UPDATE Oct. 10, 2018. Now we learn that the Kohls 10th site is actually just 9.5 acres, not 11.5. The 2 acres parks is a 24 x 7 city park and cannot be used for school programs. Thus, it stands no chance of being Reasonably Equivalent for a BCS site for 600, 900 or 1200 students.
ORIGINAL. As you may know, the Los Altos School District and its Board of Trustees have made a significant change in land acquisition strategy. Does changing the site for the new 10th school in Mountain View from the Safeway-Old Mill corner on San Antonio Rd. to the Kohls 10th site corner on Showers Dr. change the public relations equation? Will more constituent sentiment edge towards acceptance of rather than resistance to this plan for siting Bullis Charter School?
In this article Lalahpolitico assumes the Kohls 10th site is intended for Bullis Charter School, even though Lasd continues to insist that no decision has been made. See the lastest Lasd online public engagement. See the 10th site Advisory Task Force.
What’s Better About the Kohls 10th site for a BCS school?
SIZE: The total effective site acreage increases from 8.6 to 11.6. That means the outdoor space per BCS student could be ‘reasonably equivalent.’ UPDATE Oct. 18, 2018. Nope acreage increases from 8.6 to 9.5. The other 2 acres are Kohls are a 24×7 park and can’t be used for a school program. 9.5 acres won’t be ‘reasonably equivalent.’
TRAFFIC: The Showers Drive corner has better/calmer vehicle access than the San Antonio corner.
SAFE EMINENT DOMAIN: The Showers Drive Kohls 10th site seller is willing. This looks to be a ‘friendly’ rather than a hostile eminent domain process. Eminent domain is necessary in order to terminate several long-term leases including the Kohls department store. This site presents less risk of a surprise cost boost awarded by judge or jury. The seller is a large real estate investment firm with a large portfolio of properties across many states. It is apparently ready to “adjust its portfolio” to pursue other opportunities in other markets. The seller will continue to own land at Walmart, Trader Joes, Chilis and that high rise office fronting on El Camino.
LASD gave up trying to exercise eminent domain on this site. The hostile seller has helped the District pursue the alternative Kohl deal
Is Kohls 10th site More Expensive than Safeway-Old Mill? No.
Safeway-Old Mill at 8.6 acres is zoned with a FAR of 1.85 while Kohls 10th site with an effective site size of 11.6 acres is zoned with a higher FAR of 2.35. A higher FAR generally makes land more expensive per acre. [Greystar –developers of a mixed-use project at the Safeway-OldMill site — are buying 2 acres at Kohl to satisfy a MV ‘parkland’ requirement. That is how the total effective Kohls site adds up to 11.6 acres.]
LASD is buying 9.6 acres on Showers, in other words, 1 more acre than it would have at San Antonio. So at Kohls 10th site, Lasd appears to be buying more expensive land and one more acre of it. However, 1 acre at Kohls appears to have a Hetch Hetchy Water surface easement strip. That means one can’t put buildings on it, probably just grass or blacktop. One can’t sell building rights – TDRs – to 3rd party developers like Google. And it is probably worth nothing like $15M or $17.5M an acre price on the rest of the site. The easement has a FAR of zero. For estimation, I assume it costs zero.
The Kohls 10th site could have generated ~800,000 TDR compared to the Safeway Old Mill 610,000 TDRS. But LASD has decided NOT to attempt to sell the extra ~200,000 TDRs and is leaving as much as $20M of revenue on the table. Why? Probably to avoid the risks that 2nd round would entail. Would the 2nd batch of ~200,000 TDRs be saleable at $130 each…or only for less? Would the price drop anger or even void contracts of the 7 buyers from the first round? Would the Mountain View City Council agree to have even more development intensity ‘exported’ from the San Antonio specific plan area to the Whisman area? Would the MV Planning Department gag on awarding even more projects the coveted ” gatekeeper status” that expedites a project through the plan approval process? All very big risks.
Table: BCS permanent sites – Comparison of New Land vs. Existing Land
Click image for larger version. the Link for download of the .xls file is below.
Click above image for larger version. the Link for download of the .xls file is below
Lasd gets more Acres for the same bucks
The abandoned Safeway-Old Mill land deal {1} could have had a final land cost of $26.7 million for 8.6 acres [C24]. Pretty awesomely cheap at about $3.1M an acre. Great optics.
The Kohls 10th site deal – if the District had sold a 2nd round of 200,000 more TDRs {2} – could have had a final cost of $23.5 million for 11.6 acres [E24]. That would have been cheap $2.0M an acre! Great optics.
But there is no second round of TDRs, therefore the Kohls {4} {3} final land cost is probably somewhere in the range of $26.7 million [G24] to $48.2 million [F24] for 11.6 acres. That’s from $2.3 M per acre up to about $4.1M an acre.
For about the same outlay, Lasd is getting more acres and lower eminent domain risks
All these MV deals are much better deals than the smaller Los Altos sites on El Camino which were considered over several wasted years. Those sites would have cost Lasd much more because City of Los Altos — unlike Mountain View — has NO capacity to subsidize new school construction.
Now that the size of the chosen site – Kohls – is over 10 acres AND the land costs Lasd no more than one-sixth of the $150 M measure N bond, a lot of the public may feel this is “fair” to Bullis Charter and does not break the bank. So “why the heck look at other alternatives?”
However, the 11.6 acres land with the CONSTRUCTION of a shiny new school for BCS will cost $100M, or 2/3 of the $150M Measure N bond money. Is the $50 M left from the bond enough to facilitate the desired District move to a ‘middle school model?’ Is it enough to fix up Egan and Blach junior highs to receive the six graders? Yes, it is plausible. [Caveat: Lalapolitco understands the several millions of Measure N have already been spent to fulfill the District’s obligations in the 5-year agreement. BCS has more students – enrollment growth these past 5 years vs. Lasd — and more new portables. ]
Less Appeal of Alternative Approaches to Site BCS
John Swan, Los Altos School District
1)John Swan – former Lasd board candidate in 2016 – has advocated for a number of sites in Los Altos Hill where 10 acres was/is available for $1 to 2 million per acre. But with the Kohls deal at the same low price of $2M an acre, Swan’s LAH approach {5} seems to be a non-starter.
A majority of District constituents seem to feel it is a good idea to acquire new land in or near where they believe the enrollment growth is highest –NEC. [In fact, enrollment growth might be occurring uniformly throughout the district. Nonetheless, when Portola school was closed and sold in the 90s, there was a location gap there in N. Los Altos and NEC. Much like there was a location gap in LAH when Bullis Purrisima was closed in the late 90s. It has since been reopened.]
“If the District can get land in NEC for the same price as in LAH, why build a shiny, new school in more remote LAH?” Yet other constituents think that locating a new school in an urban setting like Safeway Old Mill or Kohls is “cruel to children.” Lalahpolitico: It seems to me that only if the Kohl deal falls apart, will a majority of constituents be willing to consider a LAH location again.
Sept. 16 meeting. LASD trustees Doug Smith, Tamara Logan. Gary Waldeck of LAH. BCS trustees, Peter Evans, Francis LaPoll
2)Creative Facilities Solutions, a BCS affiliated organization advocates for using existing LASD land to house BCS.
One idea is for BCS to be housed on Covington, with or without the elementary school remaining there. Modifications to the Covington site could cost around $30M they say. That would leave $120 M for preparing Egan and Blach for the middle school model (adding sixth graders), and more making many improvements at the neediest k-5 existing schools. It delays the need for a second $200 M bond measure for a nice long time.
Another idea is for BCS to be housed on Egan. Advocates claim fixing up Egan for BCS would cost as little as $30M. Of course, this plan actually requires Egan to move to the ‘shiny, new’ $100M school at the Kohl site. Thus the total cost is $130 million leaving a $20 M for needs at existing schools. MV Councilperson Margaret Abe Koge sparked this interesting Egan in MV idea.
Peering into the Future – 5 years
Will the District get the Kohls 10th site land deal done? The 7 TDR sale contracts with developers need to close by February 2019. Tha means the eminent domain costs of terminating the tenant leases at the Kohls site should be worked out this fall 2018. The District needs to take title to the property no later than when the TDRs expire. Maybe all will be clear by Valentines Day. A school would not open till 2021 at the earliest.
A lot could go wrong. The final costs numbers might not be close to the estimates LosAltosPolitico has developed here with partial sketchy information. My point is the optics are good for the District.
Doug Smith and Tamara Logan were two of several LASD boards members and staff to attend
In the meantime, right now the District and BCS are discussing the renewal of the ‘5-year facilities agreement’…and one would think the negotiation team is also discussing a ‘permanent’ site.
Lalahpolitico supposes BCS is probably demanding to raise the student enrollment cap to 1200 or maybe 1500, up from 900 now. We suppose BCS is continuing to ask for Covington as their exclusively occupied permanent site. That is what they asked for last time…5 years ago.
We suppose Lasd reps, Tamara Logan and Doug Smith – pugnacious former Lasd trustees – are offering BCS 1) go to Mountain View Kohls in 2021 with a 900 cap or 2) stay split on Egan and Blach with a 900 cap permanently if preferred.
You can see the two sides are probably still very far apart. Who will blink first? What are the actual goals of each side? We’ll consider that in a future post.
Sirkay Shali Winter 2018, introducing Affordable Housing advocates to a Downtown Los Altos Vibrancy group steered by downtown real estate interests.
Lasd Board Election news – there will be an election!
It was looking like the Lasd borg candidate slate — incumbents Vladamir Ivanovich and Bryan Johnson, and LAEF endorsed Sirkay Shali — might be unopposed. That would mean no election.
Lalahpolitico is so glad a fire-cracker newcomer to the BCS scene – Ying Liu – will oppose them. She will be an effective voice for the charter, tax payers and all parents who have been disappointed with their overpriced neighborhood public k-8. Don’t we wish all 9 Lasd schools could be a BCS-run branch school instead?
