic congestion and insane housing prices and rents have been spawned by the modern economic miracle of Silicon Valley, a zillion dotcom startups, and the brave new online world. Hardly anyone knew what the Internet was back in 1988.

So we have monster or trophy homes in Palo Alto, SUVs the size of armored personnel carriers, multi-tasking, and really, really awful traffic congestion.

For these and other reasons, including what seems to be a puzzling deterioration of the public's trust in Stanford, anything Stanford wants to do goes under a lot more scrutiny now than it did before.

Oh sure, there are still the Stanford faithful who believe that the university should be able to build anything it wants to because it is such a great academic institution. But that dog won't hunt anymore, as a former U.S. president was fond of saying.

Everyone knows that Stanford is a truly remarkable academic institution, which is one of the reasons I've enjoyed covering it for most of the last two decades. I've enjoyed meeting and getting to know faculty, administrators and students over those years. It's an alive place to be, sizzling with ideas.

Simitian, speaking in January of what's called Stanford's Community Plan, said:

" . . . the Community Plan, as a package of amendments to our county's General Plan, must be a county plan reflecting the county's perspective and interests . . . Because this is a public document designed to protect and enhance the lives of the public, the goals and strategies set forth in the plan must be rooted in public interest."

It will be up to Simitian and his colleagues, along with the county Planning Commission, to determine if the county planning staff's recommendations do just that. But one thing is clear. This is becoming a county plan, not Stanford's plan.

The county staff heard the continuing chorus from the city councils of Palo Alto and Menlo Park, from residents, from the open space district, and from green groups: Stay out of the foothills. Some version of that will become reality for Stanford later this year.

But one thing green groups and others suggested is not part of the recommendations, which is determining an overall build-out limit for the campus. Indeed, the county staff calculates that the core campus will grow by 5 million square feet in the next 25 years, including the 3.8 million in the current proposal.

For reference, up until 1960 the campus had 4.4 million square feet of academic and support buildings. That number is now 12.3 million square feet. That means the current campus will grow by 41 percent in the next 25 years.

That's not exactly a no-growth stranglehold that may be clamped on Stanford.

Stanford officials, as of last week, have been mum on the county staff recommendations, but they probably weren't shouting for joy in the Quad.

And an early word is that the green groups aren't that happy either, because the open space protection may not last for the 25 years alluded to in the plan.

Now the real dance begins.