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SANTA CLARA — Faced with a choice between siding with a developer proposing a mix of homes and town houses in an empty area on Pioneer Parkway and residents who say they are fed up with dense housing in the city, the Santa Clara City Council chose neither during its meeting Wednesday night.
The council chose not to deny or approve a developer's application to change zoning on the property between 400 East and Patricia Drive from low-density one home per 10 acres to medium-density eight homes per acre. Instead, the council tabled the proposal in a narrow, 3-2 vote and tasked the developer to come back with a housing proposal between the two in terms of crowdedness.
While all five council members expressed reservations about the project during the debate, two council members, Leina Mathis and Christa Hinton, said they would approve the zoning based on it providing more housing in a lower price range in the series. Two others, Jarett Waite and Denny Drake, expressed "nay" votes citing that the project offered too much housing in one space.
A fifth council member, Ben Shakespeare, fit somewhere between the two: The project was too dense, but he wanted the developer to be able to come back to the council in a short time with a revised, less dense housing project.
