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HomeMy WebLinkAboutCC 09-15-2026 Oral CommunicationsCC 09-15-2026 Oral Communications Written Comments From:Jennifer Griffin To:City Council; City Clerk Cc:grenna5000@yahoo.com Subject:Retail at Coach House Shopping Center & Homeless Sheriff"s Department Date:Tuesday, September 8, 2026 9:01:58 PM CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Do not click links or open attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the content is safe. Dear City Council: (Please consider the following input as public input for the Oral Communications section of the Cupertino City Council meeting on September 15, 2026. There is still existing retail at the Coach House Shopping Center at the intersection of Prospect and South De Anza Blvd. The developer wants to put housing in with no retail. Is anything being done to help this retail stay in Cupertino? I think it is important with all of these SB 330 projects that are taking away retail in Cupertino that we try to help the retail that is on these sites stay in Cupertino. Can the city help with incentives or finding other empty sites in Cupertino for these businesses to move to? Many of these are beloved mom and pop stores. It sounds like the Sheriff's Department will soon be homeless. Is there any other site in Cupertino the Sheriff's Department could move to if they are forced to leave their building? Please help protect and keep our retail in Cupertino and help them find new homes in Cupertino when their retail buildings get torn down. Thank you. Best regards, Jennifer Griffin From:Jennifer Griffin To:City Council; City Clerk Cc:grenna5000@yahoo.com Subject:Cities Having to Rezone Churches and Grocery Stores to Meet RHNA as Demanded by HCD Date:Tuesday, September 8, 2026 10:27:36 AM CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Do not click links or open attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the content is safe. Dear City Council: (Please consider the following as Public Input for the Oral Communications section of the Cupertino City Council meeting on September 15, 2026). The Pleasanton Weekly recently ran an excellent article reporting that the city of Pleasanton had to rezone portions of two churches in its city (a Lutheran Church and a Bible Church) to make the RHNA numbers for its Housing Element as demanded by HCD for certification of its Housing Element. HCD actually accepted this! The churches did not seek the rezoning themselves. Parts of their church campuses and property were actually rezoned by the city of Pleasanton for high density housing! The RHNA numbers are so high HCD is forcing cities to give up their churches to make RHNA! The RHNA numbers are totally wrong and were based on no reliable statistical fact. HCD knows this and has never acknowledged it, yet they still require cities to rezone places like churches to meet these "Pie in the Sky" RHNA numbers to get Housing Element certification from HCD themselves. Who is running HCD? Housing speculators? This same scenario of church and house of worship rezoning, such as happened in Pleasanton to the Lutheran Church And the Bible Church, also happened in Los Altos. Los Altos was forced to rezone portions of three churches (A Baptist Church/Bible Church, a Methodist church and an Eastern Orthodox Church) for high density Housing to get certified by HCD for their Housing Element. The churches did not even seek this rezoning. The city just did it. And HCD accepted it! The city of Los Altos also was forced by HCD to rezone two grocery stores for high density housing. Again, HCD allowed this. In the process of trying to meet their bogus HCD supplied RHNA numbers, Los Altos almost had to rezone a Catholic parochial school for high density housing. Now, the parking lot of Foothill College is in the Los Altos Hill Housing Element where the parking lot of a Community College had to be rezoned for high density housing by the city of Los Altos Hills to meet their too high HCD supplied RHNA numbers. Los Altos Hills had to do this to get their Housing Element Certified by HCD. So who is running HCD? Housing speculators? The use of invalid RHNA numbers by HCD to force cities to rezone houses of worship, grocery stores And school parking lots for high density housing has reached a crisis level. We are a city of STEM, but HCD does not operate using STEM. The rezoning of churches and schools and grocery stores for high density housing is outrageous and shows the loss of local control means we lose our churches, our schools and our grocery stores along the way. Thank you. Best regards, Jennifer Griffin Cupertino Cultural Center RECEIVED SEP 1 4 2026 CUPERTINO CITY CLERK Edward Hirshfield September 14, 2026 Before 1994 Cupertino was the hub of Cultural activity in the South Bsy because we hosted the DeAnza Center for the Performing Arts at DeAnza College. In that year the Center was closed because the building was condemed becuase it was judged to be seismically unsound. In its heyday the center hosted the San Francisco Syphomy Orchectra, SF Opera, Broadway Shows and intellectually leading Speakers performed there on a regular basis. A few years later Sand Hill Properties announced world classs plans for the Vallco center. It included outstanding architecture, housing for 2200 families, park space on a portion of the roof, commercial space and a possible peforming arts center. The know nothing organization "Better Cupeertino" ended all that by doing everything they could to kill the project. They slow rolled the project for ~20 years until The State of California prevented complete destruction by mandating that the housing portion of the project continue. So, now, we are left with a plain vanilla housing project that may be built by a yet to be named third party. The cultural enhancements we once had lost and hoped for are all gone. We have the City Councity poisioned by "Better Cupertino" to thank for this. Better Cuperino has deprived the City and its Citizens of the cultural benefits it might otherwise have enjoyed worth millions of dollars . We are now in the center of a cultural desert. All may not be lost if the new City Council is willing to take on the Cultural enrichment now scuttled by stupid and unlawful managment of the past 25 years. For exampple, the Eastern portion of the Vallco property has not yet been planned. It is owned by Sand Hilll properties but they may be willing to reliquish it for the right price. And, this is not the only possibility. Cupertino could be an oustanding Culteral Hub with the right management. After all, San­ Francisco lost most of its culteral facilities in its 1906 earthquake. Since that time, it built an Opera House, Symphony Hall, Jazz Center, Art Museums, Natural History Museum, Zoo, parks and many other public service entities. These were created by public/privite efforts. We have that same oportunity now if we approach this with perserverence and intelligence. Apple is one of the most cash heavy companies in the world. Wouldn't they like to known for the cultural balence they've brought to the world to counterpoise the technical revoloution they have wrought? The City Council ows the effort to lead its citizens to assuage the damage caused by their ig­ norant activity over the last 25 years. Work with Apple and others to build a cultural center here we can all be proud of. Begin now to create a plan both the City and its business entities can enjoy for a public/private parternership we can leave to ourselves and our children. We therefore propose that the Cupertino City Council direct the City Manager form a plan to ex ­ pand the Arts and Culture Commission to include local Citizens, Academics and local Corporate entities to be completed by Decemer 1, 2026 to define a plan to create a Cupertino Cultural Center.