Issue date: August 26, 1998

Menlo's day in court on Sand Hill project <z0042.0>Menlo's day in court on Sand Hill project (August 26, 1998)

**Menlo Park argues that environmental impact report is inadequate.
By RENEE DEAL

The massive environmental impact report on Stanford's planned Sand Hill Road Corridor development is imperfect and sometimes confusing, according to a man whose judgment carries the weight of law.
But that man, retired Monterey County Judge Harkjoon Paik, must now determine whether the EIR's flaws are acceptable byproducts of human effort, or if they make the document legally indefensible.
Judge Paik made his comments about the EIR during oral arguments last week by attorneys from Menlo Park, who claim the EIR must be rejected on eight legal points, and attorneys from Palo Alto and Stanford, who scoffed at that claim. He gave no indication of when he would issue his ruling on the lawsuit, but he is working against a 90-day deadline, according to William McClure, Menlo Park's city attorney.
The two-day court hearing in Santa Clara County Superior Court on August 19 and 20 centered on Menlo Park's lawsuit against Palo Alto and Stanford over the EIR, which Menlo Park insists is lacking in key, legally required information about the planned roadway, housing and commercial development.
Medical center expansion

Judge Paik's most intensive questioning was directed at Menlo's argument that the EIR should have included more information about the "reasonably foreseeable consequences" of projects planned for the near future, especially the expansion of the Stanford Medical Center.

Menlo Park attorneys Trent Orr and Mr. McClure claimed that the university cannot expand the medical facility without the major Sand Hill Road improvements included in the development plan. When designing the roadway improvements, which include extending Sand Hill to El Camino Real, Stanford built in enough capacity to serve the medical center expansion, they said.

Yet, they noted, the EIR failed to reveal or analyze specific traffic or other impacts from the planned medical center project, in violation of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA).

Without that information, the EIR presents a misleading picture of how traffic may increase with the roadway improvements studied in the EIR, and underestimates the mitigation measures that may be needed to handle that increase, they argued.

With the information, Mr. Orr said, the public can better address the question: "How much is this roadway project really going to improve traffic ... or how much of the roadway is going to be eaten up by future ... projects?"

Palo Alto and Stanford attorneys maintained that the EIR meets all of CEQA's requirements to address potential cumulative impacts from future development Stanford can reasonably predict. They noted that the traffic projections for key intersections included traffic potentially generated by a 400,000-square-foot medical center expansion -- information that Menlo Park attorneys maintained didn't go far enough to meet CEQA requirements.

Stanford submitted plans to the city of Palo Alto last December for a 218,000-square-foot expansion of the medical center, located just off Sand Hill Road on the Stanford campus. While that project was not included in the EIR for the Sand Hill Road Corridor development, other projects in addition to the roadway improvements were studied: construction of about 1,100 apartment and senior housing units along Sand Hill Road, near San Francisquito Creek; and an 80,000-square-foot expansion of the Stanford Shopping Center.

Weekend noise

Considerable time was spent on debating Menlo Park's claim that the EIR didn't address what lawyers called a "very simple mitigation measure" to reduce noise during the estimated three-year construction period: a ban on weekend construction work.

Although Menlo Park residents near the construction areas and the Menlo Park City Council requested a weekend ban, Palo Alto is allowing construction work from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Saturdays and 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sundays. And a ban was not addressed in the EIR.

Mr. Orr noted that the weekend ban was strongly advocated as a feasible mitigation of what the EIR acknowledged will be a "significant and unavoidable" noise impact. Therefore, he said, the EIR is required by CEQA to explore the option.

Philip Seymour, a Los Angeles attorney representing Palo Alto, argued that the weekend ban was not suggested during the public testimony period required before approval of the EIR, except by one person at a public hearing who spoke "in an extremely feeble, throwaway manner" of restricting construction hours.

That claim was promptly refuted, with Mr. McClure pointing to evidence in the public record, including a letter written soon after the draft EIR was issued and signed by about 17 residents requesting construction-hour restrictions.

Judge Paik indicated strong sympathy for Menlo Park residents near the construction site, citing the distress the noise and disruption would cause particularly on Sundays. "I think it's a very important issue," he said.

"For some people, Sunday is a very sacred day," he said, though he added that "for most yuppies, maybe it's not."

While his sympathy was apparent, Judge Paik noted that his ruling cannot be based on sympathy, but on the law.

Menlo Park's lawsuit also challenges aspects of the EIR dealing with the study of two nearby intersections -- Sand Hill Road-Santa Cruz Avenue, and Junipero Serra-Alpine Road-Santa Cruz Avenue. Menlo Park maintains that the two, often-congested intersections should have been analyzed as a single complex intersection because they are so close to each other and a backup at one often affects the other.

Mr. Seymour argued that Menlo Park's claim is based on the city's own preference of methodology, not on any legal requirement; he maintained that the EIR's analysis is adequate.