At an awards ceremony last night, the Silicon Valley Business Journal awarded Most Creative Deal to Sunnyvale’s handling of the land transfer of Onizuka Air Force Base. This was a seven year process that only really took off two years ago, when Sunnyvale City Manager Gary Luebbers and the current City Council pretty much tossed out all of the ideas that had been proposed to date and came up with the land swaps and leases that resulted in an expanded Fire Station 5, a new Foothill/De Anza satellite campus, a Veterans Administration R&D facility, and homeless and low income housing on the old armory site.
This was a huge and complicated effort involving multiple land swaps and negotiations between ten different parties, including the Air Force and GSA, the City of Sunnyvale, Foothill/De Anza, the VA, MidPen Housing, Charities Housing, and others. And it all came together in about two years.
Sunnyvale should feel very proud of what we accomplished with Onizuka, and the SVBJ award is just recognition of our terrific accomplishment.
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“and homeless and low income housing on the old armory site.” Does this mean that the homeless shelter off of the Wolfe Rd/Fairoaks Ave split will be moved? I hope so because I am tired of those homeless people standing in the street with cardboard signs begging for money. The other day, a lady was standing in one of the lanes with her sign – ridiculous!! Why doesn’t Sunnyvale stop them from doing that? Most of the time, those people are drunk and a danger to their own safety.
Fantastic Jim! This is a great story. Now everybody stay on track and get it done!
Toni: It isn’t being moved – it’s being closed, which is one of the reasons why this deal was even possible. The National Guard and the County decided to stop operating – I think the Guard decided to decommission the Armory and then the County decided to shut down the shelter. Once those interests were gone, we were free to use the land, which is ours (we leased it to the Guard, they sublet it to the County). I haven’t heard of any County plans to try and open another shelter somewhere else.
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Thanks Jim Got your back in my neighborhood and Coffee shop
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