1.) Three articles that set up the historical context:
Reviewer:
Anonymous
Date: July 17, 1997
Rent (one bedroom): $1100
Rent (two bedrooms): $1400
Rent Reasonability: About
Average
Rent gets raised: No Comment
Average rent increase: No Comment
Age of complex: 5-10 years
Apartment Itself: Very Nice!
Maintenance (Apartment): Responsive
and professionally done
Maintenance (Grounds): Beautiful!
First Class!
Parking: Crap shoot
Neighbors: No Comment
Rental Office: No Comment
Surrounding Area: No Comment
Pets: No Comment
Review: Though I have not lived
at Mansion Grove, I know several friends that live there. First of all,
I must mention that the place is beautiful itself, and
they have just made the community
gated (though they still haven't activated the gates yet.) There are plenty
of fountains (which they turn off at night), a
heated swimming pool, spas,
tennis courts, weight room, and other first class amnenities. However,
I must point out the negatives. First, it is located in the
middle of a desolate brown
field that is very ugly. There are views of the Guadalupe River, but that
River can get very ugly in the winter, with all the rains.
All kinds of trash collects
in that river, and it is always brown.
But the worst thing about Mansion
Grove is that it is located on an old SuperFund site dumping ground. SuperFund
sites are sections of land that the
government said were unsafe
due to toxic levels of pollutants in the soil. In fact, when you apply,
you are asked to read a large document that contains
information regarding the various
concentrations of pollutants. Basically, it's not worth your health to
live in such an unclean environment, even though
the prices at Mansion Grove
are quite reasonable, considering the amnenities.
Overall: No Comment
Birth Defects and Superfund Sites (Fall, 1997)
New research suggests increased risk for certain birth defects when women
live very
close to Superfund sites in early pregnancy. The study by the CA Birth
Defects
Monitoring Program (CBDMP) looked at three common birth defects: neural
tube
defects (spina bifida and anacephaly), conotruncal heart defects (a group
of serious
heart defects), and cleft lip and cleft palate. Study findings suggest
that women who
lived with in 1/4 mile of a Superfund site during the first three months
of pregnancy
were four times more likely to give birth to a baby with serious heart
defects, and 2
times more likely to give birth to a baby with neural tube defects. Children
born with
cleft lip and cleft palate occurred no more frequently than expected. Women
who
lived further than 1/4 mile from the sites were not at higher risk.
Researchers say the results are reinforced by similar findings in other
studies but
cannot be considered definitive because of the small number of women living
very
close to the sites. Even with the small number of women living close to
Superfund
sites, the study itself was comprehensive. In the largest study of its
kind, the CA
Birth Defects Monitoring Program interviewed more than 200 mothers, including
those with healthy babies in a wide area across California. It was the
first
investigation to focus on the vulnerable months surrounding early pregnancy
when
these birth defects occur. And it took into account other issues such as
lack of
vitamin use, cigarette smoking, race/ethnicity and socio-economic status.
How many women are affected by the higher risk? Only 0.6% of the mothers
interviewed lived within 1/4 mile of a Superfund site during early pregnancy.
About
half of these women lived on military bases. The study couldn't measure
whether
mothers were actually exposed to chemicals from those sites. "It's hard
to study
these chemical soups", said the study author, Lisa Croen, PhD of the CBDMP.
Superfund sites are those on the National Priority List targeted for cleanup.
Of the
1400 sites in the US, 105 are in CA and the county having the most (29),
is Santa
Clara County. Sites include inactive pesticide and chemical manufacturing
plants,
wood processing facilities, drum storage sites, contaminated groundwater
areas,
sanitary landfills and mines. Military bases make up 20% of California's
Superfund
sites.
The small number of cases around hazardous waste sites means the findings
do not
have strong statistical power. However, they do support early research
hinting at
higher risk. The higher risk for certain birth defects are relevant as
communities plan
development around hazardous waste sites or re-use of these sites.
Source: CA Dept. of Health Services Press Release and CBDMP Info Packet
(6/16/97)
CBDMP is a public health program devoted to finding causes of birth defects
and is
funded through the CA Dept. of Health Services and jointly operated with
the March
of Dimes Birth Defects Foundation. For more information, or to obtain a
copy of the
study, call CBDMP at 209-224-2212
Outcry growing over Cisco's plan.Cities say San Jose environmental report understates the impact of Coyote campus
BY NOAM LEVEY
Mercury News Staff Writer
Underscoring the rising tensions
over Silicon
Valley's sprawl, San Jose's
southern
neighbors are stepping up their
complaints
about Cisco Systems' plans
for a huge new
campus in Coyote Valley and
accusing San Jose
of grossly underestimating
how much
the development would disrupt
life in their
communities.
Cities from Monterey to Salinas
to Hollister
envision a dim future in which
thousands of
Cisco workers flood their unprepared
region,
saddling the area with more
traffic, dirtier
air and higher housing prices,
just like
Silicon Valley.
"We are a natural target for
those employees
who want access to the lifestyle
here and
the greater housing opportunities
in our
region,'' said Kate McKenna,
special project
manager for the Association
of Monterey Bay
Area Governments.
San Jose's draft report on the
environmental
impact of the Cisco campus
fails to
acknowledge its effect on the
Monterey Bay
region, some officials there
complain. They
want San Jose's planners to
redo the report
before it's sent to the city
council for
approval -- a major step toward
construction
of the Cisco campus.
Reacting to the report, several
leaders have
even asked San Jose to help
them cope with
the projected growth by spending
millions to
subsidize mass transit and
housing. Others
have called on San Jose to
open up land in
San Jose itself for housing
development.
San Jose city planners have
concluded that
just 20 percent of the 20,000
people expected
to work at Cisco's new Coyote
Valley campus
will live south of San Jose.
``There just aren't any close
options for
housing to the south,'' said
San Jose Deputy
Planning Director Joseph Horwedel,
explaining
that planners looked at regional
estimates that forecast far
more housing
production in the Bay Area
than to the south.
``If you go north, you have
all this housing
development going on. In San
Jose alone,
we're building 5,000 units
a year.''
While many cities to the south
have imposed
strict growth limits, San Jose
plans to build
about 43,000 new housing units
in the next
decade. And although many of
the roads to
the south are two-lane country
roads or
undeveloped freeways such as
U.S. 101 south
of Gilroy, the Bay Area has
a massive matrix
of six- and eight-lane expressways
that
feed into the South Bay.
That could encourage many Cisco
workers to
take advantage of a ``reverse
commute''
that would allow drivers to
speed down
southbound roads in the mornings
while
northbound highways feeding
into San Jose
from the south are clogged,
planners say.
Most live north
To back up their predictions,
San Jose city
planners point out in the environmental
impact report they prepared
on the project
that the vast majority of the
Cisco employees
working at the company's North
San Jose
campus live in San Jose or
points north.
The report estimates that just
12 percent of
the workers will live in the
Morgan Hill and
Gilroy area, 5 percent in San
Benito County,
2 percent in Monterey County
and 1
percent in Santa Cruz County.
With so few commuters from the
south, the
city has concluded that development
of
Coyote Valley will have little
effect on
traffic and air quality in
San Benito, Santa Cruz
and Monterey counties. The
report does not
even analyze traffic conditions
south of
Morgan Hill.
To regional planners to the
south such as
McKenna, those conclusions
are fatally
flawed. They see a very different
reality
unfolding in their back yards.
``There is not adequate recognition
that the
project will have major regional
implications,'' McKenna said.
San Jose city planners may talk
confidently
about Cisco workers choosing
to live in the
Bay Area rather than points
south, but the
already changing landscape
of San Benito,
Santa Cruz, Monterey and even
Merced counties
seems to suggest otherwise.
Limited housing, poor roads
and long commutes
do not appear to have dissuaded
Silicon
Valley residents from snapping
up homes from
Los Banos to Monterey. Even
by South
Bay standards, many of these
cities are
growing like wildfire.
In Los Banos, an influx of new
residents
fueled a 39 percent gain in
that city's
population from 1990
to 1995, and officials
predict the city will more
than double to
51,000 residents in the next
20 years.
In Hollister, growth is overwhelming
the
city's sewer treatment plant,
and last summer
prompted city leaders to put
a moratorium on
new building permits.
Although there are few studies
of how much of
this growth is directly caused
by Silicon
Valley spillover, anecdotal
evidence suggests
the impact is significant.
When Monterey County last summer
surveyed
home sales in subdivisions
being built on
the north side of Salinas,
sales
representatives reported that
between 20 and 50 percent
of the buyers were from Silicon
Valley. And
many planners simply point
to the
deteriorating traffic conditions
on the
region's main highways as a
dramatic illustration
of the rising number of residents
who now
drive up to Silicon Valley
every morning.
Though they are increasing steadily,
housing
prices in San Benito and Monterey
counties
remain significantly lower
than those in
Silicon Valley, with the median
home price in
Hollister $100,000 less than
in San Jose,
according to February sales
figures.
Officials to the south say their
market will
be very tempting to Cisco's
new employees,
many of whom may not even be
able to afford a
home in San Jose, where the
median
home price pushed above $360,000
in February.
And unlike the company's North
San Jose
workers, Coyote Valley workers
will not
only be 15 miles closer to
Hollister and
points south, they will also
be spared the chore
of traversing the San Jose
metropolis to get
to work. Hollister and Santa
Cruz will be 40
miles from the Cisco campus,
``well within
the commuting range for future
employees,''
AMBAG noted in a letter to
San Jose planners.
``This housing demand cannot
possibly be met
in the incredibly overheated
housing
market in the South Bay and
Peninsula,''
Salinas Mayor Anna Caballero
told San Jose
officials.
Even Santa Clara County Planning
Director Ann
Draper noted in a letter to
San Jose that
estimates that 80 percent of
Cisco's workers
will live north of Coyote Valley
``may be
overstated.''
Growing increasingly frustrated
that their
concerns are not being addressed
-- many of
these leaders raised the same
questions about
the project last year -- some
cities are
asking San Jose to either pay
for the
consequences of the growth
or build more housing
in San Jose to alleviate growth
pressures to
the south.
Salinas was joined by the city
of Marina in
asking San Jose to open up
land in Coyote
Valley for further housing
development closer
to the project.
Salinas has also made other
far-reaching
demands, asking San Jose and
Cisco to commit
more than $10 million to subsidize
an
extension of Caltrain service
to Salinas and
perhaps millions more toward
the $20 million
cost of developing the line.
$1 million asked
In a letter to San Jose, Salinas'
mayor
Caballero also asked Cisco
to contribute $1
million a year over the next
20 years to
develop low-income housing
and to set up
apprenticeship programs in
the city's schools.
Gov. Gray Davis last week outlined
his
support for funding a Caltrain
extension south
of Gilroy. Cisco spokesman
Steve Langdon said
the company is committed to
being a
good corporate citizen. ``We
are very
interested in talking with
communities like Salinas
about cooperation,'' Langdon
said, noting
Cisco's contributions to housing
in Silicon
Valley.
But San Jose officials appear
unlikely to
accede to demands to open more
land here for
development.
`These other cities have issues
of their
own,'' said San Jose Mayor
Ron Gonzales.
`They need to be focusing on
controlling
their own growth.''
The Coyote Valley Urban Reserve
south of
where Cisco wants to build
has been set
aside for housing, but only
when certain
triggers are met. Those include
a projection of
five years of balanced budgets
and a return
to the level of city services
offered in 1993. It
could be years before those
triggers are met,
and there is little political
will in San Jose to
change them.
Nor is there much interest in
slowing down
the Cisco project for the benefit
of
communities to the south, which
some believe
unfairly want to dodge the
costs
associated with a booming economy.
San Jose city planners said
they are
reviewing the issues raised
by cities to the south, but
officials are sticking by their
estimates. It
appears unlikely that anyone
in City Hall will
do anything to stop the project.
Controversial Cisco Systems expansion OK'd in San Jose, Calif.
SAN JOSE, Calif. - City planners
have
approved a controversial expansion
by Cisco Systems Inc. into one of
SiliconValley's last remaining
agricultural areas.
Despite objections from
environmentalists and neighboring
communities, as well as threatened
lawsuits, the city's planning
commission on
Wednesday said economic, legal,
social, technological and other
benefits outweighed the environmental
impact.
The Internet equipment company
wants
to build a $1.3 billion, 688-acre
office complex in the northern part of
the Coyote Valley's remaining
6,000
acres of hills and farmland.
The
city's largest private employer,
it has completed six new office
construction projects at its
San Jose headquarters in
recent years, and Cisco estimates
it
will need room for 20,000 more
as it adds about 1,000 employees a month.
Opponents argue the development
would
destroy the area's agricultural
character and bring to mostly rural
communities congested roads
and housing
prices that have rocketed 34
percent in just a year.
Coyote Valley was incorporated
into
San Jose in 1958, but the city
has delayed substantial development in the
area because it does not get
enough tax
revenues from businesses to
pay for
city services such as sewer
lines, libraries and schools. Planners say new
housing will not be built in
the area for
years.
Environmental groups, including
the
Sierra Club and Audubon Society,
contend animal and plant habitats will be
threatened by development.
The San Jose Planning Commission
has
scheduled meetings for late
this month and early October to consider the
report. If approved, the matter
goes
to the city council, which
is expected
to give it the go-ahead.
Mayor Anna Caballero of neighboring
Salinas said she and other
city leaders would renew their objections to the
development at upcoming hearings
before deciding whether to
take legal
action.
© Copyright 2000 Minneapolis
Star Tribune. All rights reserved.
SAN JOSE CLEARS CISCO COMPLEX
The New York Times,10/26/2000
The networking giant Cisco Systems, Silicon Valley's
biggest employer, received final government approval for a
planned $1.3 billion corporate office complex to be built in
a rural area south of San Jose, Calif. The expansion project,
which calls for a 688-acre office park for 20,000 Cisco
employees, was unanimously approved by the City Council,
with one member abstaining because of a conflict of
interest. The project was approved several weeks ago by the
city planning commission. Cisco's proposal has been at the
center of controversy in recent months because it will
encroach on one of Silicon Valley's last rural tracts, known
as Coyote Valley. To appease opponents of the plan, Cisco
announced recently that it would donate $3 million and
help raise $97 million more for land preservation efforts.
But it remains unclear whether those steps will be enough
to placate environmental opponents.
Laurie J. Flynn (NYT)
While
other cities clamor for more tech, Silicon Valley wants less
Bettina Boxall / Los Angeles
Times
SAN MATEO, CALIF. -- As high-tech
businesses desperate for office
space push the boundaries of SiliconValley
north toward San Francisco,
cities caught in the advancing
wave
are beginning to rebel.
Confronted with insane housing
prices
and worsening traffic and worried
that local shopping districts will be
taken over by Internet companies,
many
communities on the San Francisco
Peninsula are throwing up barriers
in the dot-coms' golden paths.
Cities are passing ordinances
restricting the location of
technology firms, slashing office-space
densities and, in some cases,
turning down projects that
could house dot-com companies.
"What I think you're hearing
is,
'We're losing the small-city
feel. There's too much traffic, too much
activity.' I understand that,"
said John Baer, a
San Carlos, Calif., developer.
"But the reality is, you've got a peninsula
that, bless its soul, is on
fire right now."
The concerns are striking because
they
focus on the home-grown industry,
the one that started just down the
highway and rained riches and
recognition on the area.
From the old-fashioned downtown
of San
Mateo to the new corporate
parks of Redwood City, Calif., and the
leafy streets of the commercial
core
in Palo Alto, Calif., there
is growing anxiety about the effect of the
dot-com explosion, which has
driven office
vacancy rates below 1 percent
in many cities.
"We need to pay attention to
what is
occurring," said Susan Arpan,
a Palo Alto official and leader of a regional
economic development coalition
examining the issue.
In Foster City, Calif., a start-up
software company is leasing
and renovating an elegant old corner building
that formerly was home to a
women's
clothing store, and before
that, a
department store.
The company's arrival a couple
of
months ago contributed to quite
a stir in this tidy city of 95,000 halfway
down the peninsula.
Locals looked at the corner
space and
then down the block at a former
bank building now occupied by an Internet
travel agency that closes its
blinds
to the street.
Didn't like what saw
They didn't like what they saw.
"When this hit, it was a red
flag
waving," said Bob Nutini, who
owns a men's clothing store next to the
travel firm and sits on the
board of a
downtown business association.
Recently the San Mateo City
Council
passed a moratorium on conversion
of core downtown retail space to office
use. It later expanded the
moratorium to another shopping
district, and city officials
then extended for six months both bans while
considering permanent zoning
restrictions.
Officials in San Mateo and other
peninsula cities say it's not
that they don't want dot-com offices in their
communities. They just don't
want them
everywhere, squeezing out locally
owned stores, taking parking
and occupying land that could be used for
badly needed housing.
They also worry that if the
dot-com
industry takes a serious nose
dive, they will be burdened with empty
buildings.
San Mateo is particularly protective
of its downtown, which has
managed to avoid the unfavorable fates of many
other small urban centers.
It is neither a yuppified, outdoor
mall nor a scrawny has-been.
It is a healthy commercial core of small
independent shops, restaurants
and a few chain
stores, a place where residents
can
get their hair cut and buy
a pair of shoes or a bicycle.
Store owners are terrified
they will
be displaced by dot-com firms
happy to pay more than the shopkeepers could
afford.
"Probably in the next five or
six
years a lot of [merchants]
will be leaving here," predicted Serop
Samurkashian, whose wife runs
a downtown
shoe-repair shop that is struggling
after a recent $16,000-a-year
rent hike.
Peter Pau's San Mateo firm develops
and leases commercial space.
He rented 18,000 square feet to themoment -- a
firm that develops e-commerce
software for companies.
Good and bad
"People are being affected,
and rents
are high, and a lot of people
don't like it," he conceded. But he hastened
to point out that the former
clothing
store had been empty for more
than a
year. Pau said he looked for
a good retail tenant but couldn't find one.
"It's supply [and] demand,"
he said.
"If retailers want to be here,
they can come here. It's not like they're
being shut out."
Moreover, he thinks many people
unfamiliar with the dot-com
world harbor an unjustified disdain for it.
"They just don't like them.
They're
different. They wear T-shirts
to work," Pau said. "I see a lot of these
companies with young people.
There's
nothing wrong with them. Why
should we
discriminate against them?"
Certainly, there's nothing threatening
about themoment's CEO, Lawrence
Frye. He's a conservatively dressed,
middle-age man who easily could
pass
for a Wall Street investment
banker.
Frye chooses his words carefully,
gently suggesting that his
60 employees are an asset to downtown.
"We are infusing a high degree
of
energy and enthusiasm and commerce
in the community," he said. Given the
hours of a start-up venture,
many of
his workers are eating breakfast,
lunch and dinner downtown six
days a week, he added.
Frye moved his 1-year-old firm
from
two other locations, one in
San Mateo and one in San Bruno, Calif.
The downtown address appealed
to him
because it is near a commuter-train
stop and cost about a quarter of what
premium business-park space
would in some SiliconValley
cities.
And Frye said he wanted to stay
in the
Bay Area because of what he
called its chemistry. This is where Internet
firms find the talent, the
investment
capital and the entrepreneurship
that
fuels them.
But the disadvantages of the
region's
popularity and prosperity are
becoming more and more apparent to local
officials.
'Caught up in whole trend'
"We're just one city caught
up in a
whole trend," said Kris Schenk,
Menlo Park's director of community
development. "Prices are going
up so high
that it threatens a lot of
things --
the traditional community values."
San Mateo Mayor Jan Epstein said
longtime residents of her city
are cashing out
and leaving. The pace of daily
life
has become too fast for them.
"There's a tension over the
amount of
change and a question in people's
minds about degrading quality of life,"
she said.
Nearby, in Redwood City, growth
has
been so frenetic that officials
are having second thoughts after approving
3.5 million square feet of
new office
space in the past two years.
SiliconValley office demand
has "just
marched up the peninsula toward
San Francisco and we sit right in the
middle," said Redwood City
Vice
Mayor Richard Claire. Ed Everett,
the
city manager, said: "Nobody
expected this explosion. People who bought land
have become millionaires in
the
past three years."
On the one hand, Redwood City
officials are delighted that
their longtime moribund community finally has
joined the dot-com boom.
But traffic on the nearby Hwy.
280 has
slowed to a crawl. The price
for an average single-family home starts at
$500,000, an impossible sum
for
those who provide the backbone
of
civic services.
"We can't find teachers. We
can't get
police officers to live in
this area," said Claire, a college instructor
who has students starting at
computer
programming jobs for more than
he makes.
Act to slow growth
Redwood City's City Council
passed an
ordinance recently to slow
office growth by increasing parking requirements
and reducing densities for
new
developments.
"What we did was stop the free-for-all
in Redwood City, and the developers
are all very upset," said Deborah
Nelson,community development
director.
A bit to the south, Menlo Park
reached
its projected 2010 build-out
for office space in the late 1990s. It now
wants to attract non-dot-com
businesses,
said Schenk, the community
development
director.
Recently, he said, the City
Council
rejected a proposal for a new
office complex, despite the developer's
willingness to throw in a lot
of expensive
extras to sweeten the deal.
San Carlos also just tightened
its
zoning to ensure offices do
not replace ground-floor retail in its downtown
core. Baer, a partner in JMS
Development, argues that localized
zoning changes are not going
to contain the powerful market forces shaping
the entire region.
"It's very unlikely you're
going to
roll this back. So then the
question is, 'How do you manage it?' " he said.
It's a question even dot-com
companies
soon may be asking. Frye says
his well-paid employees
barely can afford to buy a
home in the San Mateo area. "Many of the newer
people are, frankly, priced
out of the
market."
© Copyright 2000 Los Angeles
Times.
All rights reserved.