Use these snippets to inspire your own feedback letter to the San Jose planning department regarding the Westgate West Costco Warehouse
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TRAFFIC SAFETY
Discuss dangers to students, kids, pedestrians, runners, and cyclists from the 11,000+ car trips per day Costco’s own plan expects the Warehouse Store to generate. Discuss the lack of any committed meaningful road safety improvements even in the most recent Costo plan.
TRAFFIC POLLUTION WASTED ENERGY
Discuss the danger, inconvenience, wasted time, pollution, and wasted energy due to the daily gridlock that will be produced by the 11,000+ car trips a day to the Costco. This is calculated from the project’s own traffic study. Of particular concern is the expected gridlock and the danger it brings to the intersection of Lawrence Expressway and Prospect Road in front of Prospect High School. This is where hundreds of students walk and bike to and from school each day and where the school’s cross-country runners train.
TRAFFIC
Discuss the impacts of traffic on your ability to travel. This could be traveling to and from home, to and from elementary, middle, and high schools, and to and from work. Discuss the impacts to backups on Saratoga Ave and Prospect Rd with their two lanes in each direction, small car turning lanes, and no room for any expansion.
TRAFFIC CUMULATIVE EFFECTS OF DEVELOPMENT
Discuss the cumulative traffic impacts of surrounding projects and how they must be taken into account for all traffic studies and predictions. The studies need to include the El Paseo de Saratoga mixed use 10-12 story high rise project ¼ mile away, the plan for multiple large-scale housing element projects in San Jose and Saratoga right across Prospect Ave from the proposed Costco Warehouse project, and traffic within the Saratoga Avenue Corridor.
TRAFFIC SAFETY NEIGHBORHOOD CUT-THROUGH DRIVERS
Discuss the impact of cut-through traffic through neighborhoods due to increased traffic from the Costco Warehouse. When surrounding streets are gridlocked, frustrated shoppers will seek easier ways to get to the Warehouse Store through the Country Lane Neighborhood, driving right by Country Lane Elementary. Mention recent traffic calming and bicycle safety measures implemented along Saratoga Avenue due to existing traffic safety issues. Saratoga Ave is designated the most dangerous for bike traffic by the Valley Transportation Authority. The Country Lane Neighborhood should be protected from cut-through traffic by closing off the remaining Graves Avenue entrance to the proposed Costco with a wall.
TRANSIT OPPORTUNITIES TO REALIZE SAN JOSE GOALS
Discuss San Jose’s “Urban Village” concept. The Urban Village goal requires projects to have “residential and jobs-based development, access to transit, and be walkable and bicycle-friendly”. The proposed Costco Warehouse site is located within a designated Urban Village area and meets none of these goals. The neighborhood would welcome a mixed-use neighborhood scaled project that would meet these goals.
TRANSIT
Discuss the lack of any viable transit options. The only nearby bus stop is 500 feet away with buses only running every half hour. The nearest rail service is miles away. Costco has the audacity to tout the site as “locally and regionally accessible by multiple transport connections” on their project website.
CLIMATE CLEAN ENERGY OPPORTUNITIES TO MEET SAN JOSE GOALS
San Jose’s has a plan called Climate Smart whose goal is to have San Jose be Carbon Neutral by 2030. Discuss the fact the Costco plan lacks any clean energy options like solar or energy storage and should include them. Mention the fact that San Jose’s own Clean Energy Community Advisory Commission recommended that the city should have Costco add these options and that the city refused to even ask for them.
POLLUTION
Discuss the effects of pollution from a year of demolition and construction, bioretention basins (stormwater and rain runoff storage), daily operations and standstill traffic. Discuss the chemical pollution from a decades old Midas and Firestone auto repair site and a dry cleaner. This affects students, seniors, and neighbors, particularly those with respiratory conditions.
NOISE
Discuss the noise to be generated from demolition, construction, and daily operations of the project. The noise generated by Costco includes noise from the tire center (air impact guns), cars (doors slamming, radios playing), delivery trucks (air brakes, idling), forklifts (constant beeping while in motion), and mechanical equipment (HVAC equipment, transformers, trash compactors). Much of the noise generated by daily operations, which can be broadcast into surrounding neighbors, occurs throughout the day and night and some (e.g. HVAC equipment) is continuous 24/7. This affects students, seniors, and neighbors, particularly those with sound sensitivity conditions, as they study, work, sleep, etc.
VISUAL BLIGHT
Discuss the visual blight from Costco’s operations area that is open to public view from the residents to the north, businesses and their clients to the east, and customers entering the premises from the planned Graves entrance near Cameo Drive. The visual blight generated by Costco includes pallets, storage racks and shelving, shopping carts, forklifts, recycling materials, trash, and semi-trailers left in outside loading spaces. Typically, Costco’s operations areas are located behind the warehouse and out of/shielded from public view. For example, the gated operations area at Costo’s Almaden location is behind the warehouse. In addition, the operations area and warehouse are shielded from view of the residences directly behind the warehouse by a 10 - 12 foot solid sound wall. The operations area of the proposed Costco should be shielded from the view of residents, businesses and their clients, and customers accordingly.
PARKING SITE CIRCULATION ACCESS TO EXISTING BUSINESSES
Discuss the deficient amount of parking spaces for a Costco location – a larger Warehouse than Sunnyvale, fewer parking spots than Sunnyvale, and spots are shared with neighboring businesses.
Discuss the impact on access to and parking near Traders Joe’s, Starbucks, and other Westgate West and nearby stores/businesses. The proposed Costco will be the first of its kind in the US with rooftop parking and will only have 692 parking spaces, which is less than the Sunnyvale location. Since 381 of Costco’s parking spaces will be on the roof, which will be accessed by a one-lane in and one-lane out ramp, people will be inclined to use the surface parking first, leaving less parking for other businesses. There also needs to be specifics on where the 300 Costco employees will park.
NO NEED FOR A NEW COSTCO WAREHOUSE
There are four Costco Warehouses in the immediate area already. Two are within a 10-15 minute drive – Almaden and Sunnyvale. The other two are about the same or a little more – Coleman and Senter. All are in light industrial and commercial areas more appropriate for a Warehouse.
EXCLUDING
The proposed Costco Warehouse will not be open to everyone. It requires a yearly membership fee to shop there or to use their food court to buy pizza or hotdogs. This is in contrast to the multiple stores that were on the site that were forced to close to make room for the 4 acre warehouse building. This includes the Smart and Final supermarket, and the Goodwill store that did job training, had community-based programs, and was a place for neighbors to give their unwanted items to a good cause.
ALCOHOL SALES
Costco sells an estimated $5 billion of alcohol annually. This includes beer, wine, and hard liquor. They are the largest alcohol distributor in the US.
San Jose has limits in the city municipal code for the number and concentration of stores where you can buy alcohol and take it offsite to drink, called off-sale stores. The area where the proposed Costco would be has a limit of 3 off-sale stores. There are already 7 such stores in the area. This makes the area what’s called an “area of undue concentration” as far as off-sale sellers.
The store also cannot be located within 150 feet of a residence or within 500 feet of a park. The Costco site is already much less than 150 feet from multiple houses on Graves Avenue. It is also about 505 feet from Saratoga Creek Park. This means the Costco plan fails to meet the off-sale density requirements. This prevents the San Jose Planning Department from giving approval to the plan. It means instead the city council needs to vote whether the site can violate these rules out of “public convenience or necessity.” The city can’t cite “public convenience or necessity” with 7 other nearby stores where consumers can buy alcohol, with 4 of them in the very same block as the proposed Costco – the BevMo alcohol superstore, Trader Joes, Sprouts supermarket, and the Rotten Robbie gas station.