Op-ed: Pleasant Hills can be something we’re proud of

Most people agree that the best way to address our area’s housing affordability issue is straightforward: build more houses.

By some estimates, Silicon Valley’s housing market is at least 100,000 homes short of what is needed to arrest the inexorable housing price increases we have experienced decade after decade. Increasing availability by building more housing, not just affordable housing but also market rate and luxury housing, is imperative to improving the affordability of our city.

Some development proponents advocate a one-size-fits-all approach to new housing projects, ignoring that our city is not a homogenous mass of residents. San Jose is a patchwork of diverse communities amalgamated in the later half of the 20th century. Our communities reflect different architectural styles, have differing amounts of open recreational spaces and a variety of access modes. Significant development projects should reflect this diversity and respect the sites’ natural characteristics and the character of the neighborhoods for which they are proposed.

Such is the case for Pleasant Hills Golf Course, the long-vacant 115-acre plot in the Evergreen/East Hills part of San Jose. It is important the development plan reflects the constraints of the site, which is more suburban than urban.

Unlike downtown San Jose, which is easily accessible via mass transit or numerous highways and expressways, there is essentially one major route, Tully Road, leading to the closest freeway access two miles away. Tully Road is already choked with traffic at rush hour and incapable of supporting the added traffic that a high-density development would bring. The Eastridge Transit Center is a mile and a half away, either a 15-minute bus ride or a 30-minute walk.

Thankfully, Mayor Matt Mahan, Councilmember Domingo Candelas and planning department workers have insisted on a community visioning process before the developer puts pen to paper on a proposal. The process gives our community a voice in the process and better balances the needs and desires of all three participants: the community, the developer and the city. The guiding principles derived from the visioning process help ensure the development does not come at the expense of our neighborhoods, but rather enhances them.

We believe development of the Pleasant Hills site can become a reality with a proposal that adheres to our community’s guiding principles and respects the character of our neighborhoods while simultaneously penciling out for both the developer and our city. We, along with the many neighborhood residents and their neighborhood associations, plan to remain engaged in the process. We look forward to continuing our work with Mayor Mahan, Councilmember Candelas and Lakeside community to transform Pleasant Hills into something we can all enjoy and be proud of.

Pat Waite and Janet Holt are long-involved community leaders in District 8.