In an interview Tuesday afternoon before he was officially named mayor of Mountain View, Lenny Siegel said he believes the City Council already has set a good course for the coming year.
He said major issues facing the city are housing, transportation and protecting residents against the anti-immigrant actions of the Trump administration.
“We’ve already pretty much set a course on building a lot of not just housing, but new, denser neighborhoods, expanding the housing supply significantly,” he said. “We just have to make sure that it is done right. Mountain View, at least, is trying to solve the regional housing crisis.”
A key to accomplishing that is the recently approved precise plan for the North Bayshore area, where almost 10,000 new homes are to be built along with new office space and retail uses, Siegel said.
Residential buildings there will be allowed to be as tall as 15 stories.
“Not all the buildings will be that tall,” Siegel noted. “It’s not going to be a monolithic development. Mountain View already has a couple of 11-story buildings that nobody seems to notice. The development won’t be overwhelming.
“We’re trying to set an example in building mixed-use neighborhoods that are walkable. Given the challenges of traffic and reducing traffic, it’s the only way to go,” he added.
And what comes along with that new development — in North Bayshore and elsewhere in the city — is the need for improved transportation, Siegel said.
More bicycle lanes have already been installed, Siegel said, and the city will continue that trend.
In fact, Siegel — who is often seen riding his bicycle around the town and carries his helmet into meetings as a way to bring attention to biking — said he plans to hold monthly “Rides with Lenny,” so that “people can see the state of our bicycle infrastructure.”
“I find we get a different perspective of the city at the speed of a bicycle,” he said.
The city meanwhile has initiated studies on automated transportation for one or two corridors leading from North Bayshore to the Castro Street downtown area.
“Mountain View has become a destination city,” Siegel said. “But we can’t add any more cars to downtown Mountain View. There’s no space for them.”
That’s why the city is developing what Siegel called a “conceptual master plan” for creating a multimodal transportation center at Castro Street to become a gateway. There’ll be underground parking, offices, retail and residences above. Caltrain and and Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority’s light rail already use the station, and a new automated system from North Bayshore would also connect there.
Siegel said the city has been studying different automated transportation systems, including an elevated monorail, and is hoping to develop some sort of public-private partnership to pay for it.
Some council members have been talking with their counterparts from the cities of Cupertino and Sunnyvale about extending such a system along Highway 85.
“In other cities and countries,” Siegel said, “transportation has been built by such partnerships. Transit has to be paid for by companies like Google and Apple — they are generating the traffic, they are the ones that will benefit from the transportation, and they have money.
“Google is responsible for a lot of our problems,” Siegel said, “but Google usually steps up and tries to help solve the problems. Apple has a very poor record of contributing to local communities.”
Siegel expressed pride in the activism he sees in Mountain View, especially regarding the protection of immigrant rights.
“After Trump declared his immigration ban, a bunch of us, about a thousand, went to the San Francisco airport to protest it, on a Monday,” Siegel said. “The next day, I gave a speech at Google in Mountain View. It was a rally, organized by Google employees, and supported by management. There were 2,000 people there. The same chants, the same signs as at the airport, but fewer gray hairs.
“The tech workers, the younger tech workers, the driving force of the industry, represent a fresh air politically in this area. I hesitate to say ‘progressive,’ because the whole left-right spectrum idea is out of date. …. But, yes, there is support from my generation, but also a lot of support from younger tech workers. …
“I was an activist at Stanford in the ’60s,” Siegel said. “Back in the ’60s, Stanford and Palo Alto were centers of activism. It’s interesting to see people with activist backgrounds, companies, the Chamber of Commerce, all have similar positions on Trump and immigration. The companies value the contributions of immigrants from all over the world.
“And Mountain View has stood up, to challenge the Trump administration and the Republican Congress
on these issues. I suspect we’ll have to keep doing it,” Siegel said.
