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I I I I II Following further discussion the Board unanimously voted for the Chamber to support this proposal." Mr. Manuel said transportation and housing were the most important concerns of businesses in this area, and the Chamber felt this development was a great opportunity to fill that need. Mr. Manuel said he grew up at 2314 Roosevelt Avenue ---- and he would very much like to move back into his old community, but there is no moderate housing with low upkeep there. Mr. Manuel said these types of developments are "absolutely beautiful" and he would be proud to live in one, especially in his old neighborhood. At 10:56 p.m., MIS: HOWARD/CLAIRE TO EXTEND THE MEETING PAST THE 11:00 DEADLINE TO 11:10 P.M. CARRIED BY UNANIMOUS VOICE VOTE. MINUTE ORDER 97-088 Mike Tevis, 1037 Florence Lane, Menlo Park, the commercial real estate agent hired by the property owners to market the property two and a half years ago, urged approval of the project. Mr. Tevis said "It is important that the Council recognize that a conscientious effort was made to expose the property to all existing commercial uses, which would have allowed the property owners to gain a return on the property within 60 to 120 days after they engaged us to market the property.... We exposed it to retail uses, entertainment uses, public and quasi-public uses such as religious institutions, office uses and residential uses. We had between 10 and 20 written offers... of which half were ITom residential development and halfITom commercial and office.... And or investor buyers. We elected to proceed in concept with a commercial investor buyer - and they then proceeded to contact some of the retail type tenants that we had contacted... including Walgreens and Hollywood Video that are national retail tenants that certainly could economically make a viable use of that property. There was not an economic rate at which they would take the property. If in fact the rent was ITee, they were not interested in the location because the fundamental point that has occurred on that location, which I think a lot of the neighbors have failed to recognize is that, over time, things change. When that property was a vibrant retail center, competing retail centers like Sequoia Center which is certainly a huge success, as well as the Lucky center on Woodside Road, and various other retail developments, did not exist." Mr. Tevis said 30 years ago, traffic count on E1 Camino Real was about 10,000 trips a day, and today the traffic counts on Roosevelt and Upton are about 10,000 a day, and El Camino has about 60,000. He agreed that the traffic increases have brought about negative impacts throughout the County, but advised there has also been huge increases in employment, wealth and other benefits, "people's houses have appreciated versus what they paid in 1970." Mr. Tevis said the owners had instructed him, and he had "investigated all opportunities, and we have as yet, received one written offer ITom a church that was represented by Ken La Point that was a proposal to do a land swap and that occurred about three months ago, well after this process had been underway.... They had issues they had to resolve, and it was not a viable offer." ---- REGULAR COUNCIL MEETING MINUTE BOOK NO. 55 MAY 5,1997 MINUTES Page No. 303 PAGE 28