Tuesday, February 26, 2008

An Infill Victory in Mountain View

After several years of wrangling the city of Mountain View has finally given approval for redevelopment of the long-vacant HP site across the street from San Antonio CalTrain.

To blend in with the surroundings, the perimeter will be a ring of single-family homes.

Not that this made the project that much more palatable to neighbors, who objected to larger, multi-family buildings being built anywhere in their vicinity, even if not literally in, or even adjacent to, their back yards.

Nevertheless, the project is finally moving forward, if somewhat trimmed (450 units instead of 630).

It will be a "mixed-use" development, that will include some retail, hopefully making it somewhat of a "walkable community".

For this project to move forward is somewhat gratifying to me, since I actually showed up at a Mountain View city council meeting to speak about this, and wrote a letter to the Mountain View Voice (which they printed), led to starting this blog.

2 comments:

Yokota Fritz said...

I started blogging after showing up at planning meetings, also. :-)

Did you see this in the Merc News yet?

Nick said...

Yes, and I ought to write something about that (expensive hydrogen powered busses).

I read, a while ago, that the whole cost of running these busses (which mostly the Feds pay for, not the VTA) is something like $500 million.

The VTA could turn the 22 into a trolley bus line for much less than that, I bet, and it would cut down an awful lot more on emissions!

I'm perusing your http://www.cyclelicio.us blog, and dangit, it makes me want to ditch work and go ride.

I'm going to add a link...