Development debate
Supervisors to vote on project Monday
Foothills hot issue in Stanford expansion plans

By Kim Vo

It's been two years of newspaper ads and e-mail campaigns. Lawn signs and bumper stickers. Meetings, meetings and meetings.

On Monday, Stanford and the preservationists who oppose the university's development plans will learn who mounted the more persuasive campaign. Santa Clara County supervisors are expected to vote on the university's proposed expansion at its meeting that morning.

At issue is whether the foothills rising behind the university should remain unmarked for 25 years - or longer.

Stanford says a quarter-century is a reasonable compromise, especially since the university originally wanted only a 10-year ban. Preservationists consider Silicon Valley's spreading homes and office complexes and say the foothills should be protected for at least 99 years. A permanent ban would be even better, they argue.

Stanford has been resolute, saying anything longer than 25 years will stifle the university plans for more campus housing, academic facilities, a $10 million contribution to the local school district and leasing land to Palo Alto for $1-a-year so the city can relocate the Jewish Community Center. That would make it easier for the city to open a third middle school to relieve overcrowding.

Critics argue Stanford's expansion plans illustrate both the area's rampant development and the university's outsize role in the region.

"The north county has suffered tremendously from development," said Denice Dade with the Committee for Green Foothills, a major opponent. "How much can we keep allowing to occur until it's destroyed to the point where it's no longer a beautiful place to live?"

The opposition baffles Larry Horton, Stanford's director of community relations. "Stanford has done things thoughtfully," Horton said, adding that the attacks are "totally unnecessary for an issue like this."

This is the first time in the university's 115-year history that residents of nearby communities have been allowed to opine on its future. Stanford wants to grow by adding 2 million square feet of academic space and 3,000 housing units for students and faculty. Once completed, the new square footage would equal three Stanford Shopping Centers.

Compromises have been worked out for other aspects of Stanford's development dreams. The university's private golf course may be saved, along with the California tiger salamander.

With the vote fast approaching, the preservationists and the university still seem far apart. Preservationists point out that the university, in addition to the academic campus, also owns Stanford Shopping Center and the Stanford Research Park and must curb its growth. Stanford's Horton argues that "any institution on the forefront of the creation of knowledge must be able to make physical plant changes."

Preservationists have rallied behind Supervisor Joe Simitian's proposal that half the foothills be preserved for 25 years and the other half remain untouched for 99 years. However, Supervisor Don Gage said last week that Simitian's plan was "dead" because it was vulnerable to lawsuits.

Each side has taken its case to the masses, encouraging them in turn to contact the county supervisors. And as of last week, supervisors had received thousands of e-mails.

The Committee for Green Foothills started a lawn-sign campaign and a postcard campaign, and it has met with four of the five county supervisors to protest the expansion plan. The group's newspaper ads read "This is what Stanford wants you to know about their plan to develop the foothills." It's followed by a block of blank space, then the supervisors' e-mail addresses.

Along with newspaper ads, the Stanford Open Space Alliance has collected a 15,000-signature petition and printed 3,000 "Save the Foothills" bumper stickers. The group will organize carpools to Monday's meeting.

Other efforts include students standing on a pedestrian footbridge over Highway 101 this month to encourage commuters - via four-foot high letters - to save the foothills.

On the other side, President John Hennessy sent an e-mail to Stanford alumni and friends, advising them of Simitian's plan and the university's position. The university has a series of three newspaper ads explaining its plan, under phrases such as "Foothills Protection" and "Affordable Housing."

An organization called Approve the GUP - shorthand for General Use Permit - printed an open letter to Simitian asking him to support the 25-year foothills plan. An e-mail to the group was not returned; many of the names listed belonged to members of the Stanford community, including faculty. Horton said he didn't know who was financing the group.

Both sides claim to represent a portion of the Stanford community, a large constituency here. Stanford alumni in the Bay Area are estimated at 48,700

It is Stanford's wide reach that is partially eliciting so much passion. Peter Drekmeier, a member of the Stanford Open Space Alliance, remembers hiking along Stanford's foothills when both his parents were university professors there. It's one of the few places to "breathe fresh air, leave worries behind," he said.

He recalls the Stanford students who hiked to the Dish last month to protest a new curfew that closed the foothills at night. "Stanford says it's private property. Whose private property is it?" Drekmeier said.

It's a rhetorical question. The university owns the land, but Drekmeier's point is that people have strong attachments to the land and that the university must respect that.

The university has been a good neighbor, and it has a responsibility to its students to provide housing, Horton said. Currently, only half of Stanford's graduate students live on campus and it's hard for the remaining half to afford the sky-high rents elsewhere on the Peninsula. The real estate market is also making it difficult to recruit faculty, Horton said.

"What we're proposing, 60 percent of it, is low-income housing, desperately needed in a tight income market," Horton said. "Why this is exciting controversy is a mystery to me."