Affordable housing development continues to attract interest in the City of Mountain View with Palo Alto-based Alta Housing winning approval from the city council to develop an 105-unit 100 percent affordable residential building complex. The property will replace a portion of a storage facility donated by Public Storage located at 1020 Terra Bella Avenue. The 7-story building will be built over an area of 156,522 square feet, or approximately 1.04 acres of land.
The affordable housing project has been designed by the award-winning architecture and urban design firm Van Meter Williams Pollack based in San Francisco, Denver, and Minneapolis. According to the architects’ project design materials, the Terra Bella housing project will consist of a total of 105 units, split into one, two, and three-bedroom units. The building’s frontage along Terra Bella Avenue will provide street-level entry and private stoops to six 2 and 3-bedroom units. Above these units, there will be an 11,000-square-foot landscaped outdoor patio for residents, who will be able to access it from private residences on the same level. Other amenities include in-building laundry, community room with a kitchen, and a conference room.
The development will also include 102 parking spaces and 105 bicycle storage spaces, while the building structure will provide a buffer from traffic noise from the nearby US Highway 101. The property will also include drought tolerant and local landscaping as well as energy efficient appliances.
Alta Housing (previously Palo Alto Housing) has been building residential projects for people of diverse economic backgrounds to thrive since 1970. The communities consist of healthcare workers, seniors, veterans, school support staff, clerical workers, construction workers, waiters and waitresses, and postal service employees. In addition to housing, Alta Housing offers a Resident Service Program that includes classes and workshops for children and adults, summer programs for students, family nights, holiday events, job coaching, parent support, fitness classes, English as a Second Language classes, computer literacy, along with senior wellness services.
The Terra Bella development, in addition to Alta’s Lot 12 development, is one of several recently approved housing projects in the City of Mountain View. The city’s community development department planning division released a development update in 2022, which included long-range policy planning projects. As a result, the most notable recently approved project in the area was the Middlefield Park Master Plan, which was proposed by Google and approved by the City Council in November 2022. The Middlefield Park Master Plan is set to transform a suburban office park into a thriving community focused on well-being, health and sustainability. The development will include 1,900 homes, 20 percent of which will be available at affordable below market rates. The project also includes over 12 acres of public open spaces, over 50,000 square feet of public retail and community space, carbon-free and all-electric office and residential buildings and several miles of new walking and cycling trails.
Some of the other long-range projects include the Downtown Precise Plan Update; a Multiple-Family Residential Zoning Code Update; and the East Whisman Impact Fee Nexus Study, which details planned transportation and utility infrastructure improvements for the East Whisman Precise Plan.
