EDITORIAL - 'Judge' Simitian issues a decision

County Supervisor Joe Simitian has told Stanford he will approve a permit that will allow Stanford to construct more than 4 million square feet of new buildings over the next 10 years.

But in return, Simitian said the university must protect one acre of open space for every 2,000 square feet in new construction. The open space would be protected for 99 years.

This is a compromise. Nobody got what they wanted.

-- Those who want the foothills to be protected had hoped Simitian would go further and protect more open space.

-- Housing advocates wanted more homes in the plan than Simitian has proposed.

-- Stanford wants more freedom to build wherever it wants. Stanford has suggested that Simitian's conditions amount to a seizure of private property by the government.

Stanford officials also claim Simitian's conditions came as a complete surprise.

However, the evidence suggests Stanford wasn't surprised at all, and that the university knew of Simitian's intentions a month ago.

A couple of striking coincidences

Consider the university's offer of the former Mayfield School site at El Camino Real and Page Mill Road to the city for use as the future Jewish Community Center.

For the past 11 months, city and school officials had known they needed to evict the JCC to make way for a school to return to the site because of increasing school enrollment. When the city and school district talked to Stanford, the university would only offer two sites on what is now open space land, locations that seemed unacceptable to just about everyone involved. Did Stanford have any other sites? No, the university repeatedly said.

Then on Oct. 6 -- just 18 days before Simitian was scheduled to publicly reveal his conditions for Stanford's permit -- Stanford offered the Mayfield site to the JCC.

Now Stanford is saying that it was surprised by Simitian's conditions, and that if the university doesn't get what it wants, it will kill the JCC deal.

Maybe the timing of that offer was just a coincidence. Here's another coincidence for you to consider.

For more than a year, Stanford had said it would not agree to anything more than a 10-year ban on development of its foothills. But on Oct. 16 -- just eight days before Simitian's big announcement -- Stanford announced it would agree to a 25-year restriction.

Why the switch now instead of earlier in the 1 1/2-year process? Our guess is that Stanford knew what Simitian had in mind, and the university was trying to make the public think it had already compromised.

We don't fault Stanford for doing any of this, however. This is how the political process is supposed to work, and Stanford is acting like any applicant does.

Stanford's choices

Look at it this way -- Simitian, who organized this approval process, is like a judge. He's heard testimony for a year-and-a-half from all sides. Now he's issued a decision. We elected Simitian to make such decisions, and he's done his job well, being scrupulously fair to all sides.

Stanford has three choices: Go to court, withdraw its permit, or accept Simitian's conditions.

If it sues, Stanford can expect to spend years in court and the outcome is far from certain. You can bet Simitian has got lots of legal advice on this one.

If Stanford withdraws its permit, it's surrendered, and has decided to stop growing. We doubt the university will do that. In other words, it's a bluff.

Moreover, most people believe the university should be able to expand in order to remain on the cutting edge of research and teaching.

Stanford's best option is to take the 4 million square feet and smile. Whether the university wants to admit it or not, it's gotten a good deal -- and the alternatives are worse.