Raw appeal WEEKEND | 19
DECEMBER 13, 2019 VOLUME 27, NO. 46
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MOVIES | 21
Castro Street’s car-free future CITY PREPARES PLANS FOR WALKABLE DOWNTOWN AFTER CLOSING ROAD AT TRAIN TRACKS By Mark Noack
A
SAMMY DALLAL
The new tree outside Mountain View City Hall is a lot smaller than the towering cedar it replaced, but it still made a festive centerpiece to the city’s annual Community Tree Lighting Celebration on Monday, Dec. 9. See more photos on page 18.
A happy holiday tradition A cheerful crowd assembled at the Mountain View Community Tree Lighting Celebration on Monday night. The big old cedar tree that was the event’s centerpiece was removed last month, but its young replacement was resplendent with lights, despite its diminutive stature.
Mayor Lisa Matichak and Santa Claus were on hand, along with a lineup of choirs, from senior citizens to students, who filled the air with music. Bayer Ballet’s Snow Queen posed for photos, and good-natured snowball fights broke out in the snow play area.
While most of the Voice staff was busy handing out candy from our booth in Civic Center Plaza across from the stage, photographer Sammy Dallal roamed the festivities and captured some memorable moments. —Andrea Gemmet
t what some describe as a make-or-break juncture for downtown Mountain View, the city is pressing ahead with plans to steer Castro Street toward a pedestrian-friendly future. At its Tuesday, Dec. 10, meeting, the City Council approved a new set of studies for closing off Castro Street at the Caltrain tracks and potentially blocking off sections of the street to traffic and creating a pedestrian promenade. In 2016, city leaders decided closing off Castro Street was the best option available to preserve the character of downtown while performing needed upgrades to the train crossing. As Caltrain prepares to launch faster and more frequent train service, Mountain View and other Peninsula cities have been urged to prepare grade separation projects, removing locations where auto traffic crosses over the train tracks. The most obvious way to accomplish this, tunneling Castro Street under the train line,
was expected to cost $120 million, and city officials decided it would be too expensive and disruptive. Instead, they favored a cheaper alternative to block off Castro Street at Central Expressway and build a new underpass for pedestrians and cyclists. Vehicle traffic heading into downtown would instead be routed along Shoreline Boulevard to Evelyn Avenue. Now three years later, the plan remains controversial among downtown residents and business owners. Skeptics have warned that if plans are poorly implemented, it could ruin the charm of Mountain View’s downtown. Those concerns popped up again on Tuesday night, as council members reviewed a new environmental study for their multifaceted plans for the Castro area. The study, a mitigated negative declaration, essentially served as an official report affirming that the disruptive impacts caused by the Castro Street project would ultimately be balanced out. Barely anyone at the meeting disputed the study’s See CASTRO STREET, page 18
City Council makes mental health a priority after youth suicides STUDENT DEATHS COULD PROMPT BETTER SECURITY AT CALTRAIN CROSSINGS, HEALTH CARE FUNDING By Kevin Forestieri
T
he Mountain View City Council voted unanimously Tuesday night to turn youth mental health into a top priority next year, following the deaths of two high school students by suicide since August 2018. The move, prompted by Councilwoman Margaret Abe-Koga, means the council will find ways
INSIDE
to fit mental health care into a crowded list of citywide goals sometime in early 2020, and could lead to several major shifts in the way the city treats youth suicide prevention. The initial hope is to improve cross-agency collaboration by following in the footsteps of Palo Alto’s “Project Safety Net,” including better safety measures at the Caltrain station and at-grade crossings in Mountain View. The
GOINGS ON 22 | REAL ESTATE 23
transit agency has reported 16 fatalities on the tracks so far this year, including one at Castro Street. A b e - K o g a Margaret Abesaid at the Dec. Koga 10 meeting that she wants to find ways the city could bolster its involvement in youth mental health after two
Mountain View High School students died by suicide in less than two years. Eddie Keep died by suicide shortly before the start of the 2018-19 school year. In October, a second teen — whose name was not publicly released according to the family’s wishes — was struck by a Caltrain in Mountain View and later died of his injuries. Keep’s mother, Peggy Keep, told council members that more needs to be done to prevent
suicides, including safety and security measures along the Caltrain tracks. Crossing guards or cameras may not be the perfect solution, but they could at least act as a deterrent, she said. “There’s too much pressure — there’s all kinds of things that contribute to this,” Keep said. “It is way too easy, at certain hours of the evening, to walk down See MENTAL HEALTH, page 7