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> And then to make matters worse, a local developer is trying to tear down our old mall and build "more housing" on it, but if you look closely, what they're re

> And then to make matters worse, a local developer is trying to tear down our old mall and build "more housing" on it, but if you look closely, what they're really building is a huge office park with the bare minimum of housing to call it a housing project. They want to put in space for 15,000 workers and 4,000 people to live. That will not solve any housing problems. A lot of the Vallco project will be affordable housing, which was necessary to qualify for SB 35, funded via the office space. Adding to the market-rate housing deficit is a problem, but subsidized affordable housing is so desperately needed, and funding for it is so scarce, that I think Vallco is a win on balance.

jedberg 7y ago
> A lot of the Vallco project will be affordable housing This is not true. The majority is market rate, with the bare minimum of affordable housing to just meet SB35 (and they played games with the SB35 calculation by including parking lots in the "housing" square footage, which the City Attorney pointed out and then was fired for "unknown reasons" right after). The developer is super shady and is using legal tricks to make themselves tons of money at the expense of the community. They don't care one iota about affordable housing. There are plenty of other ways for them to be both profitable and provide below market housing without building millions of square feet of office space.
- pcwalton 7y ago
  > The developer is super shady and is using legal tricks to make themselves tons of money at the expense of the community. The developer bent over backwards to please the "community" only to see Better Cupertino torpedo the whole process out of rage at having to live by poorer neighbors. SB 35 is precisely the "legal trick" that was needed to force bad actors like Cupertino to do their part. > There are plenty of other ways for them to be both profitable and provide below market housing without building millions of square feet of office space. Cross-subsidy of affordable housing with office space is how affordable housing gets built. There is almost no funding available. Look at how long it took to get a paltry 211 units of affordable housing built in Oakland: https://twitter.com/LibbySchaaf/status/1128872869771980800?s=19 https://twitter.com/LibbySchaaf/status/1128872869771980800?s... Anyway, Vallco is an embarrassing blight on the South Bay. Virtually anything would be better than the decaying mall that's there today.
  - jedberg 7y ago
    > The developer bent over backwards to please the "community" I was part of those meetings. Not a single thing the residents asked for was offered in their plans. Furthermore, if you look at their track record, it's terrible. They don't deliver on anything they promise. Did you know that there was supposed to be a park at Main Street? They somehow got the City Council to approve a variance after the project went forward (and coincidentally raised a bunch of money for one of the city council members). I suspect they would do the same with that park roof they suggested, which every engineer you ask will tell you is most likely impossible to build. The crux of the issue here is that there was some major corruption between the city council and the developer, which seems to have been solved with the most recent election, and now someone needs to clean up the mess. > Cross-subsidy of affordable housing with office space is how affordable housing gets built. There is almost no funding available. That's fine, but how about building less office than housing, and then put in an amount of affordable housing commensurate with the income from the offices? Or how about no office at all, and instead put an extra tax on the retail businesses to pay for affordable housing? There are lots of other options besides building a mega office park that would create a housing deficit. That solves nothing. > Anyway, Vallco is an embarrassing blight on the South Bay. Virtually anything would be better than the decaying mall that's there today. It's only decaying because the developer wouldn't renew the leases of the people who were in there, so they could push the "abandoned" narrative. It sucked for the business owners who were forced out. Yeah, a lot of them were behind on rent, but that was because the developer put no resources into the mall. They manufactured its accelerated demise for their narrative. So yeah, I agree, it's a blight now, but a blight the very same developers brought upon us. Oh, and did I mention those developers break city ordinances all the time with seemingly no consequence? They were doing construction at 3am on Sunday at one point. How do I know? They banged so hard my kid was scared awake. I have video of them bulldozing at 3am on a Sunday. I called to police, who said they couldn't even identify if they had a permit. But they were at it again the next weekend!
    - pcwalton 7y ago
      > I was part of those meetings. Not a single thing the residents asked for was offered in their plans. Because Better Cupertino refused to work with the developer in any way. It is impossible to negotiate with a group that is operating in bad faith; conspiracy theories and accusations of "corruption" are a hallmark of bad faith debate. The goal was simply a wish to prevent any housing whatsoever from being developed. There is inconsistency in your very post about whether you want affordable housing (which you have not proposed a funding mechanism for) or retail on the site. Steven Scharf made his intentions very clear when he made a disgusting joke about building a wall around Cupertino and making San Jose pay for it. There isn't anything more I can say on the topic of Vallco that hasn't been already written by others. Suffice it to say that that the NIMBYism of exclusive suburbs like Cupertino is not a good look to ordinary Californians, which is why SB 50 for example polls so overwhelmingly well.

jedberg 7y ago

> A lot of the Vallco project will be affordable housing This is not true. The majority is market rate, with the bare minimum of affordable housing to just meet SB35 (and they played games with the SB35 calculation by including parking lots in the "housing" square footage, which the City Attorney pointed out and then was fired for "unknown reasons" right after). The developer is super shady and is using legal tricks to make themselves tons of money at the expense of the community. They don't care one iota about affordable housing. There are plenty of other ways for them to be both profitable and provide below market housing without building millions of square feet of office space.

pcwalton 7y ago
> The developer is super shady and is using legal tricks to make themselves tons of money at the expense of the community. The developer bent over backwards to please the "community" only to see Better Cupertino torpedo the whole process out of rage at having to live by poorer neighbors. SB 35 is precisely the "legal trick" that was needed to force bad actors like Cupertino to do their part. > There are plenty of other ways for them to be both profitable and provide below market housing without building millions of square feet of office space. Cross-subsidy of affordable housing with office space is how affordable housing gets built. There is almost no funding available. Look at how long it took to get a paltry 211 units of affordable housing built in Oakland: https://twitter.com/LibbySchaaf/status/1128872869771980800?s=19 https://twitter.com/LibbySchaaf/status/1128872869771980800?s... Anyway, Vallco is an embarrassing blight on the South Bay. Virtually anything would be better than the decaying mall that's there today.
- jedberg 7y ago
  > The developer bent over backwards to please the "community" I was part of those meetings. Not a single thing the residents asked for was offered in their plans. Furthermore, if you look at their track record, it's terrible. They don't deliver on anything they promise. Did you know that there was supposed to be a park at Main Street? They somehow got the City Council to approve a variance after the project went forward (and coincidentally raised a bunch of money for one of the city council members). I suspect they would do the same with that park roof they suggested, which every engineer you ask will tell you is most likely impossible to build. The crux of the issue here is that there was some major corruption between the city council and the developer, which seems to have been solved with the most recent election, and now someone needs to clean up the mess. > Cross-subsidy of affordable housing with office space is how affordable housing gets built. There is almost no funding available. That's fine, but how about building less office than housing, and then put in an amount of affordable housing commensurate with the income from the offices? Or how about no office at all, and instead put an extra tax on the retail businesses to pay for affordable housing? There are lots of other options besides building a mega office park that would create a housing deficit. That solves nothing. > Anyway, Vallco is an embarrassing blight on the South Bay. Virtually anything would be better than the decaying mall that's there today. It's only decaying because the developer wouldn't renew the leases of the people who were in there, so they could push the "abandoned" narrative. It sucked for the business owners who were forced out. Yeah, a lot of them were behind on rent, but that was because the developer put no resources into the mall. They manufactured its accelerated demise for their narrative. So yeah, I agree, it's a blight now, but a blight the very same developers brought upon us. Oh, and did I mention those developers break city ordinances all the time with seemingly no consequence? They were doing construction at 3am on Sunday at one point. How do I know? They banged so hard my kid was scared awake. I have video of them bulldozing at 3am on a Sunday. I called to police, who said they couldn't even identify if they had a permit. But they were at it again the next weekend!
  - pcwalton 7y ago
    > I was part of those meetings. Not a single thing the residents asked for was offered in their plans. Because Better Cupertino refused to work with the developer in any way. It is impossible to negotiate with a group that is operating in bad faith; conspiracy theories and accusations of "corruption" are a hallmark of bad faith debate. The goal was simply a wish to prevent any housing whatsoever from being developed. There is inconsistency in your very post about whether you want affordable housing (which you have not proposed a funding mechanism for) or retail on the site. Steven Scharf made his intentions very clear when he made a disgusting joke about building a wall around Cupertino and making San Jose pay for it. There isn't anything more I can say on the topic of Vallco that hasn't been already written by others. Suffice it to say that that the NIMBYism of exclusive suburbs like Cupertino is not a good look to ordinary Californians, which is why SB 50 for example polls so overwhelmingly well.