The 900 Kiely Project (”Fairfield Residential Gallery at Central Park”) now proposes 766 housing units on the old Kaiser-Permanente Hospital site (corner of Kiely Blvd & Kaiser Road) - down less than 5% from the original project plan. This still places an additional 2% of the City of Santa Clara at your doorstep with no additional schools, traffic mitigation fees, retail stores or other public services.

In June, the Planning Commission unanimously denied (7 to 0) both the Environmental Impact Report (EIR) and the project proposal, citing problems with the EIR and density issues.

The City Council ignored the recommendation and approved the EIR, with all its flaws, to authorize demolition. The Council decision to authorize build was deferred until this Tuesday (that’s tomorrow!).

Santa Clara City Council Chambers
7:00 p.m. on Tuesday, 18 August 2009
1500 Warburton Avenue
Santa Clara, California  95050

The City Council - and especially the Mayor - raised serious concerns to the developer:

  • Density; specifically design and massing, creating tiny lots and building heights an unbelievable 30% greater than allowed
  • “Putting 2000 sq-ft lots next to existing 6000+ sq-ft lot homes hardly constitutes ‘like next to like’ design”; they are 10 to 20 feet taller than existing neighborhood homes.
  • Open space less than 4% of total project area, which is inconsequentially tiny; the mayor even suggested that the open space near the park should be dedicated to the city
  • “The project’s lot coverage exceeds the city’s maximum by 12%”
  • Estimated that the “Floor Area Ratio (FAR) was higher than the city preferred”

Yet the developer changed very little.  In addition, the residents were specifically assured by the mayor, city staff and the developer that the trees on site would be protected. But:

  • Mature trees outside the demolition boundary were removed, without notice; the city’s response was to move the demolition boundary after the fact, retroactively allowing the removal of the trees
  • After the neighbors complained about the loss of the trees and asked that all surviving trees be saved, the city took no further action, and we later lost all of the mature trees near the front of the site, including the cactus garden
  • Homes next to the site were damaged by the demolition activity; the developer’s concrete crusher was placed so close to the residents that houses shook and sustained structural damage similar to that from large earthquakes.
  • Work started and ended outside the allowed hours of operation
  • Trucks that were not supposed to be parked on the street not only did so, but used the smaller neighborhood access roads to get to the site.  When the city chastised the residents by saying that the developer “did not use ‘dump trucks’”, they played a game of semantic, noting that the trucks they used were called something else.  Word games aside, pictures of the trucks on site today look very much like the pictures of trucks taken on the street.

Help our Mayor stand by her public commitments and enforce the City’s standards to ensure that the developer creates a less-massive, safer, environmentally-acceptable addition to the neighborhood. The EIR already suggests an Alternative 4 to add more park land for all to enjoy and lower Density. The zoning allows for mixed-use; let’s mix it.

The mayor’s comments, along with Planner Carol Ann Painter’s commitment to have the developer NOT cut down trees, can be seen on the second DVD on the council minutes from 16 June 2009, 1:44:00 in.  To quote Ms. Painter: “They are only proposing to demolish the buildings, and we as staff– I mean,  from a technical standpoint, we don’t have a tree ordinance, so they could start chopping down trees, but we’ll be happy to make a commitment that that’s not part of what the council approved, that’s not part of the council’s direction and we would not support that moving forward until we see what the development looks like, because we don’t want to be chopping down trees that with a revised development may not need to be chopped down.”

We need to pitch in and help fix this mess

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