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San Jose Mercury News Three
lawsuits were filed Tuesday seeking to prevent Cisco Systems and its partners from transforming semirural Coyote Valley into a bustling mecca for thousands of high-tech workers. Separate lawsuits were filed by Santa Cruz
County, Salinas and an environmental coalition made up of the Sierra Club and Audubon Society's local chapters. The Association of Monterey Bay Area Governments planned to file suit today. Salinas officials, who had hoped
to avoid litigation, decided to sue after a failure Tuesday morning to reach a settlement with San Jose. Salinas Mayor Anna Caballero is scheduled to meet with San Jose Mayor Ron Gonzales in Gilroy on Thursday. The suits,
filed in Santa Clara County Superior Court, could delay the project and force Cisco and the city to make concessions in the design of the 688-acre parcel. Cisco plans to set aside about 300 acres of open space, primarily as a flood
control measure, pay $3 million for open space preservation and help Greenbelt Alliance raise $96 million more for public lands. The plaintiffs claim that San Jose officials violated California environmental laws by
underestimating the detrimental effects the huge project will have on air quality, traffic and housing prices, and by failing to look closely at alternative sites. The suits contend that the city should have studied the entire
North Coyote Valley Research Park and its 50,000 workers, not just the Cisco campus and its 20,000 employees. The San Jose City Council, in the most significant land-use decision in a generation, agreed Oct. 24 to allow
Cisco, San Jose's largest private employer, to turn one of the largest and last expanses of undeveloped land in the city into a $1.3 billion campus. The controversial decision has polarized the community into distinct
camps: supporters who applaud the promise of job growth and economic benefits, and opponents who decry the loss of open space and fear that the campus will drive up already prohibitive housing prices. "San Jose and Cisco
could have defused this bomb with a commitment to regional planning, public transportation and on-site housing, but instead the project calls for 20,000 parking spaces," said AMBAG attorney Stephan C. Volker. David
Vossbrink, a spokesman for Gonzales, said San Jose officials attempted to work with critics of the campus throughout the approval process, which took months. "We're confident that the environmental report was very thorough,
complete and responsive," Vossbrink said. "It meets both the letter and the spirit of the California Environmental Quality Act." Cisco, which plans to start construction later this winter, vowed to persevere
despite the lawsuits. "We fully intend to see this project through to a successful conclusion," Cisco spokesman Steve Langdon said. "We are disappointed that these parties have chose litigation over collaboration.
We have remained willing to work together out of the courts. But we are also very confident that the city of San Jose will prevail in court." Salinas, which arguably would suffer the most harm from the campus, is
willing to drop its lawsuit if San Jose and Cisco will provide compensation, including subsidies for rail, affordable housing and an apprenticeship program in Salinas schools, Caballero said. "We continue to stress the fact
that we're open to serious dialogue," Salinas City Attorney Jim Sanchez said. Cisco also faces a possible referendum on the project if environmentalists collect 30,684 signatures on petitions by the Dec. 12
ballot-qualification deadline. If they succeed, Cisco would have to stop construction until the election is held. Cisco, which launched a competing petition drive to demonstrate community support, not to qualify an
initiative, has doubled the amount it is paying the petition circulators to $3 a signature, or twice as much as the environmentalists are spending, circulators said. As a result, the environmentalists said, they have lost
circulators to Cisco. But aware of the financial opportunity the competing drives present, some circulators have been offering shoppers either petition to sign. |
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