The Los Gatos Community Alliance (LGCA) has been formed to inform residents and business owners of Los Gatos about what’s going on with developments in the town. We believe that certain members of the council (Pirzinski, McNutt and Rice), the town manager (Larson) and Wendy Roonie embrace development at the expense of the rest of us.
Development in and of itself is not bad. Poorly conceived development without understanding the big picture is what is happening now. You won’t feel the pain for several years, but we don’t want to be sitting on our hands in 2020 and wonder how this all could have happened. With our forthcoming web site, you will be able to see all of the developments going on in the near past and near future.
The LGCA would rather the council embrace that which we are rather than trying to emulate our much larger neighbors to the north. This is a small town, not a big city. We prefer to keep it that way
We’re for smart, thoughtful development that builds on the soul and character of the town. Albright was zoned for no greater than 55’ high buildings with no residential and that’s what we advocate along with no open ended agreement that benefits only the developer. The Albright project combined with the North Forty could add up to 20,000 ADDITIONAL car trips in an area that is less than one mile apart in distance. ADDITIONAL means over and above the traffic already there.
We believe that even installing timed lights will not solve the problem during the rush hour. The on-ramps can only hold so many cars with the lights that are slow allowing cars to merge into traffic on 17 or 85. Have you seen the slow down on southbound 17 already caused by the back-up on 85? Have you come back to Los Gatos with the back up all the way to San Tomas. Add a couple thousand more cars to that and visualize the mess that is coming our way once Albright and the North 40 are developed. The Santana Row mess that San Jose so thoughtlessly put together is coming to Los Gatos.
Ten years from now, remember the names, Joe Pirzinski, Diane McNutt and Steve Rice. For better or worse, they will be the one’s you can look to for all the traffic, the load on the schools and of course, the environmental impact.
How can that be a benefit to the community? More car traffic, longer commutes, more kids in overcrowded schools and impacting the environment of a very unique 14 square miles that we call home.
We want the Council to act more for the citizens of the town than those trying to overbuild the resources we have left. We like Netflix and very few are against the growth of the company, but grow within the bounds as set by the towns own zoning ordinances. The tail should not be wagging the dog.
Netflix is pulling out much of the tax revenues that are the main source of revenue to the town. That division will soon be gone. And the developer will be gone, but the buildings, the traffic, the impact on schools and the environment will linger on for decades.
In today’s paper, there was an editorial by Mike Klaydo, CEO of Brocade who implored the small group of NIMBY’S to allow the 5 story building stating it was good for us to help create jobs, generate tax revenue and protect the environment. The jobs will still happen, the tax revenue just went to San Jose and if a tall building protects the environment, why does San Jose have such huge vacancies in new, tall buildings close to the freeway?
In another article in today’s Merc regarding the Sunnyvale Town and Country Center, senior vice president Michael Hurlston of Broadcom, a company that takes up 8 floors in two buildings next to the site was proud to say that Sunnyvale will ultimately be like San Jose.
We don’t want to be like San Jose. We don’t want to be like Sunnyvale, nor for that matter, even Cupertino. We like our uniqueness. The infrastructure and topography of the town does not support the amount of traffic nor people that the council is currently considering. We’re asking you to grow slow, grow smart. You have one good shot at making the north end of town more like the south end, not a mirror of San Jose.
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