Green Foothills celebrated an important victory in October 2023, when Santa Clara County approved a 99-year extension of the requirement that development in the Stanford foothills must have a supermajority vote of the Board of Supervisors. The requirement has been in place since 2000 but was slated to expire less than a year from now in 2025. Nonetheless, Stanford continues to assert its right to eventually develop these pristine lands. This victory was just the latest chapter in our decades-long effort to protect the thousands of acres of Stanford University-owned open space – an effort that goes back to Green Foothills’ founding and that will continue as long as our organization exists.
“Keep Factories Out of the Foothills”
In the 1950s, Stanford University decided to begin developing hundreds of acres of rural open space south of the Stanford campus for industrial research. The Stanford Industrial Park, as it was then called, grew rapidly, extending westward towards Foothill Blvd (then a narrow winding road). In 1960, the city of Palo Alto annexed hundreds of acres of Stanford’s open space with the intent of using it for industrial development, leading to an attempt by local community members to overturn that decision by ballot measure referendum. Although that early effort failed, the movement to “keep factories out of the foothills” led to the creation of the Committee for Green Foothills (as we were originally named) in 1962.
Stanford continued to plan for industrial development in the foothills. In 1969, Green Foothills sued Stanford and the City of Palo Alto over attempts to develop scenic open space fields and Coyote Hill, located at the southwest corner of Page Mill Road and Foothill Blvd. That led to a landmark settlement whereby Coyote Hill was protected as open space for decades. Then, in 1985, Stanford stirred up controversy again, this time among its faculty and students with a plan to build the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in the foothills. Stanford ultimately abandoned that project.
First Protections for the Stanford Foothills
In 1998, Santa Clara County initiated a General Use Permit (GUP) process for Stanford’s future land development in the unincorporated parts of Santa Clara County. For the first time, all of these 4,000-plus Stanford-owned acres were subject to an overarching planning process. (Stanford also owns thousands of acres in unincorporated San Mateo County, Palo Alto, and other neighboring cities, to which the GUP process does not apply.)
The future of the approximately 2,300 acres of open space in the Stanford foothills was the subject of especially intense community debate. Stanford had always considered the foothills area as land it might one day want for purposes besides open space. The GUP process, however, presented Green Foothills and other environmental groups the opportunity to push for permanent protection of this land.
When the County approved the GUP in 2000, it also established the Stanford Community Plan, which provides detailed policies and restrictions on how Stanford land will be developed. One of the fundamental policies of the Community Plan was the establishment of an Academic Growth Boundary (AGB) – a line roughly following Junipero Serra Blvd that divides Stanford’s developed lands from the open space in the foothills. Under Community Plan policies, no development could be approved beyond the AGB without a supermajority (4/5) vote of the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors. Stanford wanted this supermajority requirement to last only 10 years, but the County ultimately decided upon 25 years.
Extending the Foothills’ Protection
By 2016, Stanford had built out most of the development approved in the 2000 GUP and applied to the County for a new GUP. However, conflicts quickly ensued over the County’s requirement that the impacts of proposed development be fully mitigated, especially with regard to housing and traffic. Stanford withdrew their GUP application at the last minute in 2019, shortly before the Board of Supervisors was preparing to vote on it.
With the supermajority vote requirement for the AGB set to expire in 2025, Green Foothills urged the County not to wait for Stanford to return with a revised GUP application, but to move forward with needed updates to the Stanford Community Plan. We advocated for the supermajority requirement to be made permanent, but County staff recommended a 99-year extension. We felt this was acceptable, but Stanford demanded an extension of no more than 25 years. They argued that extending the supermajority vote requirement for 99 years was too restrictive.
We countered Stanford’s arguments by pointing out that the supermajority vote requirement is not a total ban on development. We also noted that the County’s 2018 Sustainable Development Study Supplement found Stanford could nearly triple its current density without going beyond the AGB and without becoming any more densely developed than similar university campuses.
On October 17, 2023, the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors agreed with us and unanimously approved updates to the Stanford Community Plan that incorporated the 99-year extension.
Stanford Foothills Still Not Permanently Protected
Although this was a hard-fought and important victory, the foothills are not permanently protected. Stanford is expected to return at some point with a new GUP proposal for additional development. We hope that new development proposals will be located on the existing campus, but it will still only take a vote of four of the five Supervisors to approve development in the foothills outside the AGB.
Wallace Stegner, Green Foothills’ founding president, said “You don’t have to live in the hills, you don’t have to own any part of them, to feel their influence and have a stake in them.” These foothills are part of the heritage of everyone who cares about open space in our area, and we will continue to work to protect them.