[EastBayHardCore]

Thought this could be relevant.

Published Sunday, August 27, 2006, by the San Jose Mercury News

Ex-industrial town seeks transformation

By Anna Tong
Mercury News

Longtime home of the Ford plant, Milpitas still looks the part. Rows
of adjacent railroad tracks that were once used to ship auto parts
in and out of the city still exist, though passing rail cars no
longer cause hourlong traffic gridlock as they did in the 1950s.
Heavy and light manufacturing plants dominate parts of the city.

Now, Milpitas is looking to radically change its look and image, by
intensely developing the area surrounding a proposed BART station,
in southern Milpitas between Interstates 680 and 880.

"We're trying to rebuild the city with a sense of destiny," said
Diana Whitecar, economic development manager for Milpitas.

The city has already approved preliminary plans in its "Milpitas
Transit Area Concept Plan," which would add 7,200 housing units,
800,000 to 1.2 million square feet of retail space, 500,000 to 1
million square feet of office, and 500 hotel rooms to Milpitas in
the next 20 to 30 years. The plan is part of the "Midtown Specific
Plan," which seeks to develop the parts of the city to keep up with
high population growth.

The future "Milpitas Transit Area" is currently as far from an urban
area as it gets -- it looks like a partly vacated blue-collar town.
One part consists of old company buildings that were almost
completely vacated when companies began outsourcing to other
countries, Whitecar said. Another section is devoted to various
types of heavy industry. The future BART station would be located
in a current truck parking lot. Almost all these areas would be
developed either into high-density apartments and condominiums or
mixed-use housing and retail.

Milpitas has no money budgeted for the development project. The
land is owned privately, and will be developed privately. But city
officials are confident that private developers will be eager to
start construction.

"Based on the level of interest we're seeing from the private
sector, I feel that it's feasible over an extended period of time,"
Whitecar said.

Much of the plan hinges on BART being extended. Then, residents
could take easily accessible public transportation to work, instead
of driving. There is currently a VTA light-rail station in the area,
but the BART extension would provide an essential connection between
the East Bay and the South Bay. For now, the plan is to gradually
develop the area as plans for the BART station are finalized.

Milpitas officials say the plan will go forward with or without the
BART station, and it looks as if the BART extension's future could
be in jeopardy: In June voters vetoed a half-cent sales-tax increase
that would have partly gone toward funding the BART extension.

Assuming the BART plans do follow through, preliminary traffic
modeling commissioned by the city showed that the traffic in the
area would increase 64 percent during morning rush hours and almost
100 percent during the evening rush hours. If the BART plans do not
follow through, the traffic in the area would increase by 13
percent, said Tom Williams, Milpitas' planning director.

"This plan is not wholly dependent on BART, but we're betting that
at some point BART will occur," Whitecar said.