13 ms·

Google Plans New Headquarters, and a City Fears Being Overrun

79 points by sethbannon 12y ago

bonn1 12y ago
> City Fears Being Overrun What does the city exactly fear?
- delucain 12y ago
  From what the article says, the city fears losing control over its local government because Google employees would outnumber the rest of the voting citizenship. They seem to want to handle this addition of houses and infrastructure slowly, but if Google employees have a majority in the vote for local issues, they could move ahead as fast as Google wants, since it's in their best interest to keep their employer growing.
  - JoeAltmaier 12y ago
    This is true of any small town near a giant corporate campus. Look at Fayetteville AK and WalMart - the old town is a few broken-down houses and shops, next to rows of 1500-person condo units that march across the corn fields like dominoes. What to do about it? Sell out, move I guess. Google wants your land after all.
  - nsnick 12y ago
    This is a good thing. Maybe if there is a google voting block, they can build high density housing, and extend BART into San Mateo County and make BART ring the bay.
  - Iftheshoefits 12y ago
    You're assuming that a lot of Google's employees live in Mountain View, and that "a lot" is potentially a political vote majority. I'm not convinced it's a valid fear, if what that councilman said is a generally held sentiment. I've only lived in the bay area a few years, but it seems to me people commute quite a lot, and it's not unheard of for San Jose residents to work in S.F. or any point between, in the east bay, etc. Even so, the other fear, which I distill to a sentiment of fear that Mountain View will become a city that is more business and less residence/public space, is one that has more merit.
    - ZanyProgrammer 12y ago
      Commuting to the Googleplex from Santa Clara, Sunnyvale, and large parts of San Jose isn't that far.
    - pm24601 12y ago
      10% of Mountain View residents are Googlers.
  - CalRobert 12y ago
    Good. Most of the peninsula is currently held in the grip of NIMBYs who hate trains, hate dense housing, and love freeways and environmentally damaging sprawl. Part of the reason SF costs so damn much is because it's so hard to have an urban lifestyle anywhere but those 49 square miles (and Berkeley and Oakland, which I quite like)
    - polarix 12y ago
      There is a reason to hate "trains" when it's fucking Caltrain with at-grade crossings and retarded federal rules about fucking horns all night long. Half the fucking Peninsula is unusable for sleeping as it is.
      - CalRobert 12y ago
        I actually was thinking of CAHSR, but then again the streets are at-grade and nobody seems to mind those. I do sympathize about the horns, though.
      - khuey 12y ago
        If Palo Alto/etc would get off their asses and support an economically feasible grade separation plan this could be fixed in under a decade.
      - pm24601 12y ago
        Oh you mean the horns that this mother ignored? http://www.ktvu.com/story/28181718/caltrain-service-shut-down-after-menlo-park-accident http://www.ktvu.com/story/28181718/caltrain-service-shut-dow... The horns are used to try to get people to not get killed.
        polarix 12y ago
        Perhaps people who are driving could consider not driving around the railroad gate (which was working when the idiot in that article decided to commit suicide). There are remarkably few good ways out for humans in our society, so this kind of spectacle is often what they end up resorting to.
  - DannyBee 12y ago
    Yes, Google employees have never held different views than their employer </s> Basically, they are afraid the majority of the people they represent may actually make their voice heard in government. What's next, complaining that if we build too much senior living, the old people might vote for what they want?
- freehunter 12y ago
  From the sounds of the article, they fear that their citizens will control the government. I mean, I don't live in Silicon Valley, I don't work for a west coast tech company, I have no stake in the game here. But the SF cities really need to figure out what they want. If you want to relieve traffic, you need to get people closer to where they work. If you don't want people working there, you shouldn't have given Google permits to build there. A "Google voting bloc" is just a codeword for "people who live and work here". Trying to keep people out of your city because you don't like their politics or the company they work for reeks of discrimination.
  - mtviewdave 12y ago
    That's an unfair characterization. When it comes to Mountain View, there are three sets of people being discussed in the article: former council members, new council members, and the general public. The new council members (e.g. Lenny Siegel) are _all_ in favor of adding new housing near Google. The City Council is now 6-1 in favor of building new housing, whereas it was 4-3 against prior to the 2014 election. The person who was afraid of a "Google voting bloc", Jac Siegel, is a former council member is no longer on the council and no longer represents the views of the council or the citizens. As for the people, while there are a certain set of long-time Mountain View residents who don't like change, most seem to accept that change is inevitable (which is why we now have a 6-1 majority in favor of new housing). (Long-time Mountain View resident, voter and homeowner here, FYI).
  - bmelton 12y ago
    That was my first thought as well, and my first answer to the question of "What do they fear exactly?" was "Democracy". I find it equally preposterous that the mass of Google employees operate as some sort of a hive-mind too, abandoning their own personal politics in favor of their employer's, but at the same time, would be foolish not to acknowledge that Google employees are likely going to favor Google-centric endeavors like Google Fiber, self-driving cars and that sort of thing at polling stations.
  - logfromblammo 12y ago
    I have known enough software development professionals to believe that we will never be a credible threat to any local government anywhere, right up until the point where 90% of local government jobs are obsoleted by computer automation, at which time it will be far too late to do anything about it. Right now, I can't be arsed to even read the minutes from the meetings of my city council. I would much rather spend that time keeping my technical skills current. Mountain View politics will, like most local governments, still largely be controlled by smallpond-bigfish, loud activists, and retirees, unless it becomes a noticeable problem that requires fixing. The one thing you do not want to do in a community of technically-minded people is to be categorized as a problem. Denying building permits for the 5000+ units of housing that will be required--that's a problem. Not building schools, crime and fire protection, utility corridors, and roads to service that housing--that's a problem. Not building commuter infrastructure for the employees who can't live in town because you won't let them--that's a problem. There are plenty of communities outside of the silicon valley area who would kill--literally commit multiple murders--to get Google to relocate headquarters there, while also offering zero local taxes on the business for a decade or more. Those communities would also complain loudly about all the young people coming in with no investment or engagement with the existing residents. But then they would float some bonds, up the mill rate, build like crazy, and immediately start pitching to other technology-intensive businesses. Money may not solve all the problems, but it is one heck of an analgesic for the ones that it can't solve. Just cash the check, Mountain View. Cash the check and get to work.
rayiner 12y ago
> “Our problem is that we have too many good jobs,” said Leonard M. Siegel, a 66-year-old environmental activist who was recently elected to the City Council. “Everyone else wishes they were in our situation, but it’s a crisis for the people here.” Boo-hoo. Also, I think it's ironic for an "environmental activist" to defend the existing suburban wasteland status quo. More development could make places like Mountain View less car dependent, and reduce how many schlep too/from SF on a daily basis. If these folks really cared about the environment, instead of prohibiting growth they would ban these sprawling office parks miles away from public transit and push tech companies into high-density development near the Caltrain.
- khuey 12y ago
  Large urban centers in coastal California have very low per-capita environmental impact compared to sub/exurban development of farmland that the anti-density crowd substitutes for responsible infill development and upzoning. They absolutely don't care about the environment. Groups like the Sierra Club are just fronts for NIMBYs at the local level in the bay area.
- anon1385 12y ago
  This seems to be the tired old "you are a part of this society so you can't criticise it without being a hypocrite" argument. Do you have evidence that Leonard M. Siegel supports "sprawling office parks miles away from public transit" other than the fact that office parks exist and Leonard M. Siegel exists?
  - pm24601 12y ago
    Lenny actually supports housing right next to offices.
- eloisant 12y ago
  Not really. Having too many jobs in Mountain View means many commuters, and super high housing prices meaning most workers (even Google employees) must commute from different places. So it's not making anyone less dependent on the car. However, the situation for long-term resident (especially home owners) is not that bad because if they don't care about the tech industry and just want a quiet place to live, they can easily flip their house for a couple millions and buy a small castle somewhere else.
refurb 12y ago
It's always somewhat entertaining to listen to cities who want to have great employment opportunities, but at the same time don't want to deal with any of the negatives that come along with it.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
mbillie1 12y ago
While I'm sympathetic to the situation folks find themselves in with skyrocketing housing prices due to an influx of tech workers, sentiments like “Nobody wants change,” and "[residents who] want to halt the city’s growth" are unrealistic. The same thing happened in places like Rockland County, NY - once a small, rural community of primarily Norwegian immigrants, it has seen skyrocketing property taxes, cost of living and population due to the increased population / desirability of NYC over the past say 60 years, as well as the Tappan Zee Bridge making it a viable home for Manhattan-working commuters. The residents (at least some of the old time residents, whose number includes several of my family members) are understandably upset, but you simply don't get to control your community size in this fashion. If you want to live in a small, rural community and find your lifelong hometown increasingly developed, the unfortunate reality is that you are not the only human being who wants her peace and quiet, and you may have to move.
- rayiner 12y ago
  What makes it totally impossible for me to sympathize with these folks, as opposed to the ones being pushed out by rising rents in SF, is that as homeowners rising property values make it easier for them to move elsewhere. If you bought a house in a sleepy suburb in the 1980's, well now it's worth $1 million+. You can get a wonderful property almost anywhere in the country for half that and pocket the rest. Or you can stay and enjoy your new-found wealth.
  - bmelton 12y ago
    > Or you can stay and enjoy your new-found wealth I am equally unsympathetic, but is that statement true? A teacher buys a house in 1982 for $125,000. That house is now worth $800,000, but while her salary has increased according to cost of living (ideally), it has definitely not accounted for the massive increase in property tax that her new values command. There's a difference of around $500 a month, just in property taxes between her home in 1982 and 2015, and that doesn't even account for the increase in cost of goods and services as the rest of the economy thrives around her.
    - 12y ago
blueskin_ 12y ago
De-paywalled: https://archive.today/Atr4E https://archive.today/Atr4E
hesdeadjim 12y ago
I've lived in Boulder for eight years now and I'm excited to see what a major Google presence could do for the tech community here. In general I've found it hard to hire or convince people to relocate, but with Google committing to the area it might become an easier sell. I also understand the fear long-term residents of Boulder have for a change like this. From their point of view the town has grown from a hippy little mountain town into a very expensive yuppy enclave. Housing prices are extremely high for Colorado, and unless you have a high paying job you usually end up commuting in from the surrounding towns on increasingly congested roadways. Adding >1000 highly paid engineers into the mix certainly won't help to alleviate that.
- drivingmenuts 12y ago
  If it's anything like Austin, it will turn it into yet another homogenous urban experience, partially or completely wrecking the things that made the town interesting in the first place. It's not without it's advantages - cheaper access to a tech society and it's trappings. OTOH, businesses and institutions that we've come to know as friends have been annihilated.
- monocasa 12y ago
  A lot of the Boulder local politics around "don't change anything" is really just code for "lets not build anymore housing so the property values continue to skyrocket". I'm really starting to get tired of it...
evtothedev 12y ago
It is so exciting that people have started to couple the creation of offices with the creation of housing!
- yourapostasy 12y ago
  It unfortunately won't really solve the housing and housing-related challenges that the article portrayed stirring up so much vocal ire in MV. Many of the adverse effects (traffic congestion, pollution, rising property taxes, etc.) are first- and second-order effects of real estate pricing increases, and simply allocating land for residential development won't retard those increases. One possible way to short-circuit those pricing increases is for an employer to lock down a very large tract, and never let parcels in it exchange ownership again. Structure an ownership model where employees still buy into their parcel under a co-op style or leasehold ownership, with all such proceeds minus operational expenses (property taxes, insurance, maintenance, repair, etc.) dumped into a total market index fund/fund-set (with communally-voted percentage of gains allocated to improvements and/or expansion) or at employee discretion into a money-market fund, and when employees leave employ and residence, their share of proceeds they put in plus their share of gains (if any) are returned to them. This locks in the underlying price basis to inception year which all future employees' residential costs are biased towards, retards real estate inflation in the tract's parcels to just imputed value assigned for property tax purposes by the municipality, captures and redirects overall real estate inflation effects upon wages into salaries and the fund, which ends up as real inflation-adjusted income in employees' hands when they leave. Employers like Google who want the accompanying productivity benefits of ancillary services like on-campus dining get manifold benefits from structuring a residential community right around the office. Including but not limited to: 10 minute commute for everyone leaving more time to enjoy life and work, no cars inside the tract with only biking/walking/PRT delivering increased health benefits and lower healthcare costs, coordinated massive volume purchasing of residential services in a single geographic location making possible even more time saving services like landscaping/housekeeping/childcare/laundry/handyman/insurance, etc. In an already-developed community like MV, cultural/entertainment/shopping venues are sure to sprout along the borders of such a tract to give variety, if such venues are not already woven throughout the community. There are secondary cost savings from choosing to plan on the decades-long timeline of such a development built as a single project. For Google specifically, heat co-generation from data centers can be redirected for use in the residential areas. All residences can be constructed to say something like PassivHaus standards to use 1/5 to 1/10 of normal energy, and simultaneously mount solar PV everywhere there is a roof or shading desired. These energy savings drop straight to the bottom line as decreased compensation inflation pressure over time. Cooperation and integration with the wider community's educational and healthcare institutions can accommodate exception cases like special needs education and high-end healthcare, without blowing out costs or compromising quality of on-campus schooling and healthcare. The entire tract's property taxes can be negotiated on a commercial (commonly given more leeway in most municipalities) basis in a single negotiation more likely to yield lower individual property taxes per residence. The cost is reduced location choice for the employees who voluntarily choose to live in the tract, and when to move away; but real estate inflation has generally economically segregated most metro areas and already reduced choices, and residential moves already commonly accompany job changes as increased traffic congestion in most metro areas make all but the most short geographic distance disparities between old and new jobs very grueling. There are also many cultural costs to address commonly associated with "company town"-type issues; homogenized and boring (though others have pointed out boring is a feature not a bug for many though not all when raising a family) milieu, stifling social setting, etc. Many possible trade offs and solutions for these challenges, though. There are variations of this kind of company town development around the world. The largest and most comprehensive ones I know of are Kiruna in Sweden and the various towns run by Saudi Aramco in Saudi Arabia. They aren't a panacea, and there are more drawbacks I haven't covered, but they are very effective at controlling direct and indirect COL costs that put upward salary pressure on a company that are out of most companies' control, without significantly compromising quality of life for median employees. There is enormous cultural pressure against this sort of tactic, however. Not least of which is the tremendous buy-in of the general public (including tech industry participants) to the sales story of ever-increasing housing prices as an integral part of every family's financial planning. If you are in any industry outside of real estate and its related sibling industries, it is to your ultimate advantage to treat most real estate and its related operational costs (that is, virtually all price increases past inception of land purchase) as a straight deadweight loss. Aside from real estate and related companies, real estate is a large factor typically in companies in trouble (like Sears or Radio Shack) or in commoditized industries (like McDonalds), but only because of real estate's unique asset characteristics due to many economic/tax/financial/legal structural factors that no other asset possesses in the same combination. If you are a Google or a GM, you want your investors/customers/employees to know you for what you innovate and do, not your real estate holdings, because that is where the big growth multipliers are to be consistently found in the future.
CmonDev 12y ago
Google is welcome to London: there is a desperate situation sadly - no major competition for tech talent is making salaries very stagnant for everyone. Also: "“If you brought 5,000 people in and they all work for Google and they said, ‘We want you to vote for this candidate,’ they can own the town.”" - that is how democracy works, e.g. attracting welfare earners to vote for those who will give them more welfare.
davidf18 12y ago
They should move to Manhattan, where I live. Google already owns the third largest building with 2,800,000 sq feet. With our fantastic subway system, whatever they would rent/build would be a far, far, greener and environmental solution than have 20,000 employees commute by car (or the controversial Google Bus). BTW, the old World Trace Center Towers 1 and 2 held 50,000 employees. The reason for the increasing price of housing has to do with overly restrictive zoning codes and not the demand. The zoning creates artificial scarcity and it is the scarcity and the increasing costs of land that results that is the cause for increasing home prices. Using politics to create artificial scarcity through this "rent seeking" is a means of taking wealth from others as opposed to wealth creation which benefits all. In an efficient market, there would not be the zoning code restrictions that limit housing density (see Harvard Economist Edward Glaeser's writings for more info).
- virtuallynathan 12y ago
  Yea, 111 8th Ave, most of which (afaik) is a datacenter. They've been kicking out the datacenter tenants when their leases end.
  - jedc 12y ago
    > most of which (afaik) is a datacenter Ha! Nope. While there has been some datacenter space in the building, the vast majority is office space. (It's way cheaper to build data centers in Iowa and the Carolinas than in Manhattan!) Google has been taking over more and more office space as leases end, though. It makes for quite a confusing office map to get from floor to floor. (Lots of partial office floors don't connect well to other partial office floors.)
Lewisham 12y ago
One thing that this article doesn't mention is that Mountain View is soul-crushingly boring. It would be one thing if it was a place of character and interest that was being eroded (I can sympathize with some elements of the SF community on that front), but it is not and it never was. It's a boring suburb with no identifiable features. Palo Alto, Los Gatos and Santa Cruz and other towns have something to them. I don't understand what the "residentialists" are trying to protect. I'd love to live nearer the Googleplex, but I wouldn't move into Mountain View. Disclaimer: I work for Google, but I had this opinion of MTV far before joining them, and I have no voting rights in MTV politics. I live in Santa Cruz and much prefer it.
- mark_l_watson 12y ago
  I worked at Google MTV in 2013 and my wife and I thought that Mountain View had a lot to offer: good restaurants, bookstores, shopping, and the nice (huge!) movie theatre complex very close to the building where I worked. San Francisco, Santa Cruz, San Jose, and Monterey were all close for more entertainment. My only complaint was that it cost us $6000+ per month to live there. I quit and went back home to Arizona where my income is smaller but the cost of living is very inexpensive.
  - ojbyrne 12y ago
    Also Shoreline Amphitheatre, which regularly gets reasonably good concerts.
    - DannyBee 12y ago
      Except that they completely ruined the sound there in order to protect the houses that got built too close to it.
      - muzz 12y ago
        Where are the houses that are close to the amphitheater?
thrillgore 12y ago
If Google thinks this will be an issue dealing with Mountain View, they'll just go with a whole new location. This isn't brinksmanship.
- jdmichal 12y ago
  Because I'm sure those 20,000 employees are all just waiting with their bags packed ready to follow Google where ever they decide to settle down... Or that they are all completely fungible and just picking up another 20,000 somewhere else won't interrupt operations at all.
  - brandon 12y ago
    It's not necessary to forklift the entire population of 20,000 employees when you have the option to grow elsewhere in the region. You might be surprised to hear that a significant number of Google employees in Mountain View were recently moved to a new campus outside of the city, and it wasn't exactly an opt-in affair.
  - skuhn 12y ago
    Yes, they will follow Google to Sunnyvale or Cupertino or any other of the five to ten towns within a 20 mile drive from Mountain View. No one is so beholden to their almost indistinguishable south bay suburb that they wouldn't venture across the border to go to work -- these towns are 20 square miles at best.
    - jdmichal 12y ago
      My original understanding of the post I was replying to was hinting at a much bigger move than 20 miles. Upon rereading it, I potentially erroneously added that context within my own head.
      - skuhn 12y ago
        Makes sense, it does seem like they would have a harder time retaining people if they moved to Boise. That would be pretty sweet if a giant tech company like Google packed up and left Silicon Valley. It's going to take big moves like that to get a real exodus rolling.
smutticus 12y ago
As a bay area resident who regularly has to listen to people whine about 'all them outsiders moving in', I have no sympathy for the residents of MV. Build some dense housing around here and stop whining. We don't all need ranch homes with 3 parking spaces. Build up, build dense, and build mass transit. > “Our problem is that we have too many good jobs,” said Leonard M. Siegel, a 66-year-old environmental activist who was recently elected to the City Council. “Everyone else wishes they were in our situation, but it’s a crisis for the people here.” If this person is actually an environmentalist then they should welcome my message of build up, build dense, and build mass transit. Per-capita carbon production goes down as density goes up. Low-density urban living, think suburbs, are terrible at keeping per-capita carbon production low. An actual environmentalist would welcome an opportunity to develop dense urban environments free from a reliance on fossil fuels. If you want to have a low carbon footprint; live in a place like Manhatten, eat vegan, sell your car and don't travel. In other words, if you claim to want environmental policy, you should be working to make that lifestyle accessible to more people. > “Nobody wants change,” said Gilbert Wong, a councilman in Cupertino, Apple’s hometown. I'm sure if I told this person they were a conservative they would take offense. But what other way is there to read this? These people are misappropriating the term conservationist. We're interested in protecting the trees, not your lawn. Places like Mountain View or Palo Alto could be examples of a new kind of sustainable dense urban living. Instead they're completely wedded to automobiles and a mid 19th century obsession with detached home ownership.
- tsax 12y ago
  Exactly. It's a travesty that Silicon Valley looks like a suburb in 2015. It should've been a great example of a dense, clean, urban region, which would also mitigate the commuter problems and the pressure on San Francisco rents.
  - rhino369 12y ago
    I was shocked when I first visited Silicon Valley. It looked like Skokie, IL. Arlington, VA is an example of a suburb who successfully created a densish environment by building a subway corridor.
bootload 12y ago
"... That success has brought Mountain View loads of tax dollars and a 3.3 percent unemployment rate, as well as skyrocketing home prices and intolerable gridlock. Good and bad, tech is responsible for most of it ..." Now if you can figure out how to decentralise corporations, imagine the amount of time, space and resources you could save. hint: why do digital companies still require a workforce to all meet at one physical location, every day?
pm24601 12y ago
MOST COMMENTATORS ON THIS THREAD ARE WRONG Wow. As a non-Googler, Mountain View resident who owns a home, I can say that the vast majority of the commenters mischaracterize problem, Lenny Siegel and the MV City Council, Google and everything. I should also add that I regularly attend CC meetings,etc. Basic background: 1) Google until recently basically ignored Mountain View south of 101. Until recently Google didn't own anything south of 101. 2) Google is not going anywhere. Mountain View is right next to Moffett Air field. This is where Larry and Sergey park their 767 ( http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/11/googles-3-top-executives-have-8-private-jets/ http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/11/googles-3-top-executives-ha... ) - Maybe Sunnyvale would be an alternative but I really doubt there are too many spots where L and S can be in walking distance of their 767. Furthermore Google is leasing a shit ass land from NASA to expand on. 3) Its not just Google: Google, LinkedIn, Intuit, Symantec, all have HQs here. Microsoft/Nokia also have their research centers here. 4) Google, et.al. subsides all services at their HQ as a result outside retail/restaurants have pretty much died north of 101. This results in local business owners/voters complaining to city council. 5) Google woke up to the political problem when MV CC told Google that they were not going to be allowed build a connection bridge across Stevens Creek Trail for buses. ( a trail that MV residents worked 25 years to create ) 6) Google land purchases have resulted in increases in real-estate taxes, however Google generates NO sales tax revenue for the city. (same problem with the other companies) 7) Land in North Bayshore has gotten so expensive that there is serious talk about putting a building on top of the VTA North County Maintenance Yard. 8) Mountain View renters have seen Y/Y increases of about 20-25%. A 2 bedroom/2 bath apartment goes for $3300. 9) The city planners have gotten so many building requests that the city has no staff to deal with the requests. 10) The school districts have real problems keeping teachers - turnover for some schools runs 6-10%. 11) Non-tech workers are being forced out - you know people like teachers, waiters, security guards. The MV Building inspectors have found entire families living in a single room ( http://mv-voice.com/news/2013/07/26/high-cost-housing-creates-desperate-living-conditions http://mv-voice.com/news/2013/07/26/high-cost-housing-create... ) 12) The 3 new city council members are all pro-housing. The anti-housing candidates were rejected. Therefore comments along the lines of : stop whining and do something - well the new city council is doing something. Specifically, demanding that more housing gets built and less office space. We are trying to make room for the new people. In many cases these are our children. 13) Google to its credit is starting to throw some money at Mountain View Capital Improvement Project list to help out. 14) Google, Mountain View are working out a traffic management plan to reduce solo drivers - the whole of north bayshore is only accessible by 3 roads. Residents who live in north bayshore right now cannot get to/from their house between 8:30 and 10 and 4:30 and 6. I might add more to this list but I think this is a good start.

79 points by sethbannon 12y ago

bonn1 12y ago

> City Fears Being Overrun What does the city exactly fear?

delucain 12y ago
From what the article says, the city fears losing control over its local government because Google employees would outnumber the rest of the voting citizenship. They seem to want to handle this addition of houses and infrastructure slowly, but if Google employees have a majority in the vote for local issues, they could move ahead as fast as Google wants, since it's in their best interest to keep their employer growing.
- JoeAltmaier 12y ago
  This is true of any small town near a giant corporate campus. Look at Fayetteville AK and WalMart - the old town is a few broken-down houses and shops, next to rows of 1500-person condo units that march across the corn fields like dominoes. What to do about it? Sell out, move I guess. Google wants your land after all.
- nsnick 12y ago
  This is a good thing. Maybe if there is a google voting block, they can build high density housing, and extend BART into San Mateo County and make BART ring the bay.
- Iftheshoefits 12y ago
  You're assuming that a lot of Google's employees live in Mountain View, and that "a lot" is potentially a political vote majority. I'm not convinced it's a valid fear, if what that councilman said is a generally held sentiment. I've only lived in the bay area a few years, but it seems to me people commute quite a lot, and it's not unheard of for San Jose residents to work in S.F. or any point between, in the east bay, etc. Even so, the other fear, which I distill to a sentiment of fear that Mountain View will become a city that is more business and less residence/public space, is one that has more merit.
  - ZanyProgrammer 12y ago
    Commuting to the Googleplex from Santa Clara, Sunnyvale, and large parts of San Jose isn't that far.
  - pm24601 12y ago
    10% of Mountain View residents are Googlers.
- CalRobert 12y ago
  Good. Most of the peninsula is currently held in the grip of NIMBYs who hate trains, hate dense housing, and love freeways and environmentally damaging sprawl. Part of the reason SF costs so damn much is because it's so hard to have an urban lifestyle anywhere but those 49 square miles (and Berkeley and Oakland, which I quite like)
  - polarix 12y ago
    There is a reason to hate "trains" when it's fucking Caltrain with at-grade crossings and retarded federal rules about fucking horns all night long. Half the fucking Peninsula is unusable for sleeping as it is.
    - CalRobert 12y ago
      I actually was thinking of CAHSR, but then again the streets are at-grade and nobody seems to mind those. I do sympathize about the horns, though.
    - khuey 12y ago
      If Palo Alto/etc would get off their asses and support an economically feasible grade separation plan this could be fixed in under a decade.
    - pm24601 12y ago
      Oh you mean the horns that this mother ignored? http://www.ktvu.com/story/28181718/caltrain-service-shut-down-after-menlo-park-accident http://www.ktvu.com/story/28181718/caltrain-service-shut-dow... The horns are used to try to get people to not get killed.
      - polarix 12y ago
        Perhaps people who are driving could consider not driving around the railroad gate (which was working when the idiot in that article decided to commit suicide). There are remarkably few good ways out for humans in our society, so this kind of spectacle is often what they end up resorting to.
- DannyBee 12y ago
  Yes, Google employees have never held different views than their employer </s> Basically, they are afraid the majority of the people they represent may actually make their voice heard in government. What's next, complaining that if we build too much senior living, the old people might vote for what they want?
freehunter 12y ago
From the sounds of the article, they fear that their citizens will control the government. I mean, I don't live in Silicon Valley, I don't work for a west coast tech company, I have no stake in the game here. But the SF cities really need to figure out what they want. If you want to relieve traffic, you need to get people closer to where they work. If you don't want people working there, you shouldn't have given Google permits to build there. A "Google voting bloc" is just a codeword for "people who live and work here". Trying to keep people out of your city because you don't like their politics or the company they work for reeks of discrimination.
- mtviewdave 12y ago
  That's an unfair characterization. When it comes to Mountain View, there are three sets of people being discussed in the article: former council members, new council members, and the general public. The new council members (e.g. Lenny Siegel) are _all_ in favor of adding new housing near Google. The City Council is now 6-1 in favor of building new housing, whereas it was 4-3 against prior to the 2014 election. The person who was afraid of a "Google voting bloc", Jac Siegel, is a former council member is no longer on the council and no longer represents the views of the council or the citizens. As for the people, while there are a certain set of long-time Mountain View residents who don't like change, most seem to accept that change is inevitable (which is why we now have a 6-1 majority in favor of new housing). (Long-time Mountain View resident, voter and homeowner here, FYI).
- bmelton 12y ago
  That was my first thought as well, and my first answer to the question of "What do they fear exactly?" was "Democracy". I find it equally preposterous that the mass of Google employees operate as some sort of a hive-mind too, abandoning their own personal politics in favor of their employer's, but at the same time, would be foolish not to acknowledge that Google employees are likely going to favor Google-centric endeavors like Google Fiber, self-driving cars and that sort of thing at polling stations.
- logfromblammo 12y ago
  I have known enough software development professionals to believe that we will never be a credible threat to any local government anywhere, right up until the point where 90% of local government jobs are obsoleted by computer automation, at which time it will be far too late to do anything about it. Right now, I can't be arsed to even read the minutes from the meetings of my city council. I would much rather spend that time keeping my technical skills current. Mountain View politics will, like most local governments, still largely be controlled by smallpond-bigfish, loud activists, and retirees, unless it becomes a noticeable problem that requires fixing. The one thing you do not want to do in a community of technically-minded people is to be categorized as a problem. Denying building permits for the 5000+ units of housing that will be required--that's a problem. Not building schools, crime and fire protection, utility corridors, and roads to service that housing--that's a problem. Not building commuter infrastructure for the employees who can't live in town because you won't let them--that's a problem. There are plenty of communities outside of the silicon valley area who would kill--literally commit multiple murders--to get Google to relocate headquarters there, while also offering zero local taxes on the business for a decade or more. Those communities would also complain loudly about all the young people coming in with no investment or engagement with the existing residents. But then they would float some bonds, up the mill rate, build like crazy, and immediately start pitching to other technology-intensive businesses. Money may not solve all the problems, but it is one heck of an analgesic for the ones that it can't solve. Just cash the check, Mountain View. Cash the check and get to work.

rayiner 12y ago

> “Our problem is that we have too many good jobs,” said Leonard M. Siegel, a 66-year-old environmental activist who was recently elected to the City Council. “Everyone else wishes they were in our situation, but it’s a crisis for the people here.” Boo-hoo. Also, I think it's ironic for an "environmental activist" to defend the existing suburban wasteland status quo. More development could make places like Mountain View less car dependent, and reduce how many schlep too/from SF on a daily basis. If these folks really cared about the environment, instead of prohibiting growth they would ban these sprawling office parks miles away from public transit and push tech companies into high-density development near the Caltrain.

khuey 12y ago
Large urban centers in coastal California have very low per-capita environmental impact compared to sub/exurban development of farmland that the anti-density crowd substitutes for responsible infill development and upzoning. They absolutely don't care about the environment. Groups like the Sierra Club are just fronts for NIMBYs at the local level in the bay area.
anon1385 12y ago
This seems to be the tired old "you are a part of this society so you can't criticise it without being a hypocrite" argument. Do you have evidence that Leonard M. Siegel supports "sprawling office parks miles away from public transit" other than the fact that office parks exist and Leonard M. Siegel exists?
- pm24601 12y ago
  Lenny actually supports housing right next to offices.
eloisant 12y ago
Not really. Having too many jobs in Mountain View means many commuters, and super high housing prices meaning most workers (even Google employees) must commute from different places. So it's not making anyone less dependent on the car. However, the situation for long-term resident (especially home owners) is not that bad because if they don't care about the tech industry and just want a quiet place to live, they can easily flip their house for a couple millions and buy a small castle somewhere else.

refurb 12y ago

It's always somewhat entertaining to listen to cities who want to have great employment opportunities, but at the same time don't want to deal with any of the negatives that come along with it.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

mbillie1 12y ago

While I'm sympathetic to the situation folks find themselves in with skyrocketing housing prices due to an influx of tech workers, sentiments like “Nobody wants change,” and "[residents who] want to halt the city’s growth" are unrealistic. The same thing happened in places like Rockland County, NY - once a small, rural community of primarily Norwegian immigrants, it has seen skyrocketing property taxes, cost of living and population due to the increased population / desirability of NYC over the past say 60 years, as well as the Tappan Zee Bridge making it a viable home for Manhattan-working commuters. The residents (at least some of the old time residents, whose number includes several of my family members) are understandably upset, but you simply don't get to control your community size in this fashion. If you want to live in a small, rural community and find your lifelong hometown increasingly developed, the unfortunate reality is that you are not the only human being who wants her peace and quiet, and you may have to move.

rayiner 12y ago
What makes it totally impossible for me to sympathize with these folks, as opposed to the ones being pushed out by rising rents in SF, is that as homeowners rising property values make it easier for them to move elsewhere. If you bought a house in a sleepy suburb in the 1980's, well now it's worth $1 million+. You can get a wonderful property almost anywhere in the country for half that and pocket the rest. Or you can stay and enjoy your new-found wealth.
- bmelton 12y ago
  > Or you can stay and enjoy your new-found wealth I am equally unsympathetic, but is that statement true? A teacher buys a house in 1982 for $125,000. That house is now worth $800,000, but while her salary has increased according to cost of living (ideally), it has definitely not accounted for the massive increase in property tax that her new values command. There's a difference of around $500 a month, just in property taxes between her home in 1982 and 2015, and that doesn't even account for the increase in cost of goods and services as the rest of the economy thrives around her.
  - 12y ago

blueskin_ 12y ago

De-paywalled: https://archive.today/Atr4E https://archive.today/Atr4E

hesdeadjim 12y ago

I've lived in Boulder for eight years now and I'm excited to see what a major Google presence could do for the tech community here. In general I've found it hard to hire or convince people to relocate, but with Google committing to the area it might become an easier sell. I also understand the fear long-term residents of Boulder have for a change like this. From their point of view the town has grown from a hippy little mountain town into a very expensive yuppy enclave. Housing prices are extremely high for Colorado, and unless you have a high paying job you usually end up commuting in from the surrounding towns on increasingly congested roadways. Adding >1000 highly paid engineers into the mix certainly won't help to alleviate that.

drivingmenuts 12y ago
If it's anything like Austin, it will turn it into yet another homogenous urban experience, partially or completely wrecking the things that made the town interesting in the first place. It's not without it's advantages - cheaper access to a tech society and it's trappings. OTOH, businesses and institutions that we've come to know as friends have been annihilated.
monocasa 12y ago
A lot of the Boulder local politics around "don't change anything" is really just code for "lets not build anymore housing so the property values continue to skyrocket". I'm really starting to get tired of it...

evtothedev 12y ago

It is so exciting that people have started to couple the creation of offices with the creation of housing!

yourapostasy 12y ago
It unfortunately won't really solve the housing and housing-related challenges that the article portrayed stirring up so much vocal ire in MV. Many of the adverse effects (traffic congestion, pollution, rising property taxes, etc.) are first- and second-order effects of real estate pricing increases, and simply allocating land for residential development won't retard those increases. One possible way to short-circuit those pricing increases is for an employer to lock down a very large tract, and never let parcels in it exchange ownership again. Structure an ownership model where employees still buy into their parcel under a co-op style or leasehold ownership, with all such proceeds minus operational expenses (property taxes, insurance, maintenance, repair, etc.) dumped into a total market index fund/fund-set (with communally-voted percentage of gains allocated to improvements and/or expansion) or at employee discretion into a money-market fund, and when employees leave employ and residence, their share of proceeds they put in plus their share of gains (if any) are returned to them. This locks in the underlying price basis to inception year which all future employees' residential costs are biased towards, retards real estate inflation in the tract's parcels to just imputed value assigned for property tax purposes by the municipality, captures and redirects overall real estate inflation effects upon wages into salaries and the fund, which ends up as real inflation-adjusted income in employees' hands when they leave. Employers like Google who want the accompanying productivity benefits of ancillary services like on-campus dining get manifold benefits from structuring a residential community right around the office. Including but not limited to: 10 minute commute for everyone leaving more time to enjoy life and work, no cars inside the tract with only biking/walking/PRT delivering increased health benefits and lower healthcare costs, coordinated massive volume purchasing of residential services in a single geographic location making possible even more time saving services like landscaping/housekeeping/childcare/laundry/handyman/insurance, etc. In an already-developed community like MV, cultural/entertainment/shopping venues are sure to sprout along the borders of such a tract to give variety, if such venues are not already woven throughout the community. There are secondary cost savings from choosing to plan on the decades-long timeline of such a development built as a single project. For Google specifically, heat co-generation from data centers can be redirected for use in the residential areas. All residences can be constructed to say something like PassivHaus standards to use 1/5 to 1/10 of normal energy, and simultaneously mount solar PV everywhere there is a roof or shading desired. These energy savings drop straight to the bottom line as decreased compensation inflation pressure over time. Cooperation and integration with the wider community's educational and healthcare institutions can accommodate exception cases like special needs education and high-end healthcare, without blowing out costs or compromising quality of on-campus schooling and healthcare. The entire tract's property taxes can be negotiated on a commercial (commonly given more leeway in most municipalities) basis in a single negotiation more likely to yield lower individual property taxes per residence. The cost is reduced location choice for the employees who voluntarily choose to live in the tract, and when to move away; but real estate inflation has generally economically segregated most metro areas and already reduced choices, and residential moves already commonly accompany job changes as increased traffic congestion in most metro areas make all but the most short geographic distance disparities between old and new jobs very grueling. There are also many cultural costs to address commonly associated with "company town"-type issues; homogenized and boring (though others have pointed out boring is a feature not a bug for many though not all when raising a family) milieu, stifling social setting, etc. Many possible trade offs and solutions for these challenges, though. There are variations of this kind of company town development around the world. The largest and most comprehensive ones I know of are Kiruna in Sweden and the various towns run by Saudi Aramco in Saudi Arabia. They aren't a panacea, and there are more drawbacks I haven't covered, but they are very effective at controlling direct and indirect COL costs that put upward salary pressure on a company that are out of most companies' control, without significantly compromising quality of life for median employees. There is enormous cultural pressure against this sort of tactic, however. Not least of which is the tremendous buy-in of the general public (including tech industry participants) to the sales story of ever-increasing housing prices as an integral part of every family's financial planning. If you are in any industry outside of real estate and its related sibling industries, it is to your ultimate advantage to treat most real estate and its related operational costs (that is, virtually all price increases past inception of land purchase) as a straight deadweight loss. Aside from real estate and related companies, real estate is a large factor typically in companies in trouble (like Sears or Radio Shack) or in commoditized industries (like McDonalds), but only because of real estate's unique asset characteristics due to many economic/tax/financial/legal structural factors that no other asset possesses in the same combination. If you are a Google or a GM, you want your investors/customers/employees to know you for what you innovate and do, not your real estate holdings, because that is where the big growth multipliers are to be consistently found in the future.

CmonDev 12y ago

Google is welcome to London: there is a desperate situation sadly - no major competition for tech talent is making salaries very stagnant for everyone. Also: "“If you brought 5,000 people in and they all work for Google and they said, ‘We want you to vote for this candidate,’ they can own the town.”" - that is how democracy works, e.g. attracting welfare earners to vote for those who will give them more welfare.

davidf18 12y ago

They should move to Manhattan, where I live. Google already owns the third largest building with 2,800,000 sq feet. With our fantastic subway system, whatever they would rent/build would be a far, far, greener and environmental solution than have 20,000 employees commute by car (or the controversial Google Bus). BTW, the old World Trace Center Towers 1 and 2 held 50,000 employees. The reason for the increasing price of housing has to do with overly restrictive zoning codes and not the demand. The zoning creates artificial scarcity and it is the scarcity and the increasing costs of land that results that is the cause for increasing home prices. Using politics to create artificial scarcity through this "rent seeking" is a means of taking wealth from others as opposed to wealth creation which benefits all. In an efficient market, there would not be the zoning code restrictions that limit housing density (see Harvard Economist Edward Glaeser's writings for more info).

virtuallynathan 12y ago
Yea, 111 8th Ave, most of which (afaik) is a datacenter. They've been kicking out the datacenter tenants when their leases end.
- jedc 12y ago
  > most of which (afaik) is a datacenter Ha! Nope. While there has been some datacenter space in the building, the vast majority is office space. (It's way cheaper to build data centers in Iowa and the Carolinas than in Manhattan!) Google has been taking over more and more office space as leases end, though. It makes for quite a confusing office map to get from floor to floor. (Lots of partial office floors don't connect well to other partial office floors.)

Lewisham 12y ago

One thing that this article doesn't mention is that Mountain View is soul-crushingly boring. It would be one thing if it was a place of character and interest that was being eroded (I can sympathize with some elements of the SF community on that front), but it is not and it never was. It's a boring suburb with no identifiable features. Palo Alto, Los Gatos and Santa Cruz and other towns have something to them. I don't understand what the "residentialists" are trying to protect. I'd love to live nearer the Googleplex, but I wouldn't move into Mountain View. Disclaimer: I work for Google, but I had this opinion of MTV far before joining them, and I have no voting rights in MTV politics. I live in Santa Cruz and much prefer it.

mark_l_watson 12y ago
I worked at Google MTV in 2013 and my wife and I thought that Mountain View had a lot to offer: good restaurants, bookstores, shopping, and the nice (huge!) movie theatre complex very close to the building where I worked. San Francisco, Santa Cruz, San Jose, and Monterey were all close for more entertainment. My only complaint was that it cost us $6000+ per month to live there. I quit and went back home to Arizona where my income is smaller but the cost of living is very inexpensive.
- ojbyrne 12y ago
  Also Shoreline Amphitheatre, which regularly gets reasonably good concerts.
  - DannyBee 12y ago
    Except that they completely ruined the sound there in order to protect the houses that got built too close to it.
    - muzz 12y ago
      Where are the houses that are close to the amphitheater?

thrillgore 12y ago

If Google thinks this will be an issue dealing with Mountain View, they'll just go with a whole new location. This isn't brinksmanship.

jdmichal 12y ago
Because I'm sure those 20,000 employees are all just waiting with their bags packed ready to follow Google where ever they decide to settle down... Or that they are all completely fungible and just picking up another 20,000 somewhere else won't interrupt operations at all.
- brandon 12y ago
  It's not necessary to forklift the entire population of 20,000 employees when you have the option to grow elsewhere in the region. You might be surprised to hear that a significant number of Google employees in Mountain View were recently moved to a new campus outside of the city, and it wasn't exactly an opt-in affair.
- skuhn 12y ago
  Yes, they will follow Google to Sunnyvale or Cupertino or any other of the five to ten towns within a 20 mile drive from Mountain View. No one is so beholden to their almost indistinguishable south bay suburb that they wouldn't venture across the border to go to work -- these towns are 20 square miles at best.
  - jdmichal 12y ago
    My original understanding of the post I was replying to was hinting at a much bigger move than 20 miles. Upon rereading it, I potentially erroneously added that context within my own head.
    - skuhn 12y ago
      Makes sense, it does seem like they would have a harder time retaining people if they moved to Boise. That would be pretty sweet if a giant tech company like Google packed up and left Silicon Valley. It's going to take big moves like that to get a real exodus rolling.

smutticus 12y ago

As a bay area resident who regularly has to listen to people whine about 'all them outsiders moving in', I have no sympathy for the residents of MV. Build some dense housing around here and stop whining. We don't all need ranch homes with 3 parking spaces. Build up, build dense, and build mass transit. > “Our problem is that we have too many good jobs,” said Leonard M. Siegel, a 66-year-old environmental activist who was recently elected to the City Council. “Everyone else wishes they were in our situation, but it’s a crisis for the people here.” If this person is actually an environmentalist then they should welcome my message of build up, build dense, and build mass transit. Per-capita carbon production goes down as density goes up. Low-density urban living, think suburbs, are terrible at keeping per-capita carbon production low. An actual environmentalist would welcome an opportunity to develop dense urban environments free from a reliance on fossil fuels. If you want to have a low carbon footprint; live in a place like Manhatten, eat vegan, sell your car and don't travel. In other words, if you claim to want environmental policy, you should be working to make that lifestyle accessible to more people. > “Nobody wants change,” said Gilbert Wong, a councilman in Cupertino, Apple’s hometown. I'm sure if I told this person they were a conservative they would take offense. But what other way is there to read this? These people are misappropriating the term conservationist. We're interested in protecting the trees, not your lawn. Places like Mountain View or Palo Alto could be examples of a new kind of sustainable dense urban living. Instead they're completely wedded to automobiles and a mid 19th century obsession with detached home ownership.

tsax 12y ago
Exactly. It's a travesty that Silicon Valley looks like a suburb in 2015. It should've been a great example of a dense, clean, urban region, which would also mitigate the commuter problems and the pressure on San Francisco rents.
- rhino369 12y ago
  I was shocked when I first visited Silicon Valley. It looked like Skokie, IL. Arlington, VA is an example of a suburb who successfully created a densish environment by building a subway corridor.

bootload 12y ago

"... That success has brought Mountain View loads of tax dollars and a 3.3 percent unemployment rate, as well as skyrocketing home prices and intolerable gridlock. Good and bad, tech is responsible for most of it ..." Now if you can figure out how to decentralise corporations, imagine the amount of time, space and resources you could save. hint: why do digital companies still require a workforce to all meet at one physical location, every day?

pm24601 12y ago

MOST COMMENTATORS ON THIS THREAD ARE WRONG Wow. As a non-Googler, Mountain View resident who owns a home, I can say that the vast majority of the commenters mischaracterize problem, Lenny Siegel and the MV City Council, Google and everything. I should also add that I regularly attend CC meetings,etc. Basic background: 1) Google until recently basically ignored Mountain View south of 101. Until recently Google didn't own anything south of 101. 2) Google is not going anywhere. Mountain View is right next to Moffett Air field. This is where Larry and Sergey park their 767 ( http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/11/googles-3-top-executives-have-8-private-jets/ http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/11/googles-3-top-executives-ha... ) - Maybe Sunnyvale would be an alternative but I really doubt there are too many spots where L and S can be in walking distance of their 767. Furthermore Google is leasing a shit ass land from NASA to expand on. 3) Its not just Google: Google, LinkedIn, Intuit, Symantec, all have HQs here. Microsoft/Nokia also have their research centers here. 4) Google, et.al. subsides all services at their HQ as a result outside retail/restaurants have pretty much died north of 101. This results in local business owners/voters complaining to city council. 5) Google woke up to the political problem when MV CC told Google that they were not going to be allowed build a connection bridge across Stevens Creek Trail for buses. ( a trail that MV residents worked 25 years to create ) 6) Google land purchases have resulted in increases in real-estate taxes, however Google generates NO sales tax revenue for the city. (same problem with the other companies) 7) Land in North Bayshore has gotten so expensive that there is serious talk about putting a building on top of the VTA North County Maintenance Yard. 8) Mountain View renters have seen Y/Y increases of about 20-25%. A 2 bedroom/2 bath apartment goes for $3300. 9) The city planners have gotten so many building requests that the city has no staff to deal with the requests. 10) The school districts have real problems keeping teachers - turnover for some schools runs 6-10%. 11) Non-tech workers are being forced out - you know people like teachers, waiters, security guards. The MV Building inspectors have found entire families living in a single room ( http://mv-voice.com/news/2013/07/26/high-cost-housing-creates-desperate-living-conditions http://mv-voice.com/news/2013/07/26/high-cost-housing-create... ) 12) The 3 new city council members are all pro-housing. The anti-housing candidates were rejected. Therefore comments along the lines of : stop whining and do something - well the new city council is doing something. Specifically, demanding that more housing gets built and less office space. We are trying to make room for the new people. In many cases these are our children. 13) Google to its credit is starting to throw some money at Mountain View Capital Improvement Project list to help out. 14) Google, Mountain View are working out a traffic management plan to reduce solo drivers - the whole of north bayshore is only accessible by 3 roads. Residents who live in north bayshore right now cannot get to/from their house between 8:30 and 10 and 4:30 and 6. I might add more to this list but I think this is a good start.