Aug 29, 2007

City housing allocation likely to come down

Stanford units may be shifted to county

By Kristina Peterson / Daily News Staff Writer

A request that Palo Alto build roughly 3,505 new homes over seven years may be scaled back, city officials said this week.

"The new number will be lower," said Steve Emslie, the city's director of Planning and Community Environment.

The Association of Bay Area Governments, a regional planning agency comprised of elected officials representing the nine Bay Area counties, late last month released its latest housing projections, which assign Palo Alto the task of building 3,505 homes. In total, Santa Clara County must produce 60,334 units of housing across its cities and unincorporated areas in the seven-year period.

Nearby Los Altos is being asked to build 317 homes and Mountain View 2,879; Sunnyvale's allocation is 4,426 new units.

Emslie said Palo Alto's allocation is "extremely high," and includes credit for homes soon to be built by Stanford on land technically in an unincorporated area of Santa Clara County - not Palo Alto.

Emslie said Palo Alto's share will likely be reduced because the Stanford housing under development may be shifted to the allocation for unincorporated Santa Clara County, which right now must only build 165 new units.

Stanford land with commercial properties such as the shopping center is technically in Palo Alto, while all of the institutional areas are in unincorporated Santa Clara County, said the county's director of planning and development, Val Alexeeff.

So housing being built on unincorporated county land should be credited to the county as helping meet the region's needs, Emslie said.

But Alexeeff stressed that over the past 30 years the county has been trying to distance itself from getting involved in new developments, trying to focus "all the new growth in cities," but he said the Stanford situation was unique.

So far, ABAG has not been willing to specify a new figure for Palo Alto's allocation, if credit for the upcoming housing is shifted to the county.

ABAG senior planner Christy Riviere would only say Monday that the city's allocation "potentially will be revised."

Alexeeff said that over the next three years, roughly 300 housing units should be built on unincorporated county land at Stanford.

He said his office is expecting to hear within 10 days what units may be transferred over to them.

"If they add 100 more units, but they're already approved and will be built, who cares?" Alexeeff said. But he noted that the number of units assigned to the county must match the number of units approved to be built at Stanford.

Whatever Palo Alto's final allocation is, the city is not required to build the homes, but must make the land available and prevent any impediments to its development, said Julie Caporgno, the city's planning and transportation official.

Palo Alto has roughly 27,275 housing units, including approved building permits, senior planner Ronaldo Rivera said.

Right now both the city and county are "waiting and watching" for ABAG to tweak its numbers, Alexeeff said.

ABAG spokeswoman Kathleen Cha said the final allocations will not be adopted until next summer.


E-mail Kristina Peterson at kpeterson@dailynewsgroup.com.