Weathering the drought WEEKEND | 17 FEBRUARY 27, 2015 VOLUME 23, NO. 5
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MOVIES | 20
New school could close down Stevenson PACT DISTRICT SCENARIOS FOR OPENING WHISMANSLATER SCHOOL INCLUDE MERGING PACT By Kevin Forestieri
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MICHELLE LE
Google is expected to submit plans for a huge, car-free campus in North Bayshore on Friday.
LinkedIn and Google to submit big office plans HIGH-PROFILE OFFICE PROJECTS LINED UP FOR NORTH BAYSHORE By Daniel DeBolt
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n what has been described as a “beauty contest” between the world’s hottest tech companies and real estate developers, Google, LinkedIn, and others are expected to submit major expansion plans for Mountain View’s North Bayshore by 5 p.m. this Friday, Feb. 27.
Google is expected to propose an extraordinarily environmentally friendly, car-free campus for 10,000 employees that would be built over at least two blocks, west of Shoreline Boulevard and on the north side of the Century movie theaters and Plymouth Street. Several City Council members said they got a peek at Google’s
plans a month ago, meeting individually with company representatives. They described plans for amorphously shaped fourand five-story buildings, with a meandering running track under a glass dome. One council member described it as on par with the landmark architecture of
rawing new lines for school attendance boundaries can be a tricky task that always leaves someone dissatisfied, and that proved true Tuesday night when the Mountain View Whisman School District laid out likely scenarios for new boundaries that could trigger the closure of the district’s parent-participation school. District staff presented five scenarios to the Boundary Advisory Task Force on Feb. 24, detailing new attendance boundaries for students throughout the city, and how those boundaries would look if a new school is opened in the Whisman and Slater neighborhood. The northeast end of Mountain View has been without a neighborhood elementary school since the closure of Slater in 2006, and both school board and task force members say now is the time to bring the school back. But when the district spelled out some of the likely scenarios for how to do that, four
of the five options involved closing Stevenson — home to the parent participation (PACT) program — and merging PACT with Theuerkauf or Landels. The move would be a reverse version of the Castro Elementary decision made late last year, when the district split Castro’s traditional program and Dual Immersion Spanish program into two separate schools sharing a campus. Right now, the district has just the right number of schools to handle the number of elementary school-aged children in Mountain View, according to Terese McNamee, Mountain View Whisman’s chief business officer. McNamee said eight schools is the right number from a financial perspective, and adding another one would take bond money and operating money away from other schools. Closing Stevenson would essentially offset opening a school in the Whisman and Slater neighborhood area. “These are the best recSee BOUNDARIES, page 7
See OFFICE PLANS, page 13
Pedestrian dies after crosswalk accident LOS ALTOS RESIDENT ROBERT SCHWEHR WAS ENGINEER, AVID OUTDOORSMAN By Andrea Gemmet
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obert Schwehr had dropped off his car at the Mountain View Costco’s tire center and was walking across the street when he was struck by a car at Charleston Road and Independence Avenue on Monday, Feb. 16. He died of his injuries at the hospital on
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Wednesday. Schwehr, 68, was probably walking from Costco to REI, his daughter Kiley Riffell told the Voice. An avid fisherman and outdoorsman, REI was his favorite store, and in his eagerness to pass along his love of the wilderness, he’d been looking for a fishing pole for her 2-year-
old daughter, Riffell said. He had also been teaching his little granddaughter to sail, she said. The accident occurred shortly before 9:30 a.m. near Charleston Road and Independence Avenue, according to Mountain View police. The driver who struck KILEY RIFFELL
See PEDESTRIAN, page 8
VIEWPOINT 15 | GOINGS ON 21 | MARKETPLACE 22 | REAL ESTATE 24
Robert Schwehr, with his wife and granddaughter.