San Antonio center to include Mountain View's tallest building?

New plans for a large hotel and office building at San Antonio shopping center were met with more shock than support in a planning commission meeting last week.

"To realize we're potentially constructing the tallest structures in Mountain View, I was pretty surprised by that," said Environmental Planning Commissioner Chris Clark.

Developer Merlone Geier has proposed a 12-story, 167-foot-tall office building and parking garage as part of phase 2 of its redevelopment of San Antonio shopping center, an area that encompasses Beverages & More, Ross and Jo-Ann fabrics. To put that in perspective, the city's tallest building at 444 Castro St. is 145 feet tall.

The project also includes a 150- to 200-room hotel, 2,858 parking spaces and 66,000 square feet of ground floor retail facing a park along the Hetch-Hetchy right of way. Merlone Geier is already under construction on phase 1 of the project just south of the site, including a new Safeway, three apartment buildings and dozens of new retail spaces.

Residents packed the council chambers and expressed concern about the project's size and design and about several small businesses, including the Milk Pail Market, at the corner of San Antonio Road and California Street on property that Merlone Geier hopes to buy. The businesses face the possibility of having tall buildings towering in the background.

"I would trade the Milk Pail for this whole development," said resident Stephen Freiberg. "It's much more important to my family and the people that I know."

Merlone Geier's Mike Grehl said the 741,000 square feet of office space were necessary to subsidize the construction cost of the hotel, noting the city's longtime desire to have a full-service hotel and how the need for a $30 million city subsidy killed efforts to put one next to Google's headquarters several years ago. The developer says several hotel operators are already interested in operating the "high-quality, four-star hotel."

"A building that would be the tallest in Mountain View is, quite frankly, an equivalent gulp moment to a $30 million subsidy," said commissioner Todd Fernandez.

Commissioner Clark said he'd support heights up to seven stories, but "I think this is just over the top in terms of heights that are acceptable," echoing the sentiments of other commissioners. "This just doesn't seem like Mountain View."

He later added that the proposed uses would be "a good mix."

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San Antonio center to include Mountain View's tallest building?