Battle brewing over building heights
Airport Commission has safety concerns; city, airport officials see higher tax revenue
With Google slated to build a massive campus in San Jose in the coming years and a development boom downtown, a fight is brewing over the possibility of allowing taller buildings near the airport.
The City Council is set to vote this month on whether to change the building height limits near Diridon Station and in the core of downtown.
Taller buildings, the city’s Office of Economic Development has argued, would bring in millions more in tax dollars each year and add new vibrancy to a city long known for its sprawl. The buildings, they say, will allow for more office space and housing higher up and shops and restaurants below.
Top airport officials, along with eager developers and business groups, have agreed.
But for the first time in recent memory, the city’s Airport Commission has broken with airport staff, suggesting the move could relegate Mineta San Jose International Airport to little more than a regional airport and lead to tragic accidents.
“From a safety standpoint, it’s almost unfathomable,” said Raymond Greenlee, a longtime Delta pilot and airport commissioner. “I think, unfortunately, the money is going to talk.”
But airport officials have rebuffed those accusations.
“We would not recommend anything that wasn’t safe,” Judy Ross, San Jose’s assistant director of aviation, said Friday at a meeting of the San Jose Downtown Association.
The city and airport officials are backing what’s been labeled Scenario 4, which would allow buildings to be 5 to 35 feet taller in the downtown core and 70 to 150 feet taller around Diridon Station.
The Federal Aviation Administration has guidelines meant to protect the airspace around the airport. Regardless of what action the city takes, those will have to be met.
Separately, each airline has its own procedure for what to do if there’s an emergency and an engine on a plane becomes inoperative, known as one engine inoperative, or OEI. If that happens, planes need to be able to get high enough to avoid obstacles, circle back and land.
Now, airlines can use a couple of corridors — one over downtown and one over the Diridon area — in case of an emergency.
With taller buildings in the area, airlines would have to make some adjustments, such as carrying fewer passengers or cargo or less fuel.
For the city, it’s an economic issue. And while taller buildings might reduce, for instance, the viability of long-haul flights to and from Asia, that’s a trade-off officials are willing to make.
“We’re not expected to compete with San Francisco, which has a substantial international market,” Ross said at a committee meeting in late January.
Ultimately, some airlines might have to bump passengers — which would mean providing hotel and food vouchers — or upgrade aircraft.
Councilman Johnny Khamis said he is concerned about the possible loss of international routes.
To offset airline losses, Ross suggested, San Jose could set up a program funded by local businesses and managed by a group like a chamber of commerce.
“It’s just good city planning,” Kim Walesh, the city’s director of economic development, said recently by phone.
Around Diridon especially, the change could result in about 8.6 million net square feet of new development and bring in billions in construction dollars. And, officials insist, there is no difference in safety.
But several commissioners worry that taller buildings will mean a higher risk of accidents. They’ve backed what’s been labeled Scenario 10B, which would preserve some of the current OEI procedures and allow somewhat taller buildings near Diridon, but not downtown.
“We’re human beings and humans make mistakes,” Greenlee said.
He’s also concerned about the city bowing to Google’s wishes.
In 2007, the city studied height limits and decided not to allow taller buildings. But this time, as they revisited the idea of raising height limits, the city hired a consultant to do a new study on the potential impact.
According to briefing notes for Mayor Sam Liccardo obtained by this news organization, the city coordinated “regularly” with Google and an OEI consultant the tech company itself hired.
Last summer, the city approved an agreement with Google, with the company paying the city $1.33 million to cover staff, consultants and other costs associated with the proposed development and planning for the Diridon Station area.
One possibility for spending $100,000 of those funds, the agreement said, was on an OEI consultant.
But, Walesh said, the “city did not in fact use any of the Google Service Reimbursement Funds to cover any of the expenses associated with the recent Airport Height Study; the study was paid for entirely out of airport funds.”
Google did not respond to a request for comment about the funds.
The idea, said Liccardo, who was a councilman in 2007, that Google alone convinced the city to consider changing height limits now is “wrong.”
The decision not to allow taller buildings in the mid-2000s, the mayor said, was economic. Back then, the airport was in a shaky spot financially, and forcing airlines to rethink their OEI policies could have led to major airlines abandoning their San Jose routes. Today, that’s unlikely.
And, Liccardo said, “having a pilot’s license doesn’t endow anyone with the expertise to overrule the extensive analysis undertaken by the FAA” and other industry experts.
Ross Aimer, a retired United Airlines pilot and the chief executive of Aero Consulting Experts, said San Jose should take a look at how other cities have fared before moving forward.
In San Diego, he said, a tall parking garage near the airport has proven problematic.
“Pilots have been complaining,” Aimer said. “It makes it very difficult.”