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Stanford Trails Update
 
by Jeff Segall

A jogger negotiates the path alongside passing cars on busy Alpine Road trail photo Ginger Holt

On December 13, 2005, the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors voted 4 to 1 to accept Stanford University's public hiking trails plan. For CGF representatives and others who had followed the Stanford trails issue closely for the past five years the outcome was thoroughly disappointing but hardly surprising.

Unanswered questions
However, those present who were new to the controversy or were unfamiliar with the many threads of this tangled saga came away with many questions. For example:

• Why did the supervisors agree to put one of the proposed trails in neighboring San Mateo County — rejecting without debate, an alternative that would spend the money on improving trails and other recreational facilities in their own county?
   
• Why did the board approve this plan that is strikingly similar to a plan it found unacceptable nearly four years earlier?
   
• Why did the lone no vote come from Supervisor Liz Kniss, who represents the area affected by the plan, and why were her fellow supervisors unwilling or unable to support her on this issue?
   
• Why, on an issue that had dragged on for years, did Stanford wait until literally a few hours before the hearing to offer a new "compromise?"
   
• How was the Palo Weekly able to predict, not just the outcome, but also the exact vote a week in advance?
   
• Who was Supervisor Pete McHugh referring to when, in apparent reference to a remark much earlier during public testimony about "Stanford's bullying tactics", McHugh replied, "There's a bully here today, but it's not Stanford." (That enigmatic remark was essentially the only comment from any of the supervisors aside from Supervisor Kniss before the vote.)

Although explaining the logic behind Supervisor McHugh's comment is well beyond the abilities of this author, we can find the answers to the rest of these questions by examining the events that brought us to this point.

Looking back in time
Back in 2000, Stanford was celebrating approval of the GUP. The university gained the right to expand its campus by more than 30% in ten years, an expansion that was not opposed by community or environmental groups. However, in exchange for this huge development entitlement, Stanford agreed to a few significant mitigations and other concessions, and these measures were causing senior decision-makers at Stanford some unease.

Why the trails came to be
One key mitigation was to give up land for two trails that Santa Clara County had planned that would cross university land. The trails were required to mitigate for the recreational needs of future Stanford residents as well as for the broader community impacted by the growth-inducing impacts from the university expansion. The GUP specified that the trail issue be settled within one year of the GUP signing. Other measures included a sustainability study that would shape how the university could grow in the future.

Most colleges and universities in the 21st century understand that local governments and communities have a say in determining land use policies; however, Stanford appeared unwilling to accept this new reality.

Longtime CGF Legislative Advocate Lennie Roberts recalls that back in the 80's, she served on an advisory panel Stanford had convened to discuss the proper balance between academic needs, housing, and open space protection. After meeting regularly for two years, Stanford's Vice President for Finance announced to the panel that the university was willing to agree to some limits on its developments. When pressed for specifics, he stated that Stanford might consider forswearing development in creek beds for up to five years. Some 20 years later, Roberts smiles at the arrogance and audacity of the remark.

The GUP requirement that Stanford surrender land for the community, even the small amount required for a trail, was especially irksome. Moreover, policy makers for the university appear to have recognized that the trail matter would set the tone for the negotiations with the county on other GUP conditions.

How Stanford got the trail plan it wanted
Stanford's first move was to insist that the trails be located at the very edges of Stanford property, and in the case of one of the two trails, largely off Stanford land altogether. The second move was a public relations campaign to try to frame the issue in a favorable light, and to the extent possible, deflect criticism. Of course, both of these strategies are common for developers of all stripes who strive to get out of commitments made solely to win project approvals.

And yet Stanford has arrows in its quiver that other developers don't. One is its ability to wave around large sums of money from staggeringly deep pockets. Another is a small but loyal cadre of faculty and alums who are quite happy to repeat university talking points and half-truths. But the one that Stanford used most effectively in this case is patience.

Indeed, patience was the key to Stanford's getting approval for the trail plan in December. As previously noted, the approved plan was very similar to one the same group of supervisors unanimously refused to accept four years earlier. Don Kazak, writer for the Palo Alto Weekly, concluded his recent story on the trails with: "That's how Stanford wins — with lawyers, money and a will to outlast its critics."

When will the public be walking the trails?
No doubt patience will be a key part of Stanford's approach to the next phase of the trails story. Although we are five years into an issue that both Stanford and Santa Clara County committed to settle in one year, the Stanford trail saga is not over. Far from it. As this issue goes to press, CGF and others are considering whether to pursue litigation against Santa Clara County's approval of the trail agreements with Stanford.

Even if there is no litigation, Santa Clara County gave Stanford up to 7 years to reach agreement with San Mateo County and Portola Valley to make improvements in the existing sidewalk along Alpine Road as a way to meet its requirement for one of the two trails. San Mateo County officials have promised a full process of evaluation of the trail, and there is significant opposition from affected residents. Stanford seems likely to doggedly pursue approval for the Alpine Sidewalk, if for no other reason than to insure that the trail obligation doesn't arise in future negotiations with Santa Clara County. As Stanford Weekend Acres resident Ginger Holt told the Mercury News, "We're just bracing ourselves for five to seven years of hell over here."

What has the public gained in the 2005 plan?
Although Stanford trails threatens to be a vexatious issue for many more years, the recent turn of events does offer us an opportunity to look at what has been accomplished and learned thus far. As noted above, since the trail agreement passed in December 2005 was similar to what was proposed in December 2001, one might conclude that the considerable efforts by CGF and others have proved fruitless. However, that assessment overlooks some improvements made to 2005 plan and other changes that have occurred, generally, with regard to Bay Area trails.

First, the 2001 plan included an alternate trail route that ran through the riparian corridor and the Stanford golf course, and there was suspicion that a trail in this location would be used as a pretext for the relocation of the golf course farther from the main campus and development of the present golf course location. The riparian corridor trail is not in the 2005 plan.

Second, the 2005 plan has a fix for one major shortcoming in the 2001 plan — a lack of connection to Palo Alto's Pearson Arastradero Preserve.

Third, the 2005 plan includes funds for improving a trail from the Arastradero Road-Purissima intersection, where it leaves Stanford lands, over to the Preserve in the town of Los Altos Hills. This circuitous route along roads is not the one envisioned at the beginning of the process and is far from ideal, but it does make the sought-after connection.

Finally, the attention that CGF and others brought to the Stanford trails issue had the additional benefit of raising public awareness of the whole Bay-to-Ridge trail system of which the Stanford trails are segments. This enhanced public awareness helped influence the Palo Alto City Council to open Foothills Park to non-resident hikers entering from the Arastradero and Los Trancos Preserves. This action brought the Bay-to-Ridge trail dream a large step closer to reality.

Where do we go from here?
However, it cannot be denied that community pressure lost out to Stanford's prestige, money and clout. For the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors to say no to Stanford would have taken great political courage. All supervisors aside from Liz Kniss didn't find that courage, in large part because they had little to fear from the voters. The trails may have been in the news in northern Santa Clara and southern San Mateo counties, but not in the rest of Santa Clara County, where the other four supervisor's constituents reside.

In order to change the political calculus on Stanford issues, it is now clear that we will need to reach out to constituencies and individuals throughout Santa Clara County and build a bigger, broader, and more powerful coalition.

Published April 2006 in Green Footnotes.

Page last updated September 13, 2010.