One of the few remaining plots of land that harkens back to Sunnyvale’s pastoral days on N. Pastoria Avenue will be filled in with another office building.
The land at 479 N. Pastoria Ave. was agricultural up until the late 1950s. Since then, no planning or building applications have been associated with this site, according to city staff.
The proposed project will fill in a gap of land already surrounded by existing office buildings that were built throughout the late 1960s and into the 1990s.
The Sunnyvale City Council on July 15 approved the project, which will bring a 52,394-square-foot, four-story office building and a two-level parking garage.
The decision to approve the project comes in the middle of a Peery Park study, which is looking to define development standards in the area, develop area-wide traffic demand management strategies and potentially establish a development reserve and cap.
The study will continue in 2014 and public hearings to consider adoption of a Peery Park Specific Plan are anticipated in 2015. In the meantime, the council adopted an ordinance to allow for new applications in the area to be reviewed.
There have been several applications approved within the Peery Park area in the last two years, including an office building at 580 N. Mary Ave., the LinkedIn campus at Mathilda and Maude avenues, and two buildings of three and four stories across the street from the proposed building on Pastoria Avenue.
During the meeting, council members raised concerns about approving the project before the Peery Park study was completed, but agreed to move forward with the project with added conditions of approval.
Conditions included submitting a trip reduction program that results in a reduction of at least 20 percent total average daily trips and 25 percent peak hour trips; achieve a minimum LEED Gold level with efforts to achieve LEED Platinum level; and add a total minimum of nine bicycle parking spaces.
The final vote was 6-1, with Councilman Pat Meyering dissenting.
“Overall, I would prefer to see the Perry Park plan study done. Let’s understand all the cumulative things we’re going to ask all the new development of that area to be done as it relates to building design, [transportation demand management], traffic–all those things,” said Councilman Glenn Hendricks. “But separate from that, within the policy of the city, I think that this is a very good project.”
