A 777,000-square-foot campus proposed to be built at the corner of Central Expressway and N. Wolfe Road may be one step closer to being approved.
On Aug. 25, the Sunnyvale Planning Commission narrowly approved recommending the project to the city council, which is tentatively scheduled to review the project on Oct. 14.
The 18-acre site would be home to three interconnected office buildings, each four stories tall and built over two stories of parking, as well as a six-story parking building.
The industrial area is currently home to nine one-story buildings that are occupied. The site has been in the same family for three generations. The developer, Landbank Investments, LLC, purchased the land in the mid-1950s.
“My grandfather purchased this land back in the mid-1950s from the Rodriguez family when it was a pear orchard; Central Expressway didn’t exist and Wolfe Road was just a dirt path called Quarry Lane,” Landbank CEO Scott Jacobs said during the Aug. 25 meeting. “Then my dad developed in the 1970s, and he built nine single-story, concrete tilt-up buildings for some of the pioneering technology companies that helped create Silicon Valley.”
But Jacobs said the buildings today are out of date and inefficient, thus in need of being redeveloped.
A sea of asphalt and surface parking, minimal open space, outdated architecture, no amenities, no sidewalks, no bike paths and no real connection to Caltrain, the downtown or the surrounding community were his key examples necessitating the change.
“We set out to re-imagine what a technology campus could be and our philosophy was simple. It was design a campus that will deliver an exciting, enhanced and enjoyable user experience and the users in the this case include the company, its employees, the surrounding community and Mother Nature,” Jacobs said.
The project is aiming for LEED platinum certification and would have no surface parking. The campus would also boast more than 90,000 square feet of rooftop gardens.
Planning commissioners did, however, raise concerns about some crucial effects the project would have on the city.
In the final environmental impact report, it states, “there is no feasible, effective measure to mitigate the significant project impact at the intersection of Commercial Street/Central Expressway.”
But according to city staff, the other benefits of the project outweigh the specific environmental impacts, specifically the intersection at Commercial Street and Central Expressway.
Traffic mitigation efforts were discussed, ranging from shuttles to auxiliary lanes as well as possible subsidized transportation passes for employees. The project anticipates more than 3,000 daily car trips.
During the presentation, developers highlighted the project’s benefits to the city, including new bike paths and sidewalks, two public bus pads, an estimated 1,937 new jobs, $1 million designated for off-site transit improvements, an estimated draw of $4.7 million in annual property tax–up from $285,000–and about $1.9 million annually earmarked for Sunnyvale schools due to the increase in property taxes.
“I was quite impressed with the quality of this development; it looks like it’s going to stand out in the city of Sunnyvale and it’s going to provide a focal point here that I haven’t seen in my short time on the commission,” Commissioner Ralph Durham said during the meeting. “It remains to be seen how the transportation demand management plan will work and how the impacts for traffic will work out. I’m hoping for the best, although I’m not sure they can be fully mitigated even with a vibrant TDM plan.”
The final vote was 3-1, with Vice Chair Ken Olevson dissenting and commissioners Sue Harrison, David Simons, and Larry Klein absent.
For more information about the project, visit centralandwolfe.com.
