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Mountain View’s Environmental Planning Commission voted in support of Google’s massive North Bayshore development, despite concerns about the tech company’s recent decision to reduce the amount of affordable housing coming out of the project.
Google’s North Bayshore Master Plan came before the commission on May 3 after years in the making. The project would transform Mountain View’s North Bayshore area, which is home to Google’s headquarters, adding millions of square feet in office space, 7,000 new residential units, ground floor retail and park space. The plan is expected to take 30 years to fully come to fruition.
“Tonight we have the opportunity to take the next step toward delivering on the city’s vision of transforming North Bayshore from a car-centric, suburban office park into three complete, vibrant, mixed-use neighborhoods, and to enable much-needed housing,” said Michael Tymoff, Google’s director of district development for Mountain View, as he addressed the EPC on Wednesday night.
Building 7,000 new homes will undoubtedly come with a commensurate rise in the city’s population, which is already leading to tension between the city and local school districts about where all the new students will go – and debate around what Google owes to the community it calls home.
But the EPC’s discussion at the May 3 meeting centered around another aspect of Google’s obligations to Mountain View: The amount of affordable housing that the North Bayshore Master Plan will bring online.
In every iteration of the Master Plan released between September 2021 and December 2022, the tech company said it intended to make 20% of the 7,000 units affordable – 15% through a land dedication to the city, and the remaining 5% as affordable units, referred to as inclusionary, dispersed throughout the market-rate buildings, amounting to 1,050 units on the dedicated land and 350 inclusionary homes.
But in the final version released last month, Google decided to cut the 350 inclusionary units out of the project. Until Wednesday’s meeting, the company remained tight-lipped about its reasons for doing so, telling the Voice that the change was due to the current environment, without offering further elaboration.
At the May 3 meeting, Tymoff offered the community some additional insight as to why the cuts happened. He also emphasized that, despite the 350 units being removed from project plans, the Master Plan still complies with the city’s minimum affordable housing requirements.
“This effectively is an economic equation where you have total project revenues and total project cost,” Tymoff said. “At the end of the day we need to look at what allows market-rate residential to move forward for developers to go to the capital markets and have a feasible plan. So at this point, we feel like we’re at the limit of overall economic feasibility.”
The changes raised concerns for some commissioners, who pointed out that removing the 350 affordable units represents a major drop in the total value of public benefits that Google’s project brings to the city.
“I know that sometimes you give things up,” said Board Chair Joyce Yin. “This is not a perfect plan. By no means do I expect that we get 100% of everything that we were wanting. But I think the loss is great enough for me to pause, at least.”
Commissioners also took issue with the fact that none of the project’s affordable units will be inclusionary: with the removal of the 350 units, Google’s affordable housing contribution comes entirely in the form of land dedication to the city. That means that, once fully built out, the affordable homes will be on separate parcels from the market-rate homes.
“From a racial diversity perspective, if not an economic and class perspective, what that feels like is isolation,” said Commissioner Alex Nunez. “It’s putting people of a lower economic status or race somewhere else, instead of really going for that inclusionary value.”
Once Google dedicates the land to the city, Mountain View becomes responsible for partnering with an affordable housing developer – and finding the funding – to get the units built, something that commissioners pointed out is no easy feat.
Commissioner Bill Cranston worried that affordable housing projects in North Bayshore might have a hard time securing grant funding, given that some of the sites are far from public transit and other amenities.
“It is pretty well understood within the below market rate housing community that things like distance from services, distance from transit, are a part of making a project viable in order to secure funding,” Cranston said, adding that he’s not confident that any of affordable units would realistically come to fruition in the next housing element cycle.
From commissioner Jose Gutierrez’s perspective, Google’s removal of the inclusionary units feels like a bait and switch for some in the community.
“It’s very hurtful for members of the community who were at these meetings throughout the years and promised affordable housing such as this,” he told the Voice in an interview. “To then go back on this promise feels very disingenuous. I know that may not be their intention, because who wants to do that intentionally? But this is a byproduct of their decision.”
All the planning commissioners generally agreed that the reduction in affordable units was a loss for the community, but both city staff and some commissioners pointed out that Google was under no legal obligation to deliver those extra units.
“This project has gone above and beyond its requirement,” said Aarti Shrivastava, assistant city manager and community development director. “I think Google feels the loss of the (350 units), if you ask me. I’ve had many conversations, and they hated having to do that. … But I’ve had some honest conversations, they feel like this is the only way they can actually move ahead with the plan.”
Commissioner Chris Clark echoed this sentiment, arguing that “this product that we have tonight is probably our best chance at seeing North Bayshore actually develop.” Clark made a motion to support the North Bayshore Master Plan, allowing the project to move onto its next stage of review. It will eventually come to the Mountain View City Council for final approval in mid-June.
Nunez also suggested that, as part of the motion, city staff should come up with a rough estimate for the value of the 350 affordable units to the city, so that council members can have that information at their disposal when they make the final call.
Chief Communications Officer Lenka Wright told the Voice that staff is “working on a ballpark range for Council,” adding that because the 350 units were originally proposed for moderate income households, their public benefit value will be less than what a low or very low-income unit would be worth.
Clark’s motion passed 6-1, with Gutierrez as the sole dissenting vote. He told the Voice he couldn’t bring himself to support the motion given the removal of the inclusionary units.
“This moment should have been a moment of celebration for the community to actually have a true partnership with Google on this front with the inclusionary housing,” he said. “And it wasn’t one.”