PAMF’s planned location of the ambitious $120M, 270,000 square foot, 5 level structure at the edge and within the Sunnyvale Heritage District Neighborhood is an incompatible choice, according to many, as the site is not well-connected to the roadway network.
The site is surrounded by two-lane former “horse and buggy streets” residential Carroll, S Bayview, S Sunnyvale Ave and Old San Francisco Road, with limited access. It may be like jamming an endless number of sand particles through an hour-glass timer within the neighborhood and slowly waiting for the particles to sift through the narrow funnels.
NOTE: The street in front of the illustrated PAMF building is NOT a wide boulevard as drawn. It is currently two-laned Old San Francisco Road with stop signs at Cezanne and Bayview.
PAMF View Surrounded by Two-Lane Residential Streets
How long will it take to manage the thousands of vehicles per day as they slowly maneuver their way through the narrow streets managed by stop signs alone? Illingworth & Rodkin, Inc estimated that each vehicle would circulate in the garage for 10 min (5 minutes to enter, 5 minutes to exit).
What about outside the garage?
Josh Martin, speaking on behalf of the neighborhood group CARz (Citizens Address Rezoning), stated to the Council “our biggest concern is still the volume of traffic that will be flowing through our residential streets. The City has made no commitment to traffic mitigation, only to say they will study the problem and get back to the City with a report at the end of the year. It would be blind faith for the Heritage neighborhood to allow this project to be approved without approval from – – of the traffic mitigation for Carroll and Bayview. Two lane residential streets monitoring traffic by stop signs only.”
Councilmember David Whittum indicated a conflict as well stating, “there’s a basic problem with the site, which is it’s not well-connected to the roadway network, and that basically is a violation – proving this would violate our General Plan, where it says, “And required new development to be compatible with the neighborhood, adjacent land uses and the transportation system. This isn’t” PAMF002770
Without concrete solutions in hand, the Sunnyvale Planning conditioned PAMF to contribute just $50,000 to traffic calming devices throughout the neighborhood. To compare the values, the City, on the other hand, required PAMF to install $19M of public art, subject to review.
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