BY EMILY MIBACH
Daily Post Staff Writer
A proposed biotech campus in east San Carlos will be the mid-Peninsula’s third largest project seeking approval and would double the city’s work force to 14,000.
San Carlos Mayor Mark Olbert said at council’s Monday (Nov. 25) meeting that the proposal by Alexandria Real Estate Equities is the single largest project in the city’s history.
The 1.6-million-square-foot campus is slated for the area between Old County Road, Commercial Street, Industrial Road and the Pulgas Creek.
The two proposals that are larger are:
• Facebook’s Willow Village in Menlo Park, with 1.75 million square feet of office space, 200,000 square-feet of retail space and 1,735 homes;
• The redevelopment of Sequoia Station in Redwood City, with 1.6 million square feet of office space, 175,000 square-feet of retail space and 440 apartments.
The San Carlos site, with an address of 825-835 Industrial Road, includes the former corporate headquarters of Kelly-Moore Paints along with a number of one- or two-story office and industrial buildings constructed in the 1960s.
The development will include six office buildings, including a 112-foot tall office tower, and two parking garages, according to plans submitted by the company in October.
With more jobs, more homes are needed
Using the rule of thumb of 200 square feet per employee, the project could add 7,000 employees to San Carlos. That’s half of San Carlos’ current workforce of about 14,000, according to Olbert.
If there are 7,000 new employees in the area, that means some 4,667 new homes need to be built, using the assumption that 1.5 people live in each new apartment built in the area.
Because of the enormity of the project, Olbert on Monday requested that the council take a look at the city’s zoning plan to make sure the projects being proposed are “producing what the community wants.”
Olbert pointed out that the city’s zoning plan was created some 10 years ago and probably needs to be looked at again, as things have changed since then.
We are behind in homes. 1 new job, 1 new home. No less
Probably safe to assume that many of the people who work there will already have housing.
Why is is safe to assume that? These are net new jobs being created, so there will be net new workers to fill them. Even if people switch to jobs in this building from jobs in some other building, that building then has open spaces for new workers. Workers are moving into the Bay Area to fill all of these new jobs. New jobs must be balanced by new housing, or else housing prices will continue to skyrocket.
It would be great if they would hire from the community. We have so much higher education around here, surely there are many young people that need great jobs like these. I wonder about population density in such a small area. Grocery stores, schools, lunchtime, restaurants, streets and traffic, all of this will be affected. More of everything will be in demand. If it’s handled wisely, it could be a boon for the city in the form of new business, new investment, and money for new infrastructure that could benefit the whole city.
The corporations prefer to hire from outside of community, especially foreigners, so those workforce will be hungry enough, aggressive enough and hard working enough to achieve highest productivity. Hiring local, who have home and supports, won’t bring corporation same benefit.