Los Gatos Weekly-Times

Editorial

Change in direction frustrates developer

When an exasperated William Hirschman told planning commissioners last week that he was getting "lousy direction" from the town, he wasn't exaggerating.

Hirschman is the president of Maxim Investments, and he was justifiably frustrated because when he first proposed building some 30 homes on the four-acre site at 330 University Ave., what he heard from the town was that even more homes would be desirable.

Now the commission is telling him to scale back dramatically.

While we agree completely with the commission's position that 30 homes is far too many for that location, we also sympathize with the developer; he has been getting mixed signals.

What happened in between the time the town was enthusing over high-density infill and now?

As a very early step leading up to a general plan revision, the Town Council appointed some 30 citizens to the General Plan Task Force to assess community attitudes about a number of issues, particularly growth.

Although the survey techniques employed by the task force were informal, the results were too dramatic for town officials to ignore. Los Gatans clearly are not enthusiastic about growth--especially when it involves high density.

The town's recent enthusiasm for high density came about in part because of a concern that the high cost of housing was changing the character of the community by making it impossible for many who work in Los Gatos to reside in the community.

Furthermore, the town agreed to consider more high density in order to have the state-mandated housing element of its general plan approved.

We agree that high housing costs are a legitimate concern. Without more moderately priced housing, Los Gatos will cease to be an economically diverse community, and that will change the town's character for the worse.

That's why we hope the revised general plan will reflect that medium- and even some high-density housing is appropriate in some locations.

While there is some anti-growth sentiment in Los Gatos, we think a turn toward no-growth would be unhealthy. Better to revise the general plan so that growth takes place where it makes sense.

Maxim's 30 homes on four acres, for instance, make much more sense as part of the mixed-use planning on Los Gatos Boulevard than on University Avenue.

The traffic consultant hired by the developer insists that any potential traffic problems on University Avenue can be satisfactorily mitigated. We submit , however, that anyone who thinks 30 additional houses in that location won't lead to a traffic nightmare once Old Town is complete must not remember the steady stream of traffic that used to flow down University Avenue in Old Town's heyday.

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