When will they do a legitimate preliminary EIR to determine projected impacts on water consumption and sewage disposal? Seems to me more housing units with at least one toilet per unit will have a significantly greater impact on water demand than the mall as it stands today. The only thing the Council and staff have been considering is the housing requirement. Maybe double plumbing these new units will make a difference , but it will likely reduce the selling price/rent and desirability for these compartments. I think we are on the way to becoming Dublin in terms of ghetto housing projects. How many units will be low-income and subsidized by government programs? So many unaddressed issues. And staff seems to think the traffic load will not be impacted based on evening usage now that Nordstrom is closed? Get a grip. Even if some of the people in these 1400 units will take public transportation, the number of trips going in an out of the area will expand exponentially as they get services outside of their neighborhood (which we hope will happen as they populate schools, restaurants, stores, health services, etc.) and then the Uber and Lyft drivers will have to be accounted for as well as they thousands of deliveries at all hours of the day and night. How about doing a realistic impact report NOW before this gets so far down the process that lawsuits will be filed? Have we learned nothing from the Costco debacle?

Unless the city includes an elementary school at this site, there will be oodles of cars coming and going every school day to drop off and pick up. Just think of the math: around 1000 dwelling units = approx 3000 people, which will include many smaller humans who will require schooling. Don’t even start me on the water needs here!

I’m also concerned about the school system. I believe Donlon is the closest school and it’s already totally impacted. I do understand the states desire for more housing, but each unit brings other community stressors. Can our school system sustain this growth? What about water, roadways, electricity?

Turning Pleasanton into a suburb of Oakland!

I hope City Council reads ALL of the above comments. Excellent points!

When I moved into Pleasanton in 1969 there weren't any traffic issues or overcrowding in our schools. I know that there is progress in every city, and that the population will always grow. However, it seems that in these past years, the main concerns of our city government is to add more housing (apartment complexes seem to be what's up & coming). There is no way that more housing doesn't have an impact on our city! I've watched our once quaint Pleasanton already turn into a city with overcrowding in our schools and traffic issues (especially at start & end times of our schools). I don't have an issue with updating our mall; it's already there and brings revenue to our city. Updating it may bring some more traffic; building more housing brings a lot more permanent traffic throughout all hours of the day. I would hope that the people that we elected to take care of our city would be able to see the issues that we have been facing now are only going to get worse as we add thousands more of people to our little city.

Sounds like some of you haven't been paying attention. The city is now scrambling to catch up to state requirements for adding housing units because of their refusal to follow the law in past years. There may be plenty to fault our City Council for, but putting housing at the now nearly derelict Stoneridge Mall isn't one of them.
Did any of the previous commentators attend even one of the several Stonridge Framework meetings? Are any of them familiar with what the current discussions are even about?
Overcrowded schools? Actually most studies cite lower school enrollment as the big problem. And multi-family housing is most likely to appeal to couples or young, single folks with no children.
As for traffic, the idea is to put this kind of housing near a transit hub, aka Bart. Besides, bicycles and pedestrians are being encouraged as traffic upgrades are included. Additionally, there are retail units to be included, so residents can walk or bike nearby for their shopping.
If our city officials hadn't caved to NIMBYism and complied instead of suing and losing the numeric housing battle a few years back, we wouldn't be in this quandary now.
While a lot of shirts and knickers are in knots over too many toilets, facts seem to verify that it's all those green lawns and leaky sprinklers in our landscape that are the bane of water meters. Consolidating into multi-family dwellings plus new, water-conserving landscape requirements mitigate that. Not to mention more efficient laundry and dishwashing equipment. Besides, the water agency has always planned for far greater requirements for water at buildout than appears now to be the case. Conservation has become the byword, and recognizing we need to use less is finally sinking in. Water is in reality not an excuse for halting construction.
And finally, let's initiate the return of the yellow school bus. Imagine how many daily trips could be saved! Now that's a bandwagon we should all jump on!

Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA) of 5,965 new units.

Pleasanton Mall Site Up to 1,170 housing units proposed

Math :
1170 Mall Units / 5965 PTown Housing Units = ~ 20% of PTOWN Housing Element Distribution

5965 PTown Housing Units - 1170 Mall Units = 4795 Units remaining to be accounted for.

4795 Units / Rough Estimate ~16 or 17 Remaining Sites to Develop Properties to add housing equals roughly 192 Units per Site.

Why do the 17 remaining site have to contribute such a fraction of the share to the housing element when the Mall is being required to place 20% of the units.

Please explain to me how this is "Fair' and "Equitable".
Yours Truly,
Dave

@Dave. It has to do with parcel size. Stoneridge Mall site is much, much larger. Units per acre have been taken into consideration in all the sites.

keeknlinda, you are wrong about the schools. Of course, so is the district. There is a plan for adding classrooms to Donlon, a school that is well over the 700 students promised. As for school buses, it won’t happen. The buses are expensive and adding personnel to the budget won’t work either. This is going to be interesting to watch unfold.

Dave,

Actually, the numbers are worse. Our RHNA requires a total of 5956 units to be zoned for various housing. However, before the approval last week, the city already had 2792 units zoned or in the “pipeline” leaving a shortfall of 3173 units (see Staff Report page 9 here Web Link ) On 1/26 the Council approved 1150 units for Stoneridge, but there is currently 360 units in the review and approval process, so the actual total is 1510. With the Density Bonus provision, this number could easily surpass 2000 at Stoneridge. So 2000 divided into the 3173 surplus is 63% of the needed new units will be at Stoneridge Mall. And lets not kid ourselves: the city can zone sites for low income housing, but they have no way to enforce it. So most of this new housing will be affluent tech worker housing. This is what’s behind the states’ push to force all this new housing on cities.

There’s a very good reason that the council is dumping all these new units at Stoneridge. I'll make a second post with the email I sent to the Council the day before they approved this abomination that explains it.

My email to the Council prior to their approval of the Stonmeridge Framework and the Housing element:

Dear Mayor and Council,

Congratulations on your complete selling out of the residents in the northwest part of Pleasanton! After approving Costco, and its accompanying traffic, air quality, and picking of the taxpayers’ pockets nightmare, you will drive the final nail in the coffin with your all-but-certain approval of the Stoneridge Mall expansion project tonight. Putting most of the RHNA-required housing at the mall site is a convenient and easy way to deal with this issue. Since you split council District 1 into two pieces with absolutely nothing in common, you have effectively disenfranchised the Muirwood and Val Vista neighborhoods. You will keep yourself immune from political blowback from this decision. Most of you will become heroes because you saved your own neighborhoods from the high-density housing onslaught (which has nothing to do with affordability and everything to do with tech worker housing). Only Jeff Nibert will be at risk, but since most people have limited attention spans, they will probably forget when he runs for re-election in 3 ½ years. But this was the plan all along, right?

I remember the Tarver-Pico years when the City Council took neighborhood and community impacts into account when making development decisions. Somewhere along the way, the tipping point probably being Costco, it is now more about business owner and developer profits and perceived tax revenue for the city. The Staff Report is startling, with significant discussion about the property owner’s views, “letting the market decide” type comments, and providing "incentives" (more tax breaks for big business?) and only an aside about neighborhood comments “in Attachment 4”.

When this expansion is complete, and the traffic turns out to be much worse than the model's project, will calls be renewed to build the West Las Positas Interchange?

Tri Valley already has a big air pollution problem along with a traffic issue. Dublin just recently approved of a similar project towards the East side so this is only going to get worse. I'm going to take a guess and say these housing units will be more cultural enrichment? Because I know the changing demographics here have ruined these cities.

Pleasanton is a small city and becoming more and more crowded every year.

Traffic is horrendous at certain times of the day and evening... parking is ridiculous.

Growing means over-crowding.

Picking up school kids and dropping them off is insane at best. It was bad enough years ago when I did it.

It's all plain to see, so why does more housing builds continue to happen?? There has to be a limit, right?!

Time to consider moving out of Pleasanton I guess...

I remember when Carla and half these council members ran for office on the idea that we should be keeping jobs here in Pleasanton and stop rezoning areas for commuters. Instead we’re changing the zoning to include more housing units for people who work elsewhere and creating jobs that no one really wants. This council lacks integrity and I’m sad to see the community we’ve lived in for two generations turn into the rest of the east bay.

It appears that the impacted school that will need to deal with the new additional kids that will live in this area are:

Lydiksen Elementary
Thomas Hart Middle
Foothill High

Unfortunately for me, all 3 school are where my kids is going to / will go to.

There are already huge problems with traffic during pick up / drop off at Lydiksen. Am not looking forward to what 1170 more units will bring as well as potential crime problems that comes with high density housing

I see that the NIMBYs are out in force here. Claudette, you can't build a wall around a town once you move there and keep everyone else out. Somebody probably didn't want your house to be built either. When does that end? Joseph, we don't have an air pollution problem here. The air is cleaner than it's been in decades. They measure it. They're also isn't a problem with water beyond what is caused by people refusing to build capacity in order to keep people from moving here.

I want my children to be able to afford houses near me. I'm glad my house was built 35 years ago here. Some people wanted to stop that too.

Maybe it is time for some people to move if they can't stand the thought of more people moving in. You'll get a nice premium on your house.

Yes in my backyard. Housing at stoneridge near public transportation is a very good idea.

Water issues are an excuse plain and simple. Pleasanton refuses to build more water capacity specifically so it can be used as an excuse not to build housing. That's on Pleasanton.