This action alert is now closed.  We’ll be sure to updated you on the development of this issue.

Stanford University is applying for a General Use Permit (GUP) from Santa Clara County that will include 2.275 million square feet of new development over the next 17 years. Currently, the Stanford foothills are protected by the Academic Growth Boundary and its supermajority vote requirement, but this protection is set to expire in 2025. (Read more about what’s happening and our history of working on this issue below). Please ask Santa Clara County to make this protection permanent and preserve our open space.

What You Can Do:
Email the County Planning Department by February 2 and ask them to make the 4/5 vote requirement to change or remove the Academic Growth Boundary a permanent requirement as a condition of approving Stanford’s GUP.

What’s Happening:
Committee for Green Foothills was founded to fight development in the Stanford foothills. Over the years we have had both victories and defeats, but by and large the foothills west of Junipero Serra Blvd are still open space, just as they were when we fought our first battle over 50 years ago.

In the year 2000, an Academic Growth Boundary (AGB) was established roughly along the route of Junipero Serra Blvd. A supermajority vote (4/5) of the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors is required to change or remove the AGB. However, in 2025 that supermajority protection will expire and the AGB can then be modified with only a simple majority vote. We’re asking that this protection be made permanent.

It should be noted that Stanford is not requesting any changes to the AGB and has stated that their projected growth through 2035 (the life of the GUP) can be accommodated within the AGB. Additionally, a supermajority vote requirement is not a permanent ban on growth. There is no reason the supermajority requirement should not be made permanent.

For more information, or to review the GUP or the Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR), please see the county’s webpage.

Thank you for speaking up!