Speak up for wildlife and farmland in Coyote Valley! The City of San Jose has announced that it will be scheduling a community meeting for the public to learn about, and give feedback on, a proposed warehouse and distribution center in North Coyote Valley. We will send out email alerts when the time and place for that meeting is announced.
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About the Project
The Panattoni Development Company has proposed a massive warehouse and distribution center in North Coyote Valley, just south of the Metcalf Energy Center. The warehouse would be 517,000 square feet―the size of 9 football fields―and includes loading zones for 90 semi trucks at one time. An article in Silicon Valley Business Journal (Developer proposes distribution center for San Jose’s Coyote Valley) described the project as “mammoth” and suggested that it could be used by e-commerce giants like Amazon for sorting and shipping orders, which could mean a constant stream of semi trucks along Monterey Road.
This would be precedent-setting in the mostly agricultural North Coyote Valley, and would impact important wildlife corridors, including Fisher Creek, which runs directly adjacent to the site.
Committee for Green Foothills is working to ensure that the environmental impacts of this project are analyzed, and that the public has the chance to weigh in. Although the City of San Jose has stated that an environmental review of the project will take place, this would not happen until AFTER city councilmembers have voted on whether or not to rezone the site from agricultural to industrial. The City Council and San Jose residents should know the impacts of their decision before it is made.
Update: Success! At a meeting with environmental groups on March 7, 2016, the San Jose Planning Department committed to (a) ensuring that a full Environmental Impact Report (EIR) will be prepared for this project, (b) not bringing the rezoning application to the City Council until after the EIR is complete, and (c) bringing both the rezoning application and the proposed development project to the City Council, rather than approving the development project at the Planning staff level. Although these commitments will not necessarily halt the project, they ensure greater transparency and public involvement for this project.
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