BY BRADEN CARTWRIGHT
Daily Post Staff Writer
Palo Alto City Council candidate Henry Etzkowitz says he wants to close the Palo Alto Airport, bore a tunnel for Caltrain, offer free internet to residents, set a rent cap for seniors and build 10,000 lofts at the Stanford Shopping Center.
“That should be the objective over the next quarter century,” said Etzkowitz, one of nine candidates running for four open spots on council.
A self-described “innovation scholar,” Etzkowitz, 84, got involved with the city after Stanford raised the rent and closed the clubhouse at the Oak Creek Apartments on Sand Hill Road where he lives.
Etzkowitz organized his neighbors and started going to council meetings, arguing that Stanford was trying to force seniors out.
He said he’s taking the “Barack Obama community organizer” route into politics.
“That was how I got involved,” Etzkowitz said. “But I saw very early that the answer wasn’t just pushing back against Stanford. The answer was in increasing the scale and scope of affordable housing. That’s the real problem that Stanford and the seniors were facing together.”
Etzkowitz wants rent to be capped for seniors at a quarter of their income after they’ve lived somewhere for 15 years.
He didn’t have a specific age in mind for when the rent cap would apply — some say the retirement age is 65, but AARP starts recruiting at age 50, he said.
Etzkowitz also wants the city to allow taller buildings, as long as the architecture looks nice.
Eichler neighborhoods should be declared as historic landmarks, and an “urban forest” should be planted along San Antonio Road where the city is planning for a new neighborhood, Etzkowitz said.
“Zero height in some places, and go really high in others,” he said.
Parking lots at the Stanford Shopping Center and the Stanford Research Park are a good place for new housing and social life, he said.
The idea of building a tunnel for Caltrain has been discarded by council and advisory committees because of the high cost, but Etzkowitz wants to bring the idea back.
Palo Alto should band together with other cities to get federal infrastructure funding, and then build a linear park with a bike lane and gardens where Caltrain is now.
“We haven’t tried hard enough … It’s a time to form a coalition and solve the problem once and for all,” he said.
At the airport, Etzkowitz wants to put a basketball court on the end of the runway and return the rest of the land to nature, with planes moved to Moffett Field in Mountain View.
“Let’s make neighborly reparations to the environment and to the children of our neighboring communities,” he said.