December 15, 2005


Coyote Valley task force considers building college campus

Group reviews project description for environmental impact report

By Sheila Sanchez
Staff Writer

A task force preparing plans for development in San Jose’s Coyote Valley considered Monday evening building a major college campus to cater to about 10,000 South Valley students.

The 20-member group, under the leadership of Mayor Ron Gonzales and Councilman Forrest Williams, is guiding the development of Coyote Valley, the last piece of undeveloped rural land in the city.

Experts are saying its development could cost between $600 million and $800 million. The plan calls for a community of about 80,000 people living in more than 25,000 housing units and benefiting from 50,000 jobs.

The 7,000-acre valley at the southern end of San Jose is situated roughly 13 miles from downtown. It is about 6 miles long and 2 miles wide, enclosed by the Diablo Range foothills to the east, the Santa Cruz Mountains to the west, Tulare Hill and the hills of Laguna Seca to the north and the City of Morgan Hill to the south.

The task force also reviewed a draft work program for next year, which includes a schedule of community, taskforce and city council meetings in 2006 organized to keep the public better informed about the ambitious proposal. The group is expected to meet twice a month next year to stay on target.

In January, the task force will review and discuss agricultural mitigation options and in February and March the group will review the plan’s fiscal analysis and traffic policy, respectively.

A draft plan for the south valley community is expected next spring. As soon as its Environmental Impact Report (EIR) is ready, the group will reconvene after taking a recess from June until October. It’s expected to then discuss major EIR findings, refine and modify the plan and present a final proposal for the San Jose City Council’s review in 2007.

The task force also discussed the project description, contained in a 14-page document, which will be included in the plan’s EIR.

Gavilan College
Steven Kinsella, the superintendent and president of Gavilan Joint Community College District, said the college campus is necessary in Coyote Valley as the district, with a student population base of 150,000, is not being served adequately.

Kinsella and Laura Perry, a Gavilan Community College trustee, said district officials would purchase acreage needed to build the campus with funds generated from a bond measure passed in March of 2004, which gave the district $108 million.

Some of the money, they said, would be used to build a college in Coyote Valley and one in San Benito County.

About $8 million has been allocated to purchase land in Coyote Valley to build the college. The district, however, would need state funds in the amount of $40 to $50 million to build the campus.

Kinsella said to qualify for state funds the district would have to demonstrate that it has 500 full-time-equivalent students enrolled, which it already has.

Gavilan College’s service area begins at Bernal Road in south San Jose and includes Morgan Hill, San Martin, Gilroy and most of San Benito County.

As district officials evaluated the Coyote Valley project, they conducted an enrollment study to find out where the residents of its existing service area were going to college.

They learned that the district is losing a third of its students to other community colleges to the north such as DeAnza, Evergreen, Foothill, Mission and West Valley colleges.

Kinsella blamed the student exodus on the location of the district’s main facility, which is in Gilroy, about 18 miles south of the northernmost part of the district. He said many students work in San Jose and find it easier to attend college near where they work.

The proposed campus would house approximately 10,000 students on 80 acres along Bailey and Santa Teresa roads across from the IBM facility. District officials only have certainty on the purchase of about 50 acres of industrial land available from the Sobrato organization. The industrial price of the land is essential to making the deal, they said.

“We’re losing 50 percent of the students in Morgan Hill,” Kinsella said. “For most folks we’re the very first step in the career ladder.”

The district currently has satellite campuses in San Benito and Morgan Hill and within one semester of opening those campuses they were full and needed more space, according to Perry. “They have greatly exceeded what our expectations were in serving the community,” Perry said.

Gonzales said he hoped Gavilan College could partner with the city to build a library in the future to serve the community as is the case with the joint collaborative effort between the city and San Jose State University in the operation of the Martin Luther King Jr. Library in downtown San Jose.

“We’re looking forward to being in Coyote Valley and serving the needs of that entire community,” Perry said.
James Goodell, president of the Pasadena-based Public Private Ventures, the consultant on the project, said the standard for campus development from the California post-secondary education commission is 100 acres per college, which can be negotiated down.

He said college representatives had discussed the proposal with city planners and added that a portion of the campus, about 30 acres, would be a shared recreational athletic facility, bringing the total acreage needed to build the complex to more than 80 acres.

Goodell said he hoped the college would open in the fall of 2009.

Task force member Eric Carruthers urged district officials to build a multi-story educational facility lamenting the sprawling one-story campuses that exist today.

Task force member Dan Hancock said he would not support a college campus model that usurped 20 acres of land for parking purposes. “To me that would be so incongruent with everything else that we have planned,” he said.

He said building a large athletic field, which already exists on high school campuses, is not a good use of the land. “I don’t think we need a junior college football team in Coyote Valley,” Hancock said, asking if the public agency had an exemption from the contributing infrastructure costs that would be incurred from its construction. As a community facility it would be exempt from being in Coyote Valley’s proposed assessment district.

Goodell said the college should be considered a public service facility just like fire and police stations.

At one moment, the group received a cold reception from one taskforce member.

“I’m not sure why you’re here,” task force member Craige Edgerton said. “We’re here to approve an overall plan not specific parcels.”

Former Vice Mayor Pat Dando, now president of the Silicon Valley Chamber of Commerce, was alarmed with the district’s aggressive timeframe to buy, plan and to build the college.

Task force member Helen Chapman, representing the city’s Parks and Recreation Commission, urged district officials to look at San Jose City College’s new multi-story parking facility and athletic field.

Task force member Steve Speno said Gavilan College would be an excellent addition to Coyote Valley but that it needed to remain compatible with the plan’s urban model. Edgerton worried about setting a precedent that the first project the task force is reviewing doesn’t quite fit in. “Do we have to change the plan to fit the pieces of land or does the land have to change to fit the plan?” he asked.

Kinsella said the district’s service area population necessitates the college to be a full campus with an athletic field. “We have a problem today. We can’t get people to drive from Morgan Hill to Gilroy,” Kinsella said. “We’re simply not able to offer students a full range of courses… to acquire their two-year or vocational programs. We need a full facility,” he said.

“We have no profit motivation. We’re simply a public agency trying to make sure we have community college services which is open access, very low cost and to give people the only chance to get ahead,” Kinsella said. “Our only objective here is to make sure we have a facility that is appropriate for this specific community.”

Frank Crane, a representative of the Mikami family, who owns property on the east side of Monterey Road, was concerned about impacts and how jobs created by the college’s operation would affect job triggers or prerequisite conditions imposed on non educational facilities.

Shelle Thomas, a taxpayer and property owner in the Gavilan College community, expressed her support for having a campus in Coyote Valley. “We’re being very myopic in saying, ‘What’s good for Coyote Valley?’ Gavilan College in Coyote Valley is good for our region.”

Shanna Boigon, with the Santa Clara County Association of Realtors, said having a college in Coyote Valley would increase property values and improve the community.

Boigon said building the college would be crucial in helping Silicon Valley continue to be competitive and maintain its technical edge.

Environmental groups were present at the meeting as usual speaking for their allowed two minutes. They included Brian Schmidt of the Committee for Green Foothills, a non-profit organization, and Melissa Hippard, director of the Loma Prieta Chapter of the Sierra Club. Other speakers included Kirsten Powell with the Morgan Hill Unified School District and Dennis Kennedy with the city of Morgan Hill.

The next Coyote Valley task force meeting will be from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Jan. 9, 2006, in the San Jose City Hall at 200 East Santa Clara Street (Council Wing, combined rooms W118, W119 and W120). The agenda can be sent to you prior to the meeting. For more information log onto www.sanjoseca.gov/coyotevalley, or call Susan Walsh at (408) 535-7910.