Concerned Santa Clara

The presentation we had planned to give on 22 January 2008 has been moved to 12 February 2008.

After first being told that City Hall had misplaced the CD containing the slide show we had intended to give, a second call then told us that our agenda item was being pushed back due to special agenda items concerning the ‘49ers. [Update: I just received an e-mail stating that the original CD has been located.] There was a special City Council meeting held on the 15th to address the ‘49ers which lasted until midnight, and any items not covered were moved to the special agenda section of the regular City Council meeting on the 22nd. Because they could not guarantee that the meeting on the 22nd would not also last until midnight — special agenda items are handled first — our presentation was effectively moved to the next City Council meeting on 12 February.

The meeting for the ‘49ers was standing-room only; people who left to go the restroom were given tickets to re-enter the meeting room in an attempt to manage the number of people inside. Although we certainly don’t expect to see the same numbers for our density presentation, wouldn’t it be nice?

Original announcement:

The Pepper Tree Neighborhood Association will express concerns about high-density housing to the Santa Clara City Council on Tuesday, 12 February 2008. The meeting will start at 7:00 p.m. in City Hall, located at 1500 Warburton Ave, Santa Clara, CA 95050. See the Locations link above for information on how to get to City Hall.

Although the Kaiser Permanente/Fairfield Residential project is problematic, it is in many ways merely an implementation of the decisions the Santa Clara City Council and Planning Commission made several years ago when they re-zoned the property at 900 Kiely Blvd. By focusing purely on higher-density future development for the purpose of low-cost apartments, city officials have largely ignored the effects on the quality of life and desires of existing long-term residents. Cities don’t grow because there is plenty of rental housing; cities grow when they become, and remain, good places to stay. We need to ensure that this is understood and remains a top priority for the sitting City Council and Planning Commission.

In neighboring cities, like Sunnyvale and Milpitas, anything over 27 units per acre is seen as Very High Density development. It is in Santa Clara mainly that this density is seen as Moderate Density, with High Density not even listed in the Housing Element of the General Plan. Although we need to focus on revenue generation and affordable housing, it should not come at the expense of quality of life, not just for local residents, but the rest of the city. The City Council and Planning Commissions should not be agencies to fight against, but servants of the permanent residents and registered voters.

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On 16 January 2008, Fairfield Residential, the developer planning to put over 810 units on the old Kaiser Permanente site on 900 Kiely Blvd., met with residents of the Pepper Tree neighborhood area. We had a couple dozen people show up to hear Fairfield Residential’s slightly-updated plan and ask questions. The people in attendance from Fairfield Residential:

• Dan Milich, Project Manager and person whose name appears on the application
• John Franco, Acquisitions and co-applicant
• Kathy Thibodeaux, Fairfield’s consultant hired to act as neighborhood liaison
• Ed McCoy, VP of Development
• Karen ?? (I didn’t catch the last name), Design Project Manager

Fairfield Residential expects escrow on the Kaiser property to close by early March 2008.

The EIR (Environmental Impact Report) work has already begun. A Notice of Preparation was submitted to Gloria Sciara in the Planning Department earlier this week. Fairfield selected Impact Sciences, a local company, to perform the work, which is expected to be completed and available for public review sometime in May. The EIR will only be made available for 45 days after the draft is published for public review, so we will be certain to notify all concerned parties once we hear the news.

The destruction of the Kaiser building will be done using a claw (no implosion); the internals will be removed and the outside will be picked apart. The original demolition milestone was set for Spring 2008, but it will likely be moved out several months.

Fairfield Residential’s plan puts buildings over 45 feet tall a mere 20 feet from the street on both Kaiser Dr. and Kiely Blvd. The design of the buildings was, as one homeowner put it, reminiscent of a “prison block, complete with guard towers”. Fairfield residential was asked to provide not only drawings of the buildings themselves, but design drawings showing the elevations of the apartment complex in accurate relations to the existing neighborhood homes. They were also asked to provide sight-lines from the apartment windows and accessible areas into the windows and backyards of the neighbors surrounding the development.

The designs of the buildings they intend to put on the site are new: they have never been built before and there are no existing examples to compare. From the drawings, it is clear that the units are much smaller and more densely packed than even the higher density areas in Santa Clara; Fairfield’s apartments will be three times denser than The Enclave on Pruneridge and Lawrence and smaller than similarly specified (two-bedroom, three-bedroom, etc.) apartments on Homestead. The marketing material for The Enclave may seem nice, but we would encourage all curious parties to actually drive to The Enclave and get a feel for the density first-hand. Imagine hosting a party there. Imagine starting your daily commute along with the other residents of the community. Imagine trying to escape during an emergency or a natural disaster. Drive up a driveway and try to turn around. Bring sandwiches and a drink. Fairfield’s apartment density will be three times that of The Enclave.

Fairfield Residential has no plans to address the potential parking problems along Kaiser Blvd. and Pepper Tree Ln., among other streets in the area. Their response — completely side-stepping their role in contributing to these problems — was simply that those were public streets and the parking issues would be addressed by HOAs (Home Owner Associations) and CCNRs (Covenants, Conditions, and Restrictions), which non-Fairfield residents would not be a part of and for which existing neighbors would have no say. Of some note: the City of Sunnyvale noted that the number of parking spaces was not actually the problem in their fair city. Rather, the distribution and use of the parking spaces that exist contributed the most to parking problems: instead of parking their cars in the garages, many car owners have taken to using garages as spare rooms or for storage and park their cars in guest or street-side parking. With the sizes of the garage spaces Fairfield Residential is providing for owners and the sizes of cars owned in comparable neighborhoods, it is not hard to see how owners would elect to park their larger vehicles on the street.

As one resident pointed out, “people are social in nature”. It is not reasonable to expect that the number of parking spots reserved for Fairfield residents would be sufficient without some proportionate — not merely token — number of guest spaces. Let’s do some quick calculations: If all 800 households have only 5 friends each, and on any given day one quarter of the residents have only 2 of those friends visit, that’s potentially 400 guest parking spaces that will be required per day. Let’s say they carpool (both friends come in one car): that’s still 200 cars. Let’s say you have more than 5 friends, or like to invite more than just 2 friends over during weekends. Or instead of merely a quarter of the residents having friends over each day, it’s a third, or even half. The numbers of people and cars get big quickly.

Fairfield Residential is quick to point out how they chose their color schemes to blend in with the existing neighborhoods and how closely they follow current city specifications. While their knowledge of these concerns is required — and some by law — they seem to lack understanding of the residents and any popular aspects of the neighborhood. Specifically, Fairfield knows little about the specifications for the land while the Kaiser hospital was still active or the effects Kaiser had on the rest of the community. Pepper Tree Ct., for example, has limited two-hour parking during weekdays as a result of the overflow from Kaiser during its heyday. Residents have received tickets for parking in front of their own houses. This is not a trend we would like to have to continue. Worse yet, Fairfield Residential seems unconcerned with the effects their new development will have on the existing community.  Legal is bare minimum; concern goes over and beyond requirements and meets the need.

They mention in their application that the property will sport 7 acres of “common open space”. Seven acres is over twice as large as the entire parcel north of Kaiser Dr. and the same size as the area set aside for single-family houses and row houses on the south and west sides of the property. It is unlikely that this is even physically possible without including the streets (which John Franco pointed out is standard when calculating density on private property), necessary access ways, and areas which they are already required to preserve (due to trees and creek concerns) in their “common open space”. Ed McCoy made me laugh when he pointed to small green squares on the site map and stated, “Well, there some open land here, some space down here… if you add it all up… it all adds up.” Seven acres is huge; with the ‘49ers coming to town, maybe we can invite them down to Fairfield to practice.

The problem with high-density in Santa Clara is exactly that: a density issue. No amount of fancy colors or new development will resolve the issue of the sheer number of people and cars that will be introduced into the community by Fairfield’s intent. By their stock answers and “letter-of-the-law” responses, it is clear that Fairfield Residential is not “working with the community to put together a plan [we] can be proud of” (these words were paraphrased from a statement Kathy Thibodeaux gave to the Santa Clara City Council in November 2007). They claim to have some background in the city — John Franco lived here when he was younger, apparently — but it is evident that they don’t have any interest in our community currently, beyond financial. They certainly don’t live here now; it is not their city today. Kathy and John mentioned several times how much they took into account looking into the site before Fairfield Residential decided to bid its way into our community, but I haven’t met a single person on the street who even knew about these people or Fairfield’s plans before we raised the issue with them. It’s not their city; it is a business plan.  I wouldn’t mind that as much if we didn’t have to pay the cost, day after day, year after year.

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