Dense apartment complex has been proposed for East Whisman neighborhood

A 407-unit apartment complex project poised to be one of the densest and tallest residential developments in Mountain View is moving closer to being built after making several design changes.

First proposed in 2018 as a 412-unit, 116-foot-tall residential building on a 2.5-acre site at 400 Logue Ave. to replace a dilapidated suburban office park in the city’s East Whisman neighborhood, the project is likely to go through even more changes before it reaches the City Council.

The building — now revised to 95 feet tall — is not the only high-density housing project the city is taking on: A 583-unit apartment complex on San Antonio Road is under construction, as are the 623unit apartments under construction at California Street and San Antonio Road.

But despite housing less people, neither project is as dense as the one Miramar Capital is proposing for 400 Logue Ave. Prometheus Capital’s 583-unit building is just over 102 units per acre and the 623-unit apartments is about 73 units per acre. Miramar intends to cram 160 units per acre, most of them studios and one-bedroom apartments.

Wednesday, the city’s Development Review Committee took up the new proposed development and voted to move it forward with a few technical changes to the architectural rendering; the first time since 2018 that the project has been under review.

Once the developer makes the necessary changes, the review committee will take up the issue again. Associate Planner Lindsey Hogan said the project could go before the City Council in the first quarter of 2021, though it’s unknown whether the ongoing coronavirus pandemic will affect city review schedules.

Development Review Committee chairperson and deputy zoning administrator Rebecca

Shapiro said the project they saw Wednesday had “substantial revision since 2018.” Originally, the plan called for two buildings, one seven stories and the other 11 stories.

Now the main buildings will be uniformly eight stories tall. The project now includes 42,000 square feet of transferable development rights given to Miramar Capital after it struck a deal with the Los Altos School District. Council members had agreed in January 2018 to allow the district to sell the rights to build high-density projects to offset the cost of buying land for new school and district facilities.

With the new added square footage from the deal, the project will now be about 430,000 square feet.

“The original project just wasn’t going to be feasible to develop,” Shapiro said, noting that the developer has been facing financing issues. “They’ve now transitioned to a square building with different construction and exclusively apartment units. The site plan has changed substantially.”

The project largely conforms to the new zoning rules for East Whisman that the council approved in November 2019 and includes 62 apartments for low- and middle-income families. It also provides 420 parking spaces, or about one space per twobedroom apartments. Normally, the city’s rules would call for two spaces per twobedroom unit.

Though it is controversial among some residents as being too tall, too dense and too unlike other developments in Mountain View, Shapiro said the community overall has been very supportive to add housing to the city’s employment centers.

“We don’t usually have folks go to DRC meetings, but a few residents attended and gave great input,” Shapiro said. “These new residential buildings are fairly high intensity for the area, so everyone is really interested in making sure the design puts its best foot forward.”