Silicon Valley Business Journal
From the article:
As the South Bay prepares for the eventual arrival of BART, one key question is what kind of development cities will approve near new stations coming to Fremont, Milpitas and San Jose.
More specifically: How firmly will planners and elected officials hold developers to ambitious density guidelines in station areas?
The issue was front and center Monday, when the Milpitas Planning Commission considered a developer's request to downzone a long-planned project near that city's under-construction Great Mall BART station. And at least in this instance, Milpitas drew a clear line in the sand.
Here's the back story: In 2010, Integral Communities gained approvals for a massive project at Great Mall Boulevard and McCandless Drive, that included more than 1,300 units and 75,000 square feet of retail spread among eight, high-density buildings. The 22-acre development was called a mini-Santana Row, featured a stylish Art Deco look, and included a park. Everyone loved the renderings. And the project became a poster child for development in the city's "transit area specific plan," which contemplated 7,100 units, a million square feet of office and 290,000 square feet of retail.
But in 2012, Integral requested a downzone to turn the four high-density buildings in the back of the project into medium-density townhomes. That eliminated about 226 units from the project. (Taylor Morrison quickly snapped up the approved land, and those units are under construction today.)
The latest request seeks to change the zoning on the remaining Integral-owned land by turning two of the four remaining planned high-density buildings into townhomes and stacked flats and shifting all of the retail from a central boulevard onto Great Mall Parkway. The result would cut another couple hundred units, for a combined decrease of about 500 residential units from the project when compared to the 2010 iteration.