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Stanford University announced Monday (June 24) an offer to Santa Clara County to commit $4.7 billion toward local housing and transportation projects, with $138 million set aside for the Palo Alto Unified School District.
In return, the university has asked the county for permission to build 3.5 million square feet of new development by 2035 and shift away from some of the regulatory “conditions of approval” for a new general use permit that the Santa Clara County Planning Commission considered at its hearing Thursday (June 27) in San Jose.
As part of its offer, the university states its willingness to negotiate with a coalition of San Mateo County stakeholders. That coalition, represented by leaders in Redwood City, Woodside, Atherton, East Palo Alto, Menlo Park and Portola Valley, on May 6 submitted a letter of demands regarding contributions it believes the university should make to mitigate the impacts of its growth on those communities.
Stanford’s June 24 offer letter responds by promising about $15 million each in transportation funding to San Mateo County and the city of Palo Alto, with an estimated $3.2 million of the county’s $15 million set aside for Menlo Park transportation projects.
According to Stanford spokesman E.J. Miranda, the split is based on the final environmental impact review for the proposed use permit, which predicts about the same number of intersections would be impacted by Stanford’s growth in San Mateo County as in the city of Palo Alto.
The university argues in its letter that San Mateo County could stand to benefit from its offer. Santa Clara County, meanwhile suspended negotiations with Stanford after it worked out a separate agreement with Palo Alto Unified School District to provide $138 million to its schools if the county approves the development agreement.
However, San Mateo County Supervisor Don Horsley told The Almanac that supervisors for both counties have been meeting together, and that he is hoping to mitigate the problems the university’s growth would create by following the lead of Santa Clara County moving forward.
“We’re not going to negotiate separately with Stanford,” he said.
He added that he is hopeful because some components of the offer letter did indicate that Stanford is listening to the coalition’s concerns that the university’s proposed growth would impact its neighbors north of the county line. The dividing line between the two counties, he said, is really “by accident of the creek,” but the impacts will certainly be felt on both sides of San Francisquito Creek.
“The bigger the campus gets, the more the impacts are. That’s not to say we don’t appreciate that it’s a great university,” he added. “We have to come to some kind of amicable agreement on how to mitigate those impacts.”
Housing and schools
Stanford’s offer has drawn criticism so far from the two Menlo Park City Council members who serve on a subcommittee tasked with negotiating with Stanford on its general use permit, Betsy Nash and Cecilia Taylor.
In email responses, they said Stanford should not be allowed to count the 215 apartments it is already building in Menlo Park as part of its “Middle Plaza” development toward its total requirement for new housing units, as it has requested.
During the approval process for Middle Plaza, located at 500 El Camino Real, Stanford indicated that at least some of those new units would be occupied by staff and faculty who currently live in other university-subsidized units in Menlo Park. However, the university emphasized in its offer letter that the units would be occupied by “future” faculty and staff.
The university says in its offer letter that it would also provide 47 below-market-rate housing units in San Mateo County.
However, what’s less clear is whether the university would also help pay for the costs local schools would take on to educate kids of Stanford faculty and staff.
Because the university doesn’t pay property taxes as a tax-exempt academic institution – and because so many local school districts are affluent enough to rely solely on property tax revenue, without a per-pupil funding guarantee from the state – school districts have become increasingly worried about how to pay for the education costs affiliated with children living in new households Stanford adds.
In separate negotiations, Stanford has agreed to provide $138 million to Palo Alto Unified to cover anticipated impacts of its expected growth on that district, but there’s nothing laid out in other districts where the university may choose to expand. (Stanford did agree to provide some funds to the Menlo Park City School District as part of its Middle Plaza project in Menlo Park.)
According to Miranda, the university does not make payments in lieu of property taxes, but does make development agreements based on community needs “to provide certainty as to the benefits that Stanford will provide and the rules that will govern its long-term development projects.”
Horsley commented that San Mateo County schools do lose out because of the university’s nonprofit exemption from paying taxes on its property in the county.
“We did indicate we expect they would recognize that was one of the things we asked them to mitigate,” he added.
A boom across the county border
Another area that might be of concern in San Mateo County is that the university is requesting that Santa Clara County allow housing developments to be streamlined in the university’s “Quarry” development district, which is in an area nearest to San Mateo County and Menlo Park, just south of the Sand Hill Road and El Camino Real intersection.
The university proposes to build up to 1,100 new apartments for faculty and staff in that area.
Stanford has already grown significantly in this area in the last few years: The development district is near the recently expanded Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital and the new Stanford Hospital, expected to open later this year.
Most recently, the Menlo Park City Council was caught off-guard when a a four-story building with three levels of underground parking, to house Stanford’s new Center for Academic Medicine was cleared for development by the Santa Clara County Planning Commission, despite the city’s appeal, in January 2018. The university had transferred some of the “development potential” from the Palo Alto side of its campus to the Quarry development district near Menlo Park. When asked whether there were any assurances in the general use permit application that the university wouldn’t do this again, Miranda commented that the environmental analyses for Stanford’s general use permit studied the potential for up to 1,100 new units in that district. Pursuing more housing would require further environmental analysis.
A Santa Clara County decision
Ultimately, however, the power to approve Stanford’s general use permit lies with the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors.
Supervisor Joe Simitian, whose district covers Stanford, Palo Alto and a significant proportion of other northern Santa Clara County cities, told the Palo Alto Weekly that Stanford’s offer remains unacceptable because its agreement to pay Palo Alto Unified is contingent upon the county’s approval of the development agreement.
Many of the elements of Stanford’s offer, according to Simitian, are things the university proposed in the past and that county staff rejected. This includes having Stanford get credit for housing units at Escondido Village and retain existing metrics for measuring traffic, a “no net new trips” traffic counting system. Santa Clara County has called for additional monitoring of traffic during daily peak commute periods beyond the current one hour periods measured in the morning and afternoon, as well as of reverse-commute trips and average daily traffic.
Read about the Santa Clara County Planning Commission’s decisions on Stanford’s general use permit application that came out of Thursday’s hearing:
● Planning Commission backs Stanford’s campus expansion
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Keep fighting for our Menlo Park schools! We deserve to be 100% compensated for any net new students brought into them by Stanford.
How much will go to PV since we will be the most affected by this ridiculous expansion plan