The Atlantic has a nice article on one writer’s quest to find the center of Silicon Valley, which led him to 901 Thompson Place in Sunnyvale. He then spends time wandering around the city, and his observations make for an interesting story.
FollowYes, I’m still getting caught up. It’s been a busy time.
We started the evening with a study session involving city-owned property. This was a look at all of the properties we own that isn’t already used to provide city services, and it turns out there’s a lot of them. There are small pieces here and there, like the “Girl Scout House” on Dona, a triangle of property at the end of Washington near Evelyn, and so on. Some of them are too small to be anything other than sold for a single-family home or converted to a small pocket park, and I think that staff is investigating the park option for one of them in particular now. The most interesting was a series of parcels we own on Mathilda near the Denny’s. It’s kind of a checkerboard situation now, but there’s some interest by the surrounding property owners to sell their lots to the city. If that happens, we’d be able to consolidate the blocks and turn the property into something very interesting.
Pretty straightforward meeting this time. I’m told that Mayor Spitaleri may be absent for this meeting, so I may get to run it. And Councilmember Whittum is still phoning it in (so to speak – sorry Dave :-)), which will make for an interesting procedural dynamic. We’ll see.
We start the evening with a joint study session with the Planning Commission. I’m not positive, but I believe this involves the proposal to eliminate the requirement for a frontage road along Mathilda between Evelyn and El Camino.
The Mercury News is reporting that the County’s ambulance service provider, Arizona-based Rural/Metro is “in dire financial shape”, having failed to make a bond payment this week. Back in May, Moody’s downgraded Rural/Metro’s credit rating to junk status. The County is developing backup plans to make sure that ambulance service isn’t interrupted if things go south suddenly.
The Silicon Valley Business Journal is reporting that GoDaddy has already outgrown its space in the JP Morgan Building next to Plaza del Sol, and it is now expanding into Moffett Towers. They are working to accommodate a dramatic employee increase – they’re at 75 now and are looking to expand to 200 employees in Sunnyvale.
Unfortunately, Danica Patrick won’t be one of the 200…