Officials and Public Discuss How a Downtown Office Building Might Inject Vitality

It’s no secret downtown Los Altos needs a pick-me-up. 

Office buildings, three stories high, with multi-level underground parking totaling the size of 200,000 square feet on the city-owned South Plaza parking lots could help a lot, said Los Altos city officials.

The joint meeting between the City Council, planning commission and traffic commission Tuesday night discussed what Mayor Pro Tem Val Carpenter described as the most aggressive approach to attract business downtown.

Office buildings, when full, mean feet on the street throughout the day.

A projected 800 new weekday employees working in these new buildings, said Anne Stedler, Los Altos economic development manager, could bring a two-fold increase in retail and restaurant revenues.

“These would be people with good incomes, who would be here for breakfast, lunch and dinner,” Carpenter said of  the weekday employees. “These people could be here shopping and doing their errands here.”

The South Plaza parking property, bound by Plaza South to the northwest, South San Antonio Road to the east and First Street to the southwest, is but one area targeted for redevelopment.

It is part of a larger Downtown Los Altos Public Parking Plazas Opportunity Study, which the city completed in 2009 in an effort to revitalize downtown.

With an increased number of workers and customers downtown comes more car traffic, officials at the meeting said. The intersections at San Antonio Road and First Street and at San Antonio and Foothill Expressway would have more congestion, but traffic would be acceptable, Dennis Belluomini, an independent traffic consultant said.

Discussion remained open to whether South Plaza parking should become primarily offices or whether it should include residential and retail space as well.

“We need family-friendly commercial retail business,” , co-owner of , said. She wanted to see fewer banks and commercial buildings.

“I would personally would like to see a mix of retail, commercial and residential,” City Councilman David Casas said.

Underground parking was not the most appealing aspect of the proposed redevelopment plans. “I think it would be hard for the community of Los Altos to accept underground parking,” Jeannie Bruins, Los Altos planning commissioner, said. Most people do not like to park one or two floors underground, she said.

Traffic commissioner Mike Gallagher said he likes to park next to the sidewalk close to where he's going. Others from the meeting agreed.

But people will have to make sacrifices if they want a higher-density crowd downtown, Kenneth Lorell, another planning commissioner, said. “You can’t have it both ways. You can’t have acres to park like Disneyland and have a lot of buildings downtown,” he said. “I like to park right in front of the building and do what I want to do, but you know what? That’s not going to happen anymore. Los Altos is going to change.”

From 1995 to 2007, Los Altos retail sales tax gained only $81,500, while Los Gatos gained $767,000, according to the Downtown Opportunity Study. “Compared to Los Gatos downtown,” Stedler said, “we’re not simply lagging; we are lifeless.”

No one knows exactly when the city would begin to break ground on South Plaza Parking lots. Mayor Ron Packard said at the meeting he envisions the project could take 10 years to complete. But with the bulk of the environmental study completed, private developers should have an easier time obtaining financing to invest in the project, Packard said.

The public comment period is open through April 11, and the draft studies for the South Plaza parking lots are found on the Los Altos City website. The draft environmental impact report is provided above.