Frequently Asked Questions
What DEVELOPMENT WAS PROPOSED IN COOPER PARK?
Click here to see the details of the plan to develop Cooper Park that was announced in January 2018.
Is Cooper Park Still under threat now that the school district has announced a staff housing project at 777 West middlefield?
In March 2019, the School District announced that it reached an agreement with a housing developer to include staff/teacher housing at another pre-existing project in a different location, 777 West Middlefield, as reported in this Mountain View Voice article. As noted in the article, neighborhood opposition to the Cooper Park development was a major reason for the school district’s change of plans.
The West Middlefield development project is still at an early stage, and has not yet been completed. However, the City Council voted to approve the West Middlefield development on May 21, 2019.
We will continue to monitor the school district’s plans for Cooper Park, as a large parcel of open space in Mountain View will always remain a target for developers, even though the plan announced in January 2018 has been abandoned.
Who owns Cooper Park?
The area we know as Cooper Park has two sections with two different owners:
1. The majority of the land (9.5 acres) is the former Cooper School site, which includes the Action Day/Primary Plus preschool facing Eunice, the open space surrounding the preschool, the dog park, and the sports fields. This section is owned by Mountain View Whisman School District.
2. The smaller section at the south end of the site, including the playground and tennis courts bordering Chesley, is owned by the City of Mountain View.
The District SAID THAT THE PLAN TILL NOT TOUCH THE PARK, so neighbors who use the park don’t need to worry. Is this right?
No. That characterization is based on a very narrow and technical description of “Cooper Park,” referring only to the south end of the park. While the School District’s proposal did not include the small portion of City-owned land on the south end (the playground/tennis court area), the vast majority of the site that appears on city maps as “Cooper Park” would have been razed and developed, including the preschool, the surrounding open space, the dog park, and the baseball and soccer fields. Everything in the red square below would have been developed under the plan, including nearly all the sports field space:
The School District’s plan would have put the playground and tennis courts in the shadow of a giant housing development including a three-story apartment complex with four buildings and a parking lot, plus 36 high-density single family homes on “mini lots.” What is left of the park would undoubtedly have been heavily used by the hundreds of people living in the housing project.
In order to obfuscate the extent of the proposed development, the District had even suggested that the development would merely cover a "parking lot, mobile unit, or the brown patch of dirt." But the sports fields and vast open space would also have been eliminated, hardly just a "brown patch of dirt."
Who decides whether to sell the cooper school site for development?
The Board of Trustees of Mountain View Whisman School District decides whether to pursue the sale of District-owned land. The Board consists of five elected officials:
Laura Blakely: Term expires 2024
Devon Conley: Term expires 2026
Christopher Chiang: Term expires 2024
Laura Ramirez Berman: Term expires 2024
William Lambert: Term expires 2026
Can I express my opinions about the development of Cooper Park to the Board of Trustees?
Yes. You can email them at trustees@mvwsd.org. In addition, under California law, Board of Trustees meetings are open to the public, and members of the public can attend meetings and can speak during the public comment portion of the meeting. By law, meeting agendas must be posted 72 hours before a meeting, and the meeting announcements are made on this website: https://www.mvwsd.org/about/board_of_trustees/board_meetings.
Would changing the zoning for a high-density housing complex in Cooper Park be consistent with the surrounding Waverly Park neighborhood?
No. The surrounding Waverly Park neighborhood is zoned R-1 (single family residential), with lot sizes of 7500 and 10000 sq. ft. A high density development in Cooper Park would have single family homes on 5000 sq. ft. lots, plus multi-family apartment buildings. Such a zoning change for Cooper Park would be extremely inconsistent with the current neighborhood use.
Can I express my opinions about Cooper Park to the Mountain View City Council?
Yes. While development projects would be instituted by the Mountain View Whisman School District Board of Trustees, the City of Mountain View now has land use agreements with the school district that would affect any future proposed development. You can email the Mountain View City Council citycouncil@mountainview.gov.
You can also attend City Council meetings and speak during the public comment “Oral Communications” session of the meetings. The tentative meeting schedule is here: http://www.mountainview.gov/council/future_agenda_items.asp