Tuesday May 6

City looks to be pedestrian friendly

Staff: 'Village concept' would mitigate impact of two Stanford expansion projects

By Kristina Peterson / Daily News Staff Writer

In order to better weave two massive Stanford University redevelopment projects into the Palo Alto area, city staff are pushing to infuse their design with the feel of a smaller-scale village.

At Monday night's city council meeting, City Manager Frank Benest and planning officials promoted the "village concept" as a way Stanford might expand its medical facilities by 1.3 million square feet and shopping center by 240,000 square feet without treading too hard on Palo Alto.

In essence, implementing the village concept boils down to creating a sequence of highly visible public gathering places, maintaining a pedestrian-friendly atmosphere and connecting the expanded Stanford centers to Palo Alto's transit hubs and downtown, said architect and urban planner Bruce Fukuji, a consultant hired by the city.

The concept was borne out of repeated comments presenting "a strong and consistent message that the projects should not be focused inwards, but rather should address the community," said senior planner Steven Turner.

Significantly, the village concept will appear as a frequent alternative given in response to impacts listed in the draft environmental impact report being prepared for both projects and tentatively slated to be released in November, Turner said.

Council Member Pat Burt hailed the village concept as a way for Stanford and the city to mitigate potential project impacts.

Rather than negotiating or splitting the difference over problems such as transportation, Stanford and Palo Alto might be able to come up with "more creative, visionary solutions," Burt said.

Similarly, Council Member Yoriko Kishimoto praised the concept as going directly to the "heart of the comprehensive plan adopted in 1998" and a realization of sustainability goals.

"This is our shortcut to where we want to get," she said.

But not everyone was enamored of the idea.

Council Member Jack Morton said he "shuddered" to hear the word village. His main concern was that the focus was shifting away from increasing the vitality of the Stanford Shopping Center.

"It's an economic center and preserving that seems to me as important as walkability," Morton said.

City Manager Benest assured him that the Simon Property Group, which operates the shopping center, would not "agree to any plan unless it enhances their ability to be competitive."

Simon executive vice president Art Spellmeyer cautiously embraced the village concept, allowing that his group would try to "incorporate it into our design where it's not an economic disadvantage to our project."

In the only other major update to the two expansion plans, Mark Tortorich, vice president of design and construction for the medical centers, noted that university architects had transferred a total of 140,000 square feet of construction from the Hoover Pavilion site to the adult and children's hospitals in order to shift the buildings away from the wooded Arboretum area.

Most residents who spoke at Monday's meeting voiced their support for Stanford and urged the council to move quickly in developing the plans.

A spate of studies, including analyses of the projects' traffic, housing and fiscal impact, are being prepared in parallel with the development agreement and environmental impact report, and will all be released sometime next fall, Benest said.



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