Stanford wins plaudits for Escondido Village housing proposal

How will the net new 2000 units of housing affect our public school enrollment? Will this be housing for singles or for families? Nixon and Escondido elementary schools are already more than full.

Kudos to Stanford for building much-needed housing. Although it's not in Palo Alto, this will help address our housing shortage and reduce traffic from student commuters. Previous articles mentioned that these beds are for single students, which means that this will not even have much impact on our schools. Housing for singles is in very short supply in this area in any case, as the zoning code strongly discourages all homes that are not single family homes.

Commissioner Downing makes sensible points as usual.

Let's get this through the County Planning Commission next.

I lived in one of the existing "high rise" buildings in Escondido Village in the 1970s as a grad student, and it was great. This is much needed. The one thing I don't understand is why the need for a new grocery store, when one is under construction nearby on El Camino. Surely the Escondido residents can walk or bike the few short blocks. Competition is great, but I fear the new El Camino store is going to have enough problems as it is without new competition.

Evergreen Park needs resident parking permits well before this project goes in - we have all day and overnight parking in the residential section (not near Cal Ave) already. A lot of Stanford parking for free and then walking across the street. Council should have this development pay for the parking program similar to what happeneed in College Terrace

My understanding is that Stanford will increase housing units for single students in part by reducing housing for students with families. This should actually decrease the impact on PAUSD.

This article is missing a lot of information that would fully describe the impact of this project on the surrounding community. Once again, our planning commission is supporting developers instead of rigorously analyzing the true impact and making some effort to mitigating that impact.

The missing number here is how many new grad students is Stanford planning to accept and how many new employees will be needed to service the buildings, work in the grocery store and manage the car rentals, etc. The parking is barely adequate if it reflects relocating existing students. If they increase the overall population of grad students by 200, then .61x200 is still 120 new cars. If there are 100 new employees, what is the impact on parking?

Does Stanford have any idea how many grad students still own cars but park them off campus in nearby neighborhoods or on El Camino next to campus? That stretch of El Camino is always full of cars, including at night. I think this is a very good indication that Stanford is not providing enough parking.

And is there some requirement that the grad students can't be married (usually sharing a bed)? Referring to stats per bed is sophistry, avoiding the prediction of actual number people. Is Stanford asserting that the number of married students with children will go down? Is Stanford asserting that there will be no other increase in graduate students in general? Are all these new units truly studios and one bedroom, restricted to only one student each? I doubt it very much.

The one hint that all is not so rosy, is that the project is expected to add 200 car trips during commute hours. What is generating that? And what plan is in place to measure that number after the fact, and have other mitigations available if the number exceeds that number, as Menlo Park did with Facebook?

The facts are that Stanford is increasing the number of students living on campus by 1,400 plus assorted significant others and children and increasing the total number of grad students by an unknown number and the total number of employees by an unknown number. I would assume that married students and children would replace single students in housing now used by both.

The article is also silent on the number of new employees needed who will take care of the buildings, work in the grocery store and rent the cars. Where will they park? Oh right, they will all use zipcars. I don't think so.

I am not against this project. I think it is very much needed. However, I am very against the uncritical analysis of Stanford's proposal. There is nothing in this article that indicates that Stanford is fully mitigating the impacts of the new proposal. I would like to see some extra support for schools (perhaps in lieu of property tax fees for any increase in students from Stanford attending PAUSD?) and a larger parking garage.

It also isn't clear that for single graduate students the price would be less than renting a house even today. I saw an ad for a 3 bedroom house for rent for $5000 per month. Is the student housing really going to cost less than $1,600 per unit?

@Marie - They aren't planning on adding grad students, they will just be able to house more of them on campus. Per Stanford, the new building will house primarily single student or couple without children. Stanford grad housing is divided up in that basis, single, couples without children, and families with children. The current cost for housing is
here: Web Link

1. From grad students, I have heard that Stanford charges slightly higher than market rates for on-campus graduate student housing. While the housing is convenient and new, it's unlikely to provide or free up "affordable" housing. And it will surely add children to our schools.... who, if they are young and don't attend the already packed Nixon or Escondido, will have to be driven across El Camino to get to another school...in any case, someone will be driving a child somewhere, adding to the traffic.

2. Does housing provided by Stanford count towards decreasing Palo Alto's more than 3-to-1 jobs-to-housing ratio? Or, because it's controlled by agreement with the County, is this not applicable? Would building these units satisfy the housing mandate? It's a lot of units.

3. And, yes, Evergreen Park and Southgate both need to stop their neighborhoods from being used as parking lots. City-wide, as more commuters drive to work here, more neighborhoods are affected. Regardless of what Stanford builds, this problem is present and worsening.

4. To those who think that single occupancy vehicle trips can be reduced with transit programs and any of the growth scenarios envisioned for the upcoming comprehensive plan 2030, please look to the traffic consultant's conclusion: SIGNIFICANT AND UNAVOIDABLE increase in traffic for ALL FOUR COMP PLAN SCENARIOS.

Web Link

Be Positive said:

"They (Stanford) aren't planning on adding grad students"

Can you provide any proof of this contention? Would Stanford be willing to sign a contract which guaranteed no new grad students? Otherwise Stanford could change its "plans" at any time, right?

People need to realize, there are two Stanfords. One is the academic institution we all know, and the other is Stanford Land Management. Stanford Land Management is just another sleazy real-estate developer full of people eager to liquidate the quality of life in Palo Alto, for fun and profit, while building a career for themselves in real-estate development.

When is Stanford (the academic institution) going to realize that Stanford Land Management is undermining the "Stanford" brand, with all of their poorly planned, tacky real-estate projects?

"They (Stanford) aren't planning on adding grad students"

It's the course of least exertion. Stanford does not to plan for more grad students, but it does not turn away additional grad students either. Heads, they win; tails, we lose.

Thank you Cheryl Lilienstein for the link about unavoidable impacts. Do you have the link for the entire report?

Thanks BePositive for your link on the cost of housing. It looks like the cost of Stanford oncampus housing is slightly under current PA rents, if you don't count the additional charge for parking, assuming you need it.

The proposed housing is very needed. However, I also think there needs to be more effort made by the city of Palo Alto to require or encourage (whatever is legal) Stanford to mitigate the impact of this housing, and increasing numbers of Stanford graduate students in general on PA schools, streets and road, and other governmental services provided by the City of Palo Alto to Stanford. Maybe they are. This was not reflected in this article.

It is not a matter of whether Stanford is planning for more graduate students. Rather, the question is what they are forecasting. I don't believe the EIR requires Stanford to provide that information, but I really think the PAUSD needs it. For example, Stanford just completed a new Neuroscience Building and added several new programs - all of which is good. I think it highly unlikely, this new program will not result in an increased number of graduate and post-graduate students to participate in the new programs.

The forecasts for students by PAUSD seem very inadequate as I don't think they include the full impact of the latest proposed Stanford housing project and the one on California Ave., increasing numbers of graduate students and post-docs or the potential impact of the ABAG housing allotment. Are we certain that moving single and coupled students to this project will not open up other space for students with children?

Please don't mislead us.

Most grad students in business or computer science have/want/seek jobs and internships while in school. Many have 3-8 years of work experience so are older and used to living independently. It is great that the university is doing what it can to mitigate the impact but I find it hard to believe that they won't have cars given that profile.