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University and Palo Alto officials gathered at City Hall June 11 to announce a plan designed to address Palo Alto's pressing needs for more playing fields and housing units. President John Hennessy and Palo Alto's Vice Mayor Bern Beecham announced an offer made by the university to lease to the city a 6-acre property at the corner of El Camino Real and Page Mill Road. The land would be used to build community soccer fields. "We have structured this arrangement as a collaborative venture that we believe will be beneficial to both sides," Hennessy said. "As Stanford's 10th president, a former Palo Alto resident and a dad of two former Palo Alto soccer players, I'm happy to be able to present this revised Mayfield agreement to the city of Palo Alto for its consideration." The offer revises a previous agreement reached in 2000 that offered the Mayfield property to Palo Alto to relocate the Jewish Community Center (JCC), which was losing its home at the old Terman Middle School. While the agreement was under discussion, the JCC purchased a property on San Antonio Road. The Palo Alto City Council's Stanford Liaison Committee, which included Beecham and council members Yoriko Kishimoto and Vic Ojakian, had asked the university to consider revising its offer in order to address the need for more athletic fields and housing. "Today's offer is basically revised to address the new priorities that the city now faces, both the housing and recreational fields for youth and, of course, for adults," said Isaac Stein, chair of the Board of Trustees. "I can say with even more confidence what I said two-and-a-half years ago: I look forward to more such collaborations between Stanford and the city of Palo Alto and hope we can build on this success to do more things together." Pending the city's approval, Stanford would lease the Mayfield site to Palo Alto for 51 years, at $1 per year, and construct for the community an athletic fields complex on the site. The complex would include two lighted competition soccer fields, a practice field, restrooms and a storage facility, plus parking and landscaping. Once constructed, the complex would be turned over to the city. In exchange for providing the Mayfield site and building the complex, Stanford would receive the right to construct 100,000 square feet of commercial development within the South Research Park. Stanford also guarantees the construction of 250 units of housing, including an estimated 50 below-market-rate units, on currently developed commercial property once those leases expire, beginning in 2013. The housing would be located along El Camino Real and California Avenue. In exchange for building the housing, Stanford can build no more than 200,000 square feet of the total 300,000 square feet of the displaced commercial development in the South Research Park. "This is a win-win for all of us," Beecham said. "This proposal is going to wind up to the benefit of our children's children and with good fortune to their children."
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Stanford Report, June 18, 2003
