The Sunnyvale Sun
Cover Story
Photograph by Jacqueline Ramseyer
Check In: Whitney McNair (right) and Geoff Bradley (center) owners of Metropolitan Planning Group, meet with a prospective client at their office, which used to be the Greyhound Bus station on W. Evelyn Avenue in Sunnyvale.
Future Planning
Former city planners Ūnd unique office space
By Stephen Baxter and Anne Ward Ernst
Whitney McNair, then Mountain View's planning manager, was driving home to Cupertino when she saw her colleague Geoff Bradley admiring the 1,500-square-foot Greyhound Bus Station in Sunnyvale.
Bradley, whom she hired as a planner in 2006, passed by the 1966 building under the Mathilda Avenue overpass on his daily trek home.
McNair pulled over, and Bradley said he thought the building, framed in walls of glass, would make a great planning office.
Both were ready to strike out on their own and that's exactly what they did, forming Metropolitan Planning Group in 2006.
Closed in 2004, the former bus station exemplifies post-war modern-international architectural style and reminded Bradley of architect Philip Johnson's famed Glass House in New Canaan, Conn.
"I remember thinking it would make a great coffee shop or art gallery," says Bradley.
Bradley's vision to reuse the building also materialized. Light pours onto desks where passengers once waited for buses to pull onto Evelyn Avenue. McNair and Bradley roll out plans on the same counter where people once bought their bus tickets and checked their luggage.
The planning counter takes center stage in the office, just as it did for Bradley in Campbell and McNair in Mountain View.
The company has three planners now, in addition to McNair and Bradley. The firm works on projects ranging from eight new single-family homes behind Kinder Care on S.De Anza Boulevard to the 1.7 million-square-foot Moffett Towers office complex in Sunnyvale.
McNair and her husband, Todd, bought his grandparents' home on Wheaton Drive in 2001. Her husband grew up in San Jose near the Cupertino border, and she is from Dublin, in the East Bay. They have been married for 10 years.
She met her husband while earning a degree in environmental studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara, and earned a master's degree in urban and regional planning from San Jose State University in 1995.
Their daughter Riley, 3, spends her days at Bright Horizons preschool in Cupertino, and their son Parker, 5, started kindergarten at St. Joseph of Cupertino School last fall.
With 12 years of planning experience, McNair has a unique perspective on her own community of Cupertino, where land use and planning have been developing themes in city politics.
"Cupertino is struggling with the fact that there is no downtown, no central street, no central area, so they're looking at ways to create a new mixed-use area. If it's done well, it can be a really great community area," says McNair.
"Mountain View's downtown is a good example of successful mixed-use, with offices, residential and retail in one area. The synergy that it creates spurs all the components," says McNair.
She also cites Sunnyvale's Murphy Street and the Rivermark development in Santa Clara as regional examples of successful mixed-use areas.
Cupertino is in the midst of a North Vallco study project, which involves three public meetings to draw input from stakeholders such as residents and developers so the city can consider more comprehensively what sort of master plan would best serve the community as the North Vallco area changes.
The study encompasses a 240-acre swath of land bordered by Homestead Road, Tantau Avenue, Interstate 280 and Wolfe Road. Apple Inc. recently bought land with office buildings on Pruneridge Avenue, and there is speculation that Hewlett-Packard is planning major renovations on its campus there.
The purpose of the study is to explore ways to create public space in an area that lacks any retail, restaurant or housing space. Mixed-use public spaces are the future of urban design, says Michael Freedman of Freedman, Tung and Bottomley, which is facilitating the North Vallco study for the city.
"It enlivens that area 24 hours a day," says McNair. "As a planner, I think that if it's done well, it's a place people are going to love to go, rather than driving to work and driving home. It has to be done nicely because Cupertino is struggling with how to add housing in an appropriate way."
An apartment complex with retail space in front near McNair's home, at N. Blaney Avenue and Stevens Creek Boulevard, is an example of how well it can be done, she says.
McNair and Bradley have received numerous awards for their work. Metropolitan Planning Group offers assistance in urban design, policy planning, transit-oriented development, development review and entitlement services, and is working with seven cities and eight private clients.
McNair's strength is building consensus among groups. The firm uses its public and professional experience to understand differing perspectives. Bradley says cities are often focused on how a community may benefit from a project and the development process can take months. However, the developer also needs to make the project financially feasible, and timing is often crucial.
"This is a pretty unique business model," McNair says, noting that many planning firms have a narrower focus.
Even though the two partners have gone from government employees to entrepreneurs, one thing has remained the same: They work as many hours, if not more, as they did in their previous jobs. Both appreciate the flexibility of ownership, which allows them a personal life and time with their young children.
There is another aspect of their job that has not changed--the strong connections they made while city planners.
Bradley worked for the city of Sunnyvale from 1995 to 1997, and then moved to Campbell as a redevelopment coordinator from 1997 to 2000. He worked there as a senior planner there until 2005.
Bradley later worked for KB Home and also did contract work for Cupertino and Mountain View. The two planners had met several years earlier at professional meetings.
Bradley and his wife, Heather, moved to the Bay Area in 1995. Heather is also a planner with Metropolitan Planning Group.
The firm does design review for the city of Sunnyvale and in 2006 had a design review contract with Cupertino focused on single-family homes. Mountain View is one of Metropolitan Planning Group's clients, and Bradley represents developers who want to do business in Campbell.
For more information on the Metropolitan Planning Group, visit mplanninggroup.com, or call 408.730.4106.
