Upfront
Local news, information and analysis
Edgewood Plaza rebirth could be delayed City considers requiring more environmental study, new ‘benefits’ from developer after historic building is razed by Gennady Sheyner t took years of neighborhood meetings, litigation, zoning hearings and squabbles over the meaning of “historical” before the developer Sand Hill Property Company finally received a green light to redevelop the dilapidated Edgewood Plaza in Palo Alto’s Du-
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veneck/St. Francis neighborhood. It took far less time for Sand Hill to demolish, without the city’s permission, a building deemed to be historical and fling the longawaited project back into planning purgatory. On Monday, the City Council will
discuss for the first time Sand Hill’s surprising decision to demolish a retail structure at Edgewood Plaza and consider the next steps Sand Hill should take before it can proceed with the project. Built in the late 1950s, the plaza is a rare example of a commercial center constructed by the famed developer Joseph Eichler, whose signature style featured floor-toceiling windows, sliding doors and post-and-beam construction. Over
the years, however, the plaza has gradually deteriorated. The building that once housed Lucky’s Supermarket (later Albertsons) has been vacant for the last six years, and plans to build more than 20 houses on the site have been frozen because of community opposition. The project finally made a breakthrough last year, when the city approved a compromise plan that would allow Sand Hill to build 10 homes, rehabilitate an existing
building and repair the grocery store, which is now slated to be occupied by Fresh Market. Another building that was deemed historical because of the Eichler connection was supposed to be disassembled, relocated and rehabilitated. Instead, Sand Hill demolished it, claiming its condition was beyond repair. The company’s historic consultant, Page & Turnbull, explained the (continued on page 8)
EDUCATION
School district critics, lawyer clash on federal probe Office for Civil Rights investigation was ‘collaborative, fruitful’ process, lawyer says by Chris Kenrick
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Andre Zandona
Palo Alto Mayor Greg Scharff talks about the City Council’s 2013 priorities and the city’s recent accomplishments in his “State of the City” speech at Tesla Motors headquarters on Feb. 27.
CITY HALL
Scharff lays out bold plans in ‘State of the City’ Palo Alto mayor focuses on downtown improvements, technological advances in speech at Tesla Motors
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alling Palo Alto a place where the “future continues to be invented,” Mayor Greg Scharff rolled out on Wednesday night a broad and ambitious agenda for the coming year, including plans to bring wireless Internet service to local parks, add parking garages to downtown and institute smoking restrictions in open-space preserves. In a “State of the City” speech presented at the headquarters of Tesla Motors, Scharff recapped the city’s recent accomplishments, detailed the city’s official 2013 priorities and made a few
by Gennady Sheyner proposals of his own, including requiring developers to pitch in more funds for public art and reviving the city’s recently stalled effort to bring ultra-high-speed Internet to the masses. Calling the coming year “Lucky ‘13” and referring to it as the “Year of the Future,” Scharff told the assembled crowd of about 100 that they have much to be proud of and look forward to. Palo Alto, he said, is “the birthplace, the creative center, the heart, the essence of Silicon Valley.” “The ideas that change the world start here,” Scharff said. “In a garage, or in a coffee house,
in our homes, or offices, the future continues to be invented here in Palo Alto.” While his speech celebrated many of the city’s recent achievements, it also offered a host of new proposals for the City Council to debate in the coming year. Among the new ideas are Scharff’s proposal to expand the city’s existing “One Percent for Art” program — which requires developers to allot 1 percent of a project’s construction budget for acquiring public art — to encompass private as well as public cap(continued on page 12)
lawyer for the Palo Alto Unified School District and critics of Superintendent Kevin Skelly presented clashing perspectives Tuesday, Feb. 26, on a recent probe by a federal agency of a Palo Alto middle-school bullying case. Lawyer Laurie Reynolds characterized the investigation by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) as a “very productive, collaborative fruitful process,” ending with an agreement by the district to revise its bullying policies. “What it isn’t is adversarial — not a court proceeding, not punitive,” said Reynolds, who is based in the Oakland office of the firm Fagen Friedman & Fulfrost. But representatives of the parent group We Can Do Better Palo Alto disputed Reynolds’ description, charging that Skelly’s failure to take advantage of “early complaint resolution” procedures offered by Office for Civil Rights led to Palo Alto being among just 1 percent of the 1,513 recipients of disability harassment complaints between 2009 and 2012 to end with “letters of finding” by the Office for Civil Rights. Critic Ken Dauber, who ran unsuccessfully last November for a seat on the board, also disputed Reynolds’ assertion that the early complaint resolution is available only if the complaining family is willing to pursue it. “There are clear misstatements of the actual situation by Ms. Reynolds,” Dauber said. “Early complaint resolution is in fact available upon request of the school district. ... The idea that this agreement wasn’t punitive is technically true, but it neglects the last paragraph that says if the district fails to comply there will be a sanction.
“It’s simply not true that this is a commonplace event.” Dauber cited a section of the OCR’s Processing Manual that reads, “A complaint may be resolved at any time when, before the conclusion of an investigation, the recipient expresses an interest in resolving the complaint.” Dauber’s group has called for an independent investigation of “what went wrong” in the case, which resulted in findings in December that the district violated a middleschool student’s civil rights by failing to properly and fully investigate persistent complaints of bullying related to the student’s disability. While agreeing that Skelly should have informed them far earlier about details of the investigation, school board members Tuesday did not take up the call for a new probe. “We did have an independent organization do an investigation here. It was the OCR — that was their job,” board member Melissa Baten Caswell said. “There’s been a lot of discussion and work by staff on what went wrong and why we need to do more than we’ve been doing to resolve this kind of situation.” Skelly said he would return to the board March 12 with a draft of a new bullying policy. Staff members assured Caswell the policy would contain clear instructions for parents and children on how to make a bullying complaint, including instructions for anonymous reporting. Board member Barb Mitchell said she had questions about the “legal footing for students and families” raised by what Reynolds described as an Office for Civil Rights defini(continued on page 11)
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