Stanford University

News Service


NEWS RELEASE

11/15/99

James Robinson, News Service (650) 723-5675; e-mail: jamesrob@stanford.edu

Stanford submits revised 10-year development plan

Stanford University today submitted to county officials an extensively revised 10-year development plan providing for vitally needed campus facilities and incorporating many suggestions made by the public in recent weeks.

Like the Sept. 20 draft, the plan proposes significant new campus housing and allows for moderate growth in academic facilities. But the plan submitted today also for the first time establishes an Academic Growth Boundary patterned after the Urban Growth Boundary provisions in Santa Clara County's General Plan. In addition, the revised plan creates new designations to describe and establish current and intended land uses in different areas of the campus. Among these designations are campus residential/low-density and campus residential/moderate density.

Separately, university officials said they have identified two sites that could be suitable for a middle school. The Palo Alto Unified School District has requested a 25-acre middle school site on Stanford land.

In a letter that accompanies the submission of the land use plan, President Gerhard Casper said it "incorporates many recommendations and suggestions made by community members."

"The resulting plan will permit Stanford to remain competitive with universities of the highest quality the world over in teaching, learning and the search for new knowledge. To address a critical local need, our proposal provides new housing for our faculty, students and staff."

The plan includes a five-page, 33-point table summarizing the university's responses to the points made by county officials following the initial draft.

"No other university in California has a plan this comprehensive and detailed," said Larry Horton, director of government and community relations.

"The Stanford team worked extensively with county staff in preparing the revised draft plan," he said, adding that the plan takes into account the many comments made by members of the public in writing and at 10 recent public hearings. "The revised plan retains the positive features of the first draft, such as the provision of much new housing and concentration of development to preserve open space, and it adds major new provisions in response to public comment."

The revised plan:

• Creates new land use designations for the faculty/staff residential area to be supplemented by new zoning, responding to issues raised by many campus homeowners.

• Provides much new campus housing for students, faculty and staff to respond to the regional housing shortage. There would be 2,000 new units for single students ­ 1,900 of them for graduate students; 350 apartments for hospital residents and post-graduate fellows; and between 313 and 687 new housing units for faculty and staff. The range is necessary because Stanford cannot yet determine the appropriate and desirable mix of different housing types ­ for example, single family homes or townhomes ­ for certain designated sites. The determination will be made after discussions with campus residents and faculty members.

• Creates a new designation of Campus Open Space in the academic area that provides protection for certain popular open areas in the core campus -- including the Oval, the Arboretum and Lake Lagunita.

• Sets aside 18.4 acres of land in the faculty/staff residential area for parks and open space, an amount higher than the maximum five acres per 1,000 population standard that can be required under state law.

• Establishes a restrictive new Academic Growth Boundary, which was recommended by the city of Palo Alto, the Santa Clara County Planning Commission and others.

• Focuses all requested development for the next 10 years into the core campus area inside the Academic Growth Boundary. No construction is requested outside the boundary, which roughly encompasses Stanford lands lying between Sand Hill Road, El Camino Real, Stanford Avenue and Junipero Serra Boulevard, and includes some already developed areas with existing homes, the golf course and the area near the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. Like an Urban Growth Boundary, the Academic Growth Boundary would be initially reviewed five years after adoption and then be subject to a comprehensive review 10 years after adoption for possible adjustments.

In a letter to the Santa Clara County Planning Office, Horton identified two possible sites for a future Palo Alto middle school: on the southwest corner of Page Mill Road and Junipero Serra Boulevard, and on Deer Creek Road between Page Mill Road and Arastradero Road.

"The school district has expressed a preference for a site within the core campus, north of Junipero Serra Boulevard, but we are unable to identify a suitable site in the core campus," Horton said in the letter.

"The County Planning Commission's direction that future Stanford educational facilities and housing be concentrated in the core campus, the limited space in that area, and Stanford's own current and future programmatic needs make it infeasible to locate a new middle school in the core campus."

"We are proud of the revised plan. We think this one serves Stanford and our neighbors well," Horton said.

 

Community members available for comment on Stanford's proposals:

Steve Aronowitz, chair, Stanford Undergraduate Senate, 281-1065.

Dan DeYoung, former president, Stanford Campus Residential Leaseholders, 327-1938

Roger and Joan Holland, Palo Alto residents, 326-3169

Linda Mandolini, director, Transportation and Land Use, Silicon Valley Manufacturing Group, 408-501-7851

Kathleen Much, Menlo Park resident, 321-2052

Franklin Orr, dean, Stanford School of Earth Sciences and chair, Stanford Task Force on Housing Affordability, 723-2750

Sally Probst, president, Palo Alto League of Women Voters, 327-9116

Bob Rosenzweig, president emeritus, Association of American Universities, 323-3541

Chris Stromberg, Stanford graduate student, 497-7845 (h), 723-9862 (o)

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