Editorial
Finally, Edgewood Plaza to get a facelift New grocery store, 10 homes will move into historic Eichler shopping area on Embarcadero Road
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fter more than five years of effort, Edgewood Plaza, the forlorn relic of what once was the vibrant shopping core for hundreds of Eichler homes in Palo Alto, will be redeveloped, a major accomplishment for the neighborhood and the owner, Sand Hill Property Co. It is a welcome outcome for the historic center, built in 1957 by Joseph Eichler and other collaborators near Embarcadero and West Bayshore roads. The original plan included a grocery store, two retail buildings, as well as an office building that housed the office of Eichler Homes in 1959. A gas station was also part of the center and opened in 1957. But while most of the 2,700 Eichler homes built in Palo Alto in the late 1950s are still occupied, including many that have been upgraded, the Edgewood Plaza slowly deteriorated as residents found other shopping venues with more choices. The last active grocery store at Edgewood was Albertsons, which left in 2006. That will change in a dramatic way when the plan authorized by an 8-1 City Council vote Monday begins to take shape. One of the historic retail buildings will be moved and The Fresh Market, owned by a group that specializes in organic food, will occupy the grocery-store space. It hopes to open in 2013, according to the company, and will be the first store west of the Mississippi for the 115-store chain. The other key factors approved in the PC-zoned redevelopment are construction of 10 two-story homes and a small community park. The new homes, designed in the Eichler style, will feature open spaces, natural light and glassy exteriors, similar to the ubiquitous single-story Eichler designs that continue to remain popular with homeowners in the city. Karen Holman was the only council member to vote against approval, saying she was concerned about traffic safety, due to the plaza’s location on a traffic corridor next to Highway 101. Over more than five years in the making, the final plan is the product of numerous public hearings, a lawsuit filed against it by neighbors and many revisions in the design, including a reduction to 10 homes, rather than more than 30 in the original proposal. Neighbors mostly were concerned about traffic impacts and parking. Council members Gred Schmid and Larry Klein echoed some of Holman’s traffic concerns, but ultimately were able to support the project. City staff members said traffic around the plaza will be addressed as work progresses on the city’s Bicycle and Pedestrian Master Plan. For many residents of the Duveneck/St. Francis neighborhood, who frequently drive or walk past the dilapidated structures in the plaza, a makeover will be a welcome sight, as will convenient access to a modern grocery store. “We’ve known this was always going to be a neighborhood shopping center and a neighborhood shopping center means a grocery store,” John Tze of Sand Hill Property told the council. “We’ve known that we’ll need to bring a grocery store, and the grocery store is The Fresh Market,” which should appeal to Palo Altans who frequent farmers markets and have come to expect fresh organic foods to be available in their grocery store. Many supporters of the often-revised plan spoke at the council hearing, including some who had opposed a previous plan and came around to back the final version. Two, Martin Yonke and Diane Sekimura, who were involved in a lawsuit against the project, said they now look forward to seeing the property redeveloped. A key factor in the approval process was noted by Architectural Review Board Chair Judith Wasserman, who said, “It is a very important project ... in that it revitalizes a really dead corner at one of the main entrances to town. It’s a significant project. We felt it was very successful in doing what it intended to do, which was consider the viability of the retail component,” which she said was achieved by relocating one of the buildings. When the city’s Historic Resources Board Chair Martin Bernstein said relocation would not reduce the “Eichler feeling,” or harm the plaza’s historical significance, it meant that all parking in the plaza could be contained in one place, alleviating a major neighborhood concern. In the final analysis, the successful plaza design was able to overcome the historical significance of the site by winning approval from the city’s Planning and Transportation Commission, Historic Resources Board and the Architectural Review Board. Along with the neighborhoods adjacent to the project, we look forward to seeing this once-forlorn site again become a vibrant asset at an important gateway to the city.
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Spectrum Editorials, letters and opinions
Sustainability, not development Editor, With the recent approval of the “Gateway” building on the corner of Lytton and Alma our council has yet again failed to represent Palo Alto residents. The developer got way more than the zoning allowed. Instead of a two-story office building, they got a four-story office building. And by one speaker’s estimation at Monday’s City Council meeting, the extra space is probably worth $30 million to the developer. Nearby residents complained of overflow parking from this monstrosity, while the property owner of the surrounding parcels whole-heartedly endorsed the Gateway plan. Undoubtedly he will soon present his own plans for multiple high-rise, extremely dense developments in keeping with the new land-use pattern that has been established. Meanwhile the real issues of sustainability persist. How many people can live in Palo Alto? How many can work here? What do we want our city to look like in 20 or 50 years? How do we expect our children to live when they are adults? At the rate we are going, there will be no open views, no green spaces, no quiet left. Office canyons and highrise housing complexes will be the norm. Driving and parking will be a nightmare. Schools for your children’s children overcrowded warehouses with no room to play. And the environmental toll is obvious. Wait until the next drought with twice the people in Palo Alto and the same water allocation. Sustainability was supposed to be a goal of the current city council. Yet every decision to make something bigger, higher and denser is anathema to that goal. We live in a world where the existence of limits is more and more apparent, yet our City Council blithely ignores the connection between overintensification of use and diminishing essential resources. Please let council know your vision and next city council election try to find people who support it. Tina Peak Palo Alto Avenue Palo Alto
Prioritize infrastructure Editor, Palo Alto Mayor Yiaway Yeh is obviously a kind and well-meaning man. But like many do-gooders with a cause, he has neglected the first principle of running a business. And make no mistake — running a city is a business. The principle is “Ask the Customer.” The poor response to his mayor’s challenge is easily predictable. Many residents of Palo Alto and neighboring communities have no interest in being more than acquaintances with their neighbors. That is because friendship and association are not based on geographical proximity. They are based
on commonalities, including educational, financial and cultural similarity, shared languages and ethnicities, and psychological compatibility. Of these, only financial similarity has anything to do with the juxtaposition of dwellings in a neighborhood. It alone is not an adequate basis for friendship and social interaction. There is also a larger principle to consider. As many recent letters to the Weekly have pointed out, the principal function of city government is to provide a safe, secure, efficient infrastructure for daily existence. That means fire and police services, emergency medical response, and a clean, well-maintained, and smoothly operating network of streets and utilities. It is not a major responsibility of city government to provide entertainment, education and social welfare. Only when the primary requirements have been satisfied and are operating at a profit can a city afford the luxury of spending time and money on peripheral activities. Palo Alto has a long way to go to satisfy the primary requirements — humdrum though they may seem — of city operations. Morton Grosser Lemon Street Menlo Park
355 Alma Giveaway Editor, The rezoning of 355 Alma to a “planned community” gives the developer millions and millions of dollars of rentable space at the expense of the surrounding neighborhood. It creates huge parking and traffic problems. The developer saves millions by not building adequate parking. This project’s underparking exacerbates the current parking shortage there. To paper over the harm done, there was talk of discounted office space on the street level for a nonprofit. Did the Council favor an agency that helps the disabled, seniors or children? No. The “worthy” organization proposed for this valuable space is (drumroll please) the Chamber of Commerce. The suggestion to reward the Chamber was made by a councilman who reportedly discussed it with them before the council meeting. He did not disclose his discussions and pushed the item to a vote. The conversation was reported in the newspaper days later. Isn’t it improper for council members to have behind-the-scenes discussions in cases like this? Perhaps the city attorney should look into it. Elaine Meyer Kingsley Avenue Palo Alto
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What do you think? What do you think about plans to refurbish Edgewood Plaza? Submit letters to the editor of up to 250 words to letters@paweekly.com. Include your name, address and daytime phone number so we can reach you. We reserve the right to edit contributions for length, objectionable content, libel and factual errors known to us. Anonymous letters will generally not be accepted. You can also participate in our popular interactive online forum, Town Square, at our community website at www.PaloAltoOnline.com. Read blogs, discuss issues, ask questions or express opinions with you neighbors any time, day or night. Submitting a letter to the editor or guest opinion constitutes a granting of permission to the Palo Alto Weekly and Embarcadero Media to also publish it online, including in our online archives and as a post on Town Square. For more information contact Editor Jocelyn Dong or Online Editor Tyler Hanley at editor@paweekly.com or 650-326-8210.