The saga of Stanford’s proposal to expand its campus continues. This week, the County of Santa Clara announced that it was suspending talks with Stanford over the Development Agreement. However, it’s important to note that the General Use Permit (GUP) process is still ongoing. This means that we can still expect the approval of potentially huge new development on the Stanford campus.

The County suspended Development Agreement talks because those talks were dependent on there being no “side agreements” with other parties.  In spite of this, Stanford entered into a side agreement with the Palo Alto Unified School District concerning funding for new students. Supervisor Simitian expressed concern that this agreement could be used as a bargaining chip by Stanford, potentially pitting the school community against open space advocates or people concerned about traffic or housing impacts. This could have put the protection of the Stanford Foothills on the chopping block.

Committee for Green Foothills will continue to advocate for permanent protection of the Stanford Foothills as part of the GUP process, whether that includes a Development Agreement or not.

Join us in the fight! Sign our petition and stand with us to demand that the Stanford foothills be permanently protected.