https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/03/...d-vallco-mall/
Developer unveils new, long-awaited plans for dead Vallco Mall
Plan includes 2,402 housing units
A rendering shows what the proposed Vallco Town Center project in Cupertino would look like. The plan to redevelop the failing Vallco Mall includes 2,402 housing units, 400,000 square feet of retail space, 1.8 million square feet of office space and a 30-acre rooftop park. Developers submitted the proposal to Cupertino city officials Tuesday, March 27, 2018. (Courtesy of Sand Hill Property Company)
A rendering shows what the proposed Vallco Town Center project in Cupertino would look like. The plan to redevelop the failing Vallco Mall includes 2,402 housing units, 400,000 square feet of retail space, 1.8 million square feet of office space and a 30-acre rooftop park. Developers submitted the proposal to Cupertino city officials Tuesday, March 27, 2018. (Courtesy of Sand Hill Property Company)
By Marisa Kendall |
mkendall@bayareanewsgroup.com | Bay Area News Group
PUBLISHED: March 27, 2018 at 2:00 pm | UPDATED: March 27, 2018 at 2:48 pm
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CUPERTINO — Fed up with years of false-starts and controversy, the owner of defunct Vallco Mall on Tuesday went over city officials’ heads to push through a new proposal that aims to turn the failed shopping center into a downtown destination combining shopping, housing and office space.
Vallco Town Center, as the plan is called, envisions a thriving community space where people from Cupertino and beyond will come to browse their favorite stores, take in a movie, picnic with their families or even play sports. Mixed into the project will be 2,402 residential units, half of which will be reserved for low-income residents — a major boost to the housing stock in a city where booming job growth and sluggish housing creation has driven the cost of renting or buying a home through the roof.
Developers plan to do it all without giving Cupertino’s city leaders a chance to say no. Sand Hill Property Company on Tuesday submitted an application for the project under SB 35, a new housing-focused state law that requires California cities to approve certain residential and mixed-use projects — cutting out the opportunity for the political delays Sand Hill says have bogged down its Vallco redevelopment efforts for four years.
“It has now gotten to a point where we do not have any confidence that this process can come to a conclusion in a timely manner,” said Reed Moulds, managing director of Sand Hill Property Company. “This housing crisis needs to be resolved in a manner that actually provides near-term solutions, and sites like this have an opportunity to do a lot of good for the housing situation.”
But the Vallco Town Center plan isn’t likely to get a warm reception from Cupertino residents who have sought to slow the city’s growth, concerned about stressing local infrastructure. The Better Cupertino political action group, for example, has fought against turning Vallco into a major office and housing project.
More than two-thirds of Vallco Town Center would be made up of residential units, but the project also would include 1.8 million square feet of office space and 400,000 square feet of retail. The plan is a significant shift from the original Hills at Vallco project proposal Sand Hill floated in 2015. That plan called for 2.4 million square feet of office space, 640,000 square feet of retail and 800 housing units — 10 percent of which would have been affordable. But the new plan keeps a signature component of the old Hills vision — the 30-acre rooftop park.
Sand Hill says the new proposal also reduces the impact on traffic by 25 percent compared to the Hills plan, by bringing housing closer to where people work.
Vallco city officials have 180 days to approve the proposal under SB 35, assuming it meets the city’s big-picture zoning and planning requirements — which Moulds says it does.
Vallco Town Center will have the feel of a bustling downtown, Moulds said. Retail stores will line Stevens Creek Boulevard, and two shopping streets — ideal for walking and biking — will cut through the middle of the project, leading to a town center. There will be several blocks of housing throughout the project, including a few towers that could reach as tall as 22 stories. Underground, Sand Hill plans to create 10,500 parking spaces.
“We envision this being an exciting place to be — day and night,” Moulds said.
Built in the 1970s as a state-of-the-art shopping center, Vallco began to falter 10 years later when competitor Valley Fair, now owned by Westfield, opened in nearby Santa Clara. Vallco’s decline continued with the rise of online shopping, and its stores began to shutter — the mall lost its Macy’s and Sears in 2015, its J.C. Penney closed in 2016, and the AMC movie theater closed this month — though AMC will reopen if a plan to redevelop Vallco is approved by the end of this year, Moulds said.
Today the mall is a ghost town of empty store fronts, many shut with metal gates. The escalators have stopped moving, the vast parking lots and garages are abandoned, and few people walk the vacant hallways to get to the handful of amenities still open — an ice rink, a bowling alley and a Chinese restaurant.
Sand Hill Property Company bought Vallco in 2014, with the intention of redeveloping it into a mixed-use complex. The developer spent nearly a year getting input from the community, and in 2015 unveiled plans for the Hills at Vallco.
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Those plans were derailed when the Better Cupertino political action committee introduced a ballot measure, known as Measure C, to reserve the Vallco site for commercial development only. Sand Hill responded with Measure D, which asked voters to approve the Hills at Vallco plan. Both measures lost in the November 2016 election. Moulds says voters may have felt the Hills proposal provided too much office space and not enough housing, an imbalance that could further exacerbate the housing shortage felt in Cupertino and throughout the Bay Area.
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Sand Hill re-started its work on Vallco in October, and city officials agreed to analyze Cupertino’s general plan and come up with some alternatives for the site.
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But Moulds says the re-started process has been fraught with delays and politics similar to what derailed the Hills project. In November, Cupertino’s City Council considered changing Vallco’s zoning to allow for retail development only, he said. Officials didn’t go through with the change, but Moulds said it made his team lose faith in the process. Meanwhile, he says, Better Cupertino seems to be gearing up to continue fighting against housing and office development at Vallco.
“It’s quite clear this group is really going to stop at nothing,” Moulds said, “to prevent Vallco from being reinvented as a mixed-use destination.”
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