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Home Resource Center In the News Home Greenbelt Alliance in the News |
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Greenbelt Alliance In the News
June 6, 2003 Coyote development not forgotten
After challenging plans for development south of San Jose, the Greenbelt Alliance presents its vision for Coyote Valley By Sarah Ruby Pinnacle, Staff WriterRather than sit sulking after being excluded from San Jose's task force on Coyote Valley a year ago, the Greenbelt Alliance has taken advantage of Silicon Valley's lull in industrial development to come up with its own sustainable vision for the area. "San Jose does have a pretty good record, but what they've planned so far looks more like sprawl," said Dan Fahey, communications director for Greenbelt Alliance. "[Mayor Ron Gonzales'] task force is kind of large on the developer side." The 90-page document released Tuesday at a press conference, "Getting It Right: Preventing Sprawl in Coyote Valley," invited more than 100 interested parties to help develop a vision for high-density development that protects natural resources and open space. The report takes for granted that the city of San Jose will develop Coyote Valley's farmland and open space in the next several years and uses the city's own population, job and traffic projections to conceive of a new town where a socioeconomic spectrum of people can live, work, shop and play, all without setting foot inside a car. Sal Yakubu, a principal planner with the City of San Jose who attended Greenbelt Alliance's presentation, thought the ideas were good ones, though he cautioned that hard science has not been done to determine whether the plan is feasible. "From my professional point of view, the discussion today made sense in terms of transit-oriented development," he said. "We can say that we want to preserve agriculture, but somebody has to study it. Development of the Coyote Valley has concerned planners in San Benito and Monterey counties worried about the regional impact on traffic and housing prices. The City of Salinas and the Association of Monterey Bay Area Governments sued over what officials believed was an inadequate environmental impact report. Greenbelt Alliance's presentation was a vision, not a concrete plan. "At some point in time it is likely that development will occur," said Jeremy Madsen, field director at Greenbelt Alliance and coordinator of the project. "We're saying when the situation is right, this is what we think development should look like." Under its general plan San Jose has separated housing and employment in Coyote Valley, designating the northern part for employment and the middle section as housing. The southern portion is supposed to stay as greenbelt between San Jose and Morgan Hill, although ranchettes and small farms already pepper the landscape. Ultimately, the city expects 50,000 jobs in Coyote Valley, 20,000 houses and apartments, 16.7 million square feet of office space and a population of 80,000 - the size of Morgan Hill and Gilroy combined. Morgan Hill Mayor Dennis Kennedy liked the plan, but decried another 80,000 residents in South County. "That's an enormous number," he said. "It would have a tremendous impact in all of South County." The population would be achieved in such a small space by building some high-rise housing projects with densities of as many as 100 units per acre. That number would be balanced by developments with 10 houses per acre. The prospect of large development in Santa Clara County also has Al Martinez concerned for the gasping economies of San Benito and Monterey counties. Martinez is the director of Economic Development Corporation of San Benito County, a private nonprofit that tries to lure businesses to the county. "When I look at growth up north that makes our jobs even harder," he said. "Businesses want to be as close to the action as they can be." Developers eager to build business parks on the land have been temporarily staid by the estimated 30 million square feet of empty office space in Silicon Valley. "We're using the opportunity of this temporary downturn to say, 'Wait a minute, it's not 1965 anymore,'" said Daniel Solomon, an architectural and urban design consultant on the Greenbelt Alliance project. To implement the vision, the city would have to change the zoning and entitlements it has already granted to companies such as Cisco. As it stands, the valley would be built building-by-building unless the city adopts other priorities. The city has said that 5,000 jobs are needed in the Valley in order to begin residential development in the area. Nearly half of those jobs already are filled by the 2,200-worker IBM facility in the northern part of the valley. The development of Coyote Valley was placed on hold when Cisco announced it would scrap plans for a 20,000-job campus at the end of 2001, just after winning a round in court against environmentalists and the southern jurisdictions who took issue with the project's Environmental Impact Statement. Solomon said the city's intention to build offices and industry in one place and homes in another is not only outdated, it's expensive. "Our separation of employer and residential development consigns us to a lot of our day jammed on the highway," he said. "In a transit-rich community, the impact of the automobile on housing costs would be much reduced." The mix of retail, industry, housing and transit would also lower infrastructure costs and allow the area to be flexible in the face of a changing market. "San Jose has had the most punishing experiences because of this monoculture of economy," he said. Greenbelt Alliance's vision for Coyote Valley counts on rapid bus, light rail, Caltrain and even BART to ease San Jose's automobile traffic. The slender 6,800-acre valley lends itself to public transit; under the proposal nobody in urban Coyote Valley would be more than 15 walking minutes from public transportation. The city's task force has just begun the process of surveying the land for endangered species, flood patterns and traffic projections. The yearlong study will be paid for by Coyote Valley industrial landowners, and will establish parameters for coming up with a plan for development. Major landowners in Coyote Valley are Sobrato Development Companies, Gibson Speno Management Company and Divco West Properties, along with a sprinkling of small farmers. City task force member and Morgan Hill resident Russ Danielson had not seen the Greenbelt Alliance study, but he is skeptical of the need to mix industry, retail, agriculture, open space and housing together. He said people should go downtown for recreation and shopping. "It's not a priority of mine that they be mixed together," he said. "It's important that it's a good report that makes sense." For Danielson, developing Coyote Valley is a right of property owners in the area. "Why can't San Jose build when Morgan Hill is building night and day?" he asked. With the pressures to build, Greenbelt Alliance and its partners are trying to make the best of it. "We're using the individual character of the place," said Solomon. "We're not trying to bring Boston to Coyote Valley." ### |
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