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Water District approves $40 million flood protection project PROJECT INCLUDES CUESTA ANNEX AND MCKELVEY PARK FLOOD BASINS By Daniel DeBolt and Nick Veronin CITY OF MOUNTAIN VIEW
A view of what the southwest corner of Castro Street and El Camino Real could look like under an “emerging” policy in the city’s general plan update that allows buildings up to five stories high on El Camino Real.
City unveils vision for the future TALLER BUILDINGS, MORE HOUSING, BETTER TRANSIT ARE KEY ITEMS IN GENERAL PLAN’S FINAL CUT By Daniel DeBolt
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he residents who filled the City Council chambers Saturday morning for the most part did not oppose plans for taller buildings, better transit and a more “walkable” city as part of a broad vision for Mountain View’s next 20 years. Instead, most wanted to add some details to the vision or express their support for its more contentious aspects, including the possibility of building housing for Google employees in the North Bayshore area.
“The biggest problem in this town is a lack of housing in high-employment areas,” said a resident named Jack. “If you raise the number of housing units in North Bayshore you would substantially improve traffic jams in and out of North Bayshore everyday.” The meeting was part of an ongoing effort to update the city’s general plan, a constitution and development blueprint that will guide the city until 2030. It was last updated in 1992. If all goes according to plan, a draft of the updated plan will be finished by the end of the year.
For those who could not attend the Saturday meeting, a second similar meeting will be held the evening of Thursday, July 29, at the Senior Center, 266 Escuela Avenue. An hour long slide show summarized “emerging goals and policies” after hearing comments from the City Council, various community groups and city commissions over the last year. The focus was on four key areas: San Antonio shopping center, Google’s North Bayshore neighborhood, El Camino Real and East Whisman. Taller buildings that mix
retail on the ground floor with offices or housing above are planned for major intersections along El Camino Real, such as those at Shoreline and Castro streets. Those buildings “might go up to four or five stories,” said Chris Banen, president of MIG, the consultant group hired by the city to help draft the general plan. “We would want to ensure there are sensitive density transitions. We don’t want to densify just for densification’s sake.” Part of the presentation was an overhead sketch of what the See GENERAL PLAN, page 11
Museum adds ‘beautiful’ MacPaint code to collection By Nick Veronin
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eauty and poetry are terms often applied to works of art or literature. However, for computer programmers, those two words can also be used to describe a few lines of great code. Such is the case for the collection of words and numerals which form the underlying structure of MacPaint, the seminal Apple computer illustration program. Released in 1984, MacPaint changed the way people thought about personal computers, according to the president of the Computer History
Museum in Mountain View. That code — all 5,822 lines of it — is now a part of the Computer History Museum’s collection. “We think it’s a really important thing for the museum,” John Hollar, president and CEO of the museum, said of having the code for the program that “caused everyone to re-imagine what a computer could really do.” The code was made available to the public as a free download through the museum’s website on July 20. About 75,000 people downloaded the code in the first 24 hours after it became avail-
able, and 30,000 grabbed the code over the course of the next day, Hollar said. Hollar recalls being astounded, 26 years ago, at the program’s capabilities. The black and white program allowed him to draw lines of varying thickness with a mouse, using the pencil and paintbrush tools; the lasso tool allowed Hollar to select portions of a picture and then fill the selected area with a shade or pattern using the paint bucket tool. Perhaps the most revolutionary, at least in Hollar’s mind, was the ability to save an illustration on
a floppy disk, take that disk to a friend’s house, open it on their Macintosh and continue working on the project. “That was just unheard of,” he said. “But all of a sudden, with MacPaint, there it was. We take that for granted these days. In 1984 that was truly revolutionary.” MacPaint helped establish Apple as the artist’s computer, he added. Up until MacPaint, computers were for crunching numbers, word processing and other tasks centered around proSee MAC PAINT, page 9
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anta Clara Valley Water District board members unanimously approved a sweeping project Thursday designed to protect 2,220 properties in Mountain View from a rare, 100-year flood. Approved as part of the project were two flood basins — supported by the Mountain View City Council — in McKelvey Park and the vacant lot next to Cuesta Park known as the Cuesta Annex. Detailed plans have yet to be approved by the City Council. The project also calls for the construction of new floodwalls to be built along Mountain View segments of Permanente Creek, along with flood protection basins along the creek in Los Altos at Blach middle school and at Rancho San Antonio County Park. The project promises a complete revamp of McKelvey Park. The Water District will pay for a new baseball field, lowered 15 feet so it can double as flood basin. The plan was welcomed by local Little League teams who were promised new bleachers, a new snack shack, artificial turf and improved lighting, among other amenities. There will also be a playground structure in the revamped park, which currently does not have one. The project will protect twothirds of properties at risk in the event of a 100-year flood — which has a 1 percent chance of happening in any given year, said Katherine Oven, deputy operating officer for the district. Numerous property owners will be saved from the expense of See FLOOD, page 8
JULY 30, 2010 ■ MOUNTAIN VIEW VOICE ■
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