2013 site sketches show neighbor-friendly plans
Some early approaches after the 2012 bond plan was aborted, focus on replacing only the deteriorating Hillview Center and did NOT include the pool. Several layouts did NOT impact the existing fields, which could stay open for their sports activities uninterrupted.
In 2013, the then city council, having just abandoned a $85 M bond for Phase I of Master Plan 2009, was thinking small is beautiful. You can see that neighbors are not made worse off by replacing Hillview where it is now.
Resource: Results of the Godbe survey presented to council April 10, 2012. …
http://los-altos.granicus.com/MetaViewer.php?view_id=4&clip_id=473&meta_id=42065
The Right Way to Treat the Neighbors
The original 2009 Master Plan was at least two years in the making as a group of 30 or so volunteers assembled the “needs and desires” of recreation department users and also conferred with immediate neighbors to mitigate all their concerns. If you think about it, civic center “improvements” might improve the neighbors’ property values or they might decrease property values. Improvements might increase or decrease neighbors’ enjoyment of their property.
If I lived contiguous to the 18 acres and downtown, I’d feel that “things should stay pretty much the way they are now.” Unless of course they got BETTER for ME.
There has been a decades long social contract that this town exists to suppress growth. Lalahpolitico has come to realize that this means the City should suppress its own growth most of the time. For better or worse, we are a semi-rural, residentially dominated community and prefer to attract new residents who buy into this set of values. We are not Mountain View or Palo Alto and will not have their numerous apartments, condos, offices, economic diversity NOR their community, theatre and library facilities. At least not for a few more decades until the MTA (Metropolitan Transportation Authority) in Oakland and ABAG (Association of Bay Area Governments), staff-driven, non-elected agencies, get considerably more POWER to effect their regional plan – greater density and infill in the suburbs. You can guess how those new arrivals will vote. So for now, let’s keep our Civic Center improvements small and inexpensive. Let the Civic Center neighbors enjoy their R-10 single-family houses.
To summarize, although the immediate neighbors of the civic center probably number maybe 30 households with maybe 500 more neighbors within a half-mile, that does not mean a majority of us should dish out losses of property enjoyment or losses of property value to the minority. These folks are NOT selfish. Who is being selfish?
Other Resources:
Below are some of the early site plans for Measure A that were tossed around a year ago … https://losaltospolitico.com/2015/01/los-altos-civic-center-architects-update/
But here is a link to the final non-plan preferred by city council as of March 24, 2015 ABA presentation. http://los-altos.granicus.com/MetaViewer.php?view_id=4&clip_id=918&meta_id=41628
