The Loma Prietan
October 2002
Fighting Sprawl & Supporting Infill: Hyatt Rickey's Endorsement
by Irvin Dawid and Rafael Reyes
At its August meeting, the Executive Committee took the Chapter into a new and controversial arena as it participated in the
national "Stop Sprawl" campaign. Up to this time, the Chapter has mostly done what is considered fairly safe and non-controversial: We fought to protect open space, opposed bad land-use development proposals, fought bad transportation projects, and supported good transportation projects.
Unfortunately, these efforts do not address some of the root causes of sprawl.
Sprawl can be defined as land-use and transportation patterns that encourage spread-out development, which in turn encourages automobile use by making residences distant from commercial and employment centers. The consequences of sprawl are numerous, including automobile emissions (reducing air quality and promoting climate change), water pollution (due to oil, copper and asbestos from cars), loss of freshwater to runoff (billions of gallons annually), as well as loss of open space and habitat. It also results in reduced quality of life as more time is lost to commuting, and increased costs associated with infrastructure needs. In areas with limited land such as the San Francisco Peninsula, it also leads to increases in housing costs.
Government figures indicate that an estimated 365 acres of forest, farmland and other open space is destroyed by suburban sprawl every hour. The growth rate of cities in California is greater than population growth. In Los Angeles from 1970 to 1990, while population grew by 45%, there was a 200% increase in land used. Locally the situation is little different. In San Jose, 50% of the land is already allocated to roads and parking. Addressing this issue is one of our key regional challenges and opposing sprawl projects such as San Jose's expansion into Coyote Valley is a key part of a successful strategy. But it is not sufficient.
What about Supporting Good Development Proposals?
One of the distinguishing characteristics of the promotion of sprawl in the Bay Area is the dramatic jobs-to-housing imbalance on the Peninsula. In Palo Alto, for example, there are over 2.2 jobs for every resident. This means that, at best, less then half of those employed in Palo Alto can live near their work. In most cases, those who are not near work are forced farther away, increasingly to areas such as south to San Jose (or beyond) or east to Dublin, promoting sprawl.
In an effort to help address this issue, at the July Conservation Committee meeting, the Sustainable Land Use (SLU) Committee asked for endorsement of a mixed-use project in Palo Alto—the redevelopment of the 16-acre Hyatt Rickey's Hotel on El Camino Real in south Palo Alto. The existing 1950s 300-unit hotel property has been proposed to be redeveloped into a 300-unit hotel and 300-unit apartment project. The hotel's neighbors, who contend that the proposal is out-of-scale with their neighborhood and will create traffic nightmares for the area, are fiercely contesting it.
Located at the intersection of Charleston and Arastradero Roads on El Camino Real, the development will provide not only additional housing but 15% of the housing will be below-market rate. That below-market-rate housing will furthermore be secured for at least 59 years—helping ameliorate our housing crisis. It will also be adjacent to a stop on the Line 22 Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) project now in the design phase. BRT is being promoted by the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) as a cost-effective alternative to light rail transit (LRT). Unfortunately, there simply is not enough federal money available to pay for rail proposals throughout the country.
El Camino Real is already served by Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) bus lines 22 and 300. The former serves a 27-mile corridor and has the greatest frequency and ridership of any bus or LRT route—buses run every 10 minutes, carrying over 23,000 riders daily and representing 16% of VTA's total bus ridership. The BRT proposal is intended to turn this corridor into essentially an LRT line on rubber wheels.
With Hyatt Rickey's being located at a stop on both lines 22, 300, and the BRT line currently being planned for the corridor, the Hyatt project is an excellent example of transit-oriented development. In addition, it is also located within a mile of the San Antonio Caltrain station in Mountain View.
As the site is located on a major transit corridor and also approximately one-half mile from the CalTrain station, the project will create transit-oriented infill housing at a density appropriate for this location. The environmental and quality-of-life benefits from such compact, higher density, transit-oriented infill development include saving habitat and open space in the region; reducing greenhouse gas emissions along with air and water pollution related to commute trips; and minimizing the need for costly new infrastructure investments and public safety services.
While some increased local traffic and noise is may arise, it is important to note an important finding from the Environmental Protection Agency, which states that "[R]ecent research indicates that location of development within a metropolitan region is a significant factor in determining the vehicle travel and emissions generated by the development," (Our Built and Natural Environments: A Technical Review of the Interactions between Land Use, Transportation, and Environmental Quality, January 2001, p. 46).
The EPA notes that, despite some potential increases in localized congestion, evidence strongly supports the fact that compact, higher density infill development minimizes negative traffic and air quality impacts compared to typical lower density suburban sprawl development. They conclude that compact infill development—especially when it offers transit accessibility—significantly reduces average daily car trips, length of car trips, vehicle miles traveled, and harmful auto emissions in a metropolitan region.
Due to these benefits, the Chapter supported the project. However, the scrutiny did not stop there. Upon further examination of the Draft Environmental Impact Report, it was brought to the Committee's attention that total tree removal could amount to 158 trees, or a 50% loss of existing trees. The Committee decided to further study the situation. On August 19, a group of Executive and Conservation Committee members, joined by neighbors (and Sierra Club members as well) were given an exclusive tour of the hotel grounds by Dave Dockter, the city's arborist. As a result of that tour, and a meeting with the developer that followed, a resolution was painstakingly drafted that established expectations for saving the site's protected and designated trees.
Undoubtedly there will be some Club members who are unhappy with the Chapter's decision to support this project. However, just as with transportation projects, it is essential to support good proposals as well as opposing bad ones. If the residential developments are not placed within the
urban core, near transit, then they will continue to be placed far from employment
centers, requiring long commutes, and we know what that means all too well: sprawl.
For more information, see the Club's "Stop Sprawl" website: www.sierraclub.org/sprawl. Or visit the FTA website on BRT: www.fta.dot.gov/brt/. Or the VTA website on the BRT project on El Camino Real: www.vta.org/projects/line22brt.html.