The Sunnyvale City Council unanimously approved an overhaul of the Village Center Master Plan Tuesday. The new plan redefined how seven aging retail spaces, called village centers, will be zoned for commercial, residential and mixed use. Cementing these details will help protect some of North Sunnyvale’s grocery stores — including the biggest one, a Lucky’s Supermarket — but won’t stop development proposals that have already been filed.

The city has already received and approved development proposals for some of the sites, including Lakewood Shopping Center and Fair Oaks Plaza. The proposals include razing existing businesses to build about 182 townhomes.

The original 2017 plan was meant to encourage redevelopment of the centers. But as proposals came in, residents grew concerned that upgrading the sites threatened the removal of grocery stores and food resources in historically underserved neighborhoods.

More than 1,800 people signed a petition calling for the city to halt the projects. Himanshu Sethi, who lives in the San Miguel neighborhood, organized the petition and said he was disappointed that the council adopted the master plan without deeper protections for grocery stores and necessary retail amenities.

Sethi said he wants the city to be more specific in its zoning, because giving a broad definition of “retail” doesn’t protect businesses that provide necessary services. He wants to learn more about possible programs to support the small, family-owned businesses that’ll be displaced in the redevelopment, such as Speedy’s Tacos or Taj Mahal Fresh Market.

“The city can do a better job at planning for these things, to make sure these vital services and these vital businesses don’t go away,” Sethi told San José Spotlight. “This area will become a food desert and not enough urgency is being put into preventing this crisis.”

Councilmembers lamented Senate Bill 330, which makes it easier to build affordable and moderately priced housing by limiting local government control. The 2020 law allows developers to request unlimited waivers on city requirements, including retail requirements.

“I have heard over the past year and then from some of my residents, from my constituents in North Sunnyvale, about the impact of loss of retail, the loss of fresh food, the loss of grocery stores,” District 5 Councilmember Richard Mehlinger said at the meeting. “What makes it painful is what little power it feels that we have under existing state laws to prevent these objectively destructive changes.”

SB 330 limits the city’s ability to deny projects, so Lakewood Shopping Center and Fair Oaks Plaza are still on the chopping block. The city launched an incentive program for these locations, allowing developers to decrease or remove the projects’ affordable housing to increase their retail footprint, but the program has yet to see results.

Brittany Behr and her fiance Leland Bond moved to the San Miguel neighborhood about four years ago. They frequent the small and family-owned businesses at Fair Oaks Plaza, which they said are the only restaurants and grocery stores within walking distance of their neighborhood.

“We both really support housing and adding housing, especially making housing more accessible,” Behr told San José Spotlight. “The problem is, we feel that the land use is really inefficient and that sacrificing these businesses that are a backbone of the community isn’t the answer.”

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After a nationwide search, City Manager Tim Kirby appointed Daniel Pistor, the department’s deputy chief of fire services, after former Chief Phan Ngo retired in April. Pistor started his new assignment June 22 and is charged with overseeing the city’s integrated Department of Public Safety (DPS), in which all officers receive police, fire and EMT training. The department has 293 sworn and non-sworn personnel.

Pistor has served with DPS for 22 years in various roles across multiple services, including captaining the city’s SWAT team and leading the COVID-19 response during emergency situations.

“I’m honored to lead the exceptional professionals of the Sunnyvale Department of Public Safety,” Pistor said in a city statement. “Community trust is the cornerstone of public safety, and I will continue to prioritize transparency, communication and equity in every aspect of our work.”

Prior to coming to Sunnyvale in 2003, Pistor was a police officer in the Honolulu Police Department, building a foundation in community-based law enforcement through the High-Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas program.

Pistor has already spent years engaging with Sunnyvale residents through the Public Safety Citizens Academy, National Night Out and the Firefighter Pancake Breakfast, a city statement said. Ngo previously told San José Spotlight regularly engaging with residents is especially important for the department to protect and serve the community.

Devon Klein, president of the Sunnyvale Public Safety Officers Association, said the union is excited about Pistor’s promotion. He said many previous chiefs hired from outside the department take more time to understand its unique structure, but Pistor will be “Monday ready” because of his experience.

“Dan is somebody that understands our people, he understands our organization, where we’re at, where our strengths are, where our weaknesses are,” Klein told San José Spotlight. “I think we’re going to see that he’s ready to serve and impact the community immediately.”
This also means Pistor is familiar with the department’s ongoing projects and problems, such as the city’s disproportionately long paramedic response time and need to upgrade data collection systems. Klein said he hopes Pistor prioritizes these issues and advocates for improvements to the department through staffing and infrastructure fixes.

He said the union sat in on a panel of candidates during the selection process, which provided insights into the various backgrounds and skills each candidate had. Klein said the view into the hiring gives members more confidence in Pistor as chief.

“Chief Pistor is in a unique position to lead Sunnyvale’s Public Safety Department into its next chapter,” Kirby said in the statement. “Over the past 22 years, he has risen through the ranks, earning the confidence and respect of his colleagues while strengthening the department’s reputation through dedicated service to our community.”

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True Life Companies has plans to develop 101 townhomes that would replace the Lakewood Shopping Center, which includes New Wing Yuan Market, one of the only places to get groceries in North Sunnyvale. While the plans include a 10,000 square feet retail building, residents say that’s not enough to sustain the neighborhood.

“It’s a balance between the housing we need and the retail we need, trying to get both is tricky,” District 6 Councilmember Eileen Le, who represents most of North Sunnyvale, told San José Spotlight.

The Lakewood development still needs approval from the city council. It’s considered a village center — one of seven aging sites the city wants to redevelop with mixed-use buildings where restaurants and shops operate on the ground floor and residents live above.

The city published its draft village center master plan May 23, with guidelines on how much retail space is needed in the redevelopment. The draft master plan increases minimum density from 18 homes per acre to between 22 to 56 townhomes. The plan will be discussed by the Planning Commission June 16 and City Council July 1.

Almost all village center proposals the city has received so far are for townhomes with little to no retail, such as the approved village center at Fremont Corners and plans for Fair Oaks Plaza. In March, the city council approved an incentives plan to allow specific developers the opportunity to provide less affordable housing in exchange for more retail space.

Neighbors living near Fair Oaks Plaza are organizing around the possible loss of their shopping center. Christina O’Guinn has lived in the San Miguel neighborhood for 27 years, within walking distance from Fair Oaks Plaza. The shopping center is slated for demolition to make way for 81 townhomes, including the Taj Mahal Fresh Market where O’Guinn regularly shops for groceries. The project is being developed by Wood Rodgers and the latest proposal has no space for any businesses.

There are a handful of small markets and only one large grocery store, a Lucky’s Supermarket, north of the Caltrain tracks. The shopping center where Lucky’s is located is another village center, and the master plan proposes keeping that space as commercial-only.

O’Guinn said her biggest concern is turning North Sunnyvale into a food desert.

“(The developers) are not really thinking about the livability for the people, for the residents, they’re not thinking about the long term,” O’Guinn told San José Spotlight. “If you’re a resident, you don’t wanna live in a neighborhood that’s just housing.”

O’Guinn said neighborhood residents have organized a petition asking for an exemption from Senate Bill 330 — a state law that makes it easier to build affordable and moderately priced housing — to protect Lakewood Shopping Center and Fair Oaks Plaza. They’re also asking city officials to preserve Lucky’s Supermarket.
Kelley Rutchena, director of entitlements for True Life Companies’ Bay Area branch, said the developer is aware of resident concerns about the loss of local grocery stores. She spoke to the Sunnyvale Planning Commission during a May 12 presentation on the Lakewood development. She declined to comment for this article.

While plans are early in the process, Rutchena said they’re considering making the retail building two stories, bringing the total space to 23,000 square feet.

“We are considering and analysing this alternative to try to enhance the commercial portion of this site,” Rutchena said at the meeting.

Story updated May 29 at 3:22 p.m. Original story published May 28 at 8:30 a.m.

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Sunnyvale is planning for 126 affordable apartments at 295 S. Mathilda Ave. on a 1.04-acre city-owned site, developed by MidPen Housing. The site is adjacent to multiple new developments like the Meridian and downtown Cityline’s various apartments. Some nearby residents in a single-family neighborhood are not on board and have complained about parking and litter from the increasing density.

MidPen Housing spokesperson Lyn Hikida said the apartments will be available at low- and extremely low-income levels — up to 30% below the area median income, which is $195,200 for a family of four living in the county. She added the city wants to set aside a quarter of these apartments for homeless or at-risk families.

“We’ve been engaging closely with the community as we continue to refine plans for 295 South Mathilda,” Hikida told San José Spotlight. “We’re excited to be partnering with the city to help meet the intense need for high quality, affordable homes in Sunnyvale.”

The project — part of the city’s strategy to increase housing on Sunnyvale property — is still in its early stages. The developer submitted plans March 16, according to the city planning portal, and the planning department responded with comments in mid-April. There aren’t any hearings scheduled yet with the Planning Commission or City Council.

One nearby resident, who requested anonymity for fear of their personal safety, said they’re worried about the building’s height and lack of proportional parking.

While the project has 126 apartments, it will only have 67 parking spots. The resident said other buildings in the area don’t have enough parking for their residents, which makes street parking difficult and driving around the neighborhood more dangerous.

The development is planned to have six stories, which the resident said doesn’t adhere to the city’s Downtown Specific Plan. In the plan, the neighborhood west of Mathilda Avenue has a maximum building height of four stories, to transition from the downtown core into the single-family home neighborhood.

The resident wants the city and developers to work alongside the neighbors to find a middle ground, and suggested creating underground parking to shrink the building size or turning the development into affordable senior housing.

“Change is inevitable, there’s nothing wrong with that,” the resident told San José Spotlight. “We want to make sure that whatever change takes place is not changing the community too much, you can still build in a way that’s integrated into the neighborhood.”

Sunnyvale has to build 11,966 homes by 2031 to meet state housing goals, 6,709 of which must be below market rate. The city’s moving toward those goals, approving hundreds of new homes near transit and in underutilized lots.

District 2 Councilmember Alysa Cisneros, who represents the neighborhood, said some of these issues are harder to address, if not impossible for the city.

Cisneros agreed parking is a big problem in that neighborhood, but state laws say there’s no minimum parking requirement for developments within a half-mile of public transit — in this case, the downtown Sunnyvale Caltrain station. She said underground parking is much more expensive, making it less feasible. The developers need to do a traffic study later in the permitting process, which will cumulatively show traffic and parking impacts.
While residents have been raising concerns with specific parts of the project, Cisneros said she hasn’t heard anyone push against housing in its entirety. Instead, she said residents are establishing a city-sanctioned neighborhood association, including people living at the new affordable housing projects.

“This has been where a lot of affordable housing development has occurred, and (the neighbors) have largely been really gracious,” Cisneros told San José Spotlight. “They do understand the need for affordable housing, and we’re at a point where we’re trying to figure out where we can address these quality of life concerns that they have in a way that’s also not going to jeopardize the project happening.”

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The Sunnyvale City Council allocated its fiscal year 2025-26 federal grants on May 6. The city has about $383,000 from the HOME program, $1 million in Community Development Block Grant funding and $600,000 unspent from the 2024-25 fiscal year. That money is going toward various programs and organizations that support residents, such as affordable home repairs or child care improvements. But the city is preparing to use its general fund dollars or other resources to uphold local support service programs in case federal funding cuts eliminate the grant funding.

Councilmembers approved funding for multiple in-house support services, such as loan programs for major and minor home repairs. They also met the full funding request from Sunnyvale Community Services totaling more than $1.6 million, which assists low-income residents to prevent homelessness and hunger.

“I believe it is critical that we fully fund Sunnyvale Community Services, they are a lifeline to our community, they are the frontline social safety net here,” Councilmember Richard Mehlinger said at the meeting.

Federal funding cuts threaten to hit Silicon Valley governments and nonprofits hard, impacting educators, low-income developments and the county’s hospital system, among other services. It’s already delayed community projects in San Jose, including improvements to the Alum Rock Business Corridor and Happy Hollow Zoo.

City spokesperson Jennifer Garnett said the city received confirmation May 14 it would be reimbursed for the more than $1.3 million in federal grant funding during the upcoming fiscal year.

“The requests we’ve made so far this fiscal year have gone smoothly. It remains to be seen how things go in the new fiscal year,” Garnett told San José Spotlight.

Marie Bernard, executive director of Sunnyvale Community Services, said Second Harvest of Silicon Valley slashed its food allocation five times in the past 18 months, since the food bank has had various federal and community funding cuts. She said the cuts will necessitate tough financial decisions in the coming months, but she’s glad the city is working with them.

“I’m grateful and I’m hopeful because of our city’s commitment to ensure that the contracts they signed will be honored to the best of their ability, if funds are frozen or delayed,” Bernard told San José Spotlight. “I’m sure we’re going to be making some very tough decisions in the months ahead, but at least we’ll be doing it in partnership with our local government.”

The city awarded Sunnyvale Community Services about $513,000 for its Work First program operated alongside Downtown Streets Team, which provides job training and work opportunities to homeless individuals. Bernard said the city’s also helping fund the nonprofit’s three other core programs, including its rental assistance programs and food bank.

During last year’s budget cycle, Sunnyvale officials celebrated a structural surplus with enough money to set aside $3.5 million for new services, and credited the city charter’s requirement to forecast and balance the budget 20 years out. The city will review its fiscal year 2025-26 budget at a May 22 workshop.
Multiple councilmembers signaled their support for using city dollars to fund some of the programs if needed.

“Once money like this is clawed back, my assumption now has to be that that’s not coming back for the foreseeable future,” Councilmember Alysa Cisneros said at the meeting. “I now have to assume … this is on us, so that takes a holistic look at our budget and where is this going to come from on a sustainable level from the city.”

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City officials confronted the “Palestine Palette” art booth’s organizers partway through the Hands on the Arts festival Saturday, citing unapproved political content: a poster with a historic map of Palestine. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is condemning the decision, claiming the city censored Palestinian culture, and is calling for a public apology and for city staff to take equity, inclusion and free speech training.

“We are deeply concerned that Palestinian culture was singled out for censorship at an event meant to celebrate diversity,” CAIR San Francisco Bay Area Executive Director Zahra Billoo said in a statement.

Artist coalition Soul of my Soul, which hosts galleries and art events about Palestinian culture throughout the Bay Area, organized the booth for the festival. Children could paint ceramic tiles at the booth and learn about Palestinian art, including posters discussing the people’s history and significance of various artistic symbols.

City spokesperson Rachel Davis said all materials and art projects need city approval in advance, and that the booth displayed unapproved material. She said city officials asked the booth organizers to remove the unapproved poster or leave, and they chose to leave the event.

Davis added the city has heard multiple perspectives about what occurred and is committed to its tenets of treating all everyone with dignity.

“As we continue to gather information, it is very clear that this is an opportunity to learn from one another and determine how we can improve,” Davis told San José Spotlight. “We look forward to having an open and compassionate dialogue as we move forward.”

Soul of my Soul co-founder Dina, who requested to only use her first name out of fear for her safety, worked the event and said the city didn’t communicate materials needed approval ahead of time. She also said the city’s event organizers helped set up the booth and put up the posters — which were created intentionally to keep away from politics.

About an hour into the event, Dina said an attendee began loudly expressing their disapproval of the poster with the map. A few hours later, four event organizers confronted Dina in front of children and families painting tiles at the booth and told her to remove the poster.

Dina said one of the city’s organizers became aggressive, got in her personal space and tried to pack up items at the booth, some of which were Dina’s personal family heirloom ceramics from Palestine.
Soul of my Soul is working with CAIR and the NAACP to determine next steps, but Dina said she wants the city to apologize and for city officials to take an anti-Palestinian hate training. She also wants the city to hold the aggressive organizer accountable for harassing them.

“They politicize our existence, they politicize our history, they politicize every aspect of our existence, so what does that leave us with?” Dina told San José Spotlight. “You cannot say that a group’s history is political, because that is racist.”

Dozens of upset Sunnyvale residents spoke about the incident at Tuesday’s City Council meeting.

“You made it clear that your values of diversity and inclusivity are performative,” Omar, a member of the Muslim Community Association who did not give his last name, said at the meeting. “This is an opportunity for learning. It is clear the council requires education on anti-Palestinian racism so that in the future, decisions are not made that alienate an entire culture of identity at the request of a few angry community members.”

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The county doesn’t accept healthy stray cats. Its spay and neutering services are limited and it’s more than 40 miles away to the animal services facility in San Martin. Peter Hoang, senior management analyst with the city’s Department of Public Safety, presented the situation to the Sunnyvale City Council at an April 22 meeting, where councilmembers raised concerns about the 45-minute commute.

While Hoang said the department hasn’t heard any official complaints with the distance, Mayor Larry Klein said he had.

“(I’ve) heard complaints, with either the distance or … the question about county facilities,” Klein said at the meeting. “(It) has not been a lot at this point, but there have been multiple cases.”

The city council began scrambling for an animal service provider when Sunnyvale’s 18-year-long partnership with the Humane Society of Silicon Valley ended late January. A fire at the Humane Society in December cause more damage than expected, forcing Sunnyvale to find another location. The city secured an emergency partnership with the county-run San Martin facility in February.

City spokesperson Jennifer Garnett said the county agreement covers all other animal care needs, such as sheltering abandoned or lost domestic animals. The county’s emergency contract will run until the end of January 2026. The city is exploring other options for long-term contracts to meet the city’s animal care needs.

“The only major service impact is the inability to impound healthy stray cats,” Garnett told San José Spotlight.

Garnett said the city has two animal control officers, but Sunnyvale doesn’t keep track of how much time officers spend driving. The city couldn’t provide data on how many calls animal control gets about stray cats.

Santa Clara County has been hit hard by “kitten season,” as stray cat colonies grow in various neighborhoods. While other cities struggle to grapple with stray cats, Sunnyvale’s stray cat population has been dwindling, according to Bay Area Cats founder Vanessa Forney.

Bay Area Cats is a nonprofit that helps spay and neuter cats across Sunnyvale, including strays. Forney said the nonprofit has been able to spay and neuter “thousands” of Sunnyvale cats in its five years of operation. She said the number of calls for the trap-neuter-release program has dropped in recent years, due in part to the nonprofit’s strategy of targeting entire neighborhoods rather than each individual call.

Because the county can’t shelter healthy stray cats and the extra distance to the county’s spay and neuter clinic, Bay Area Cats wants the city’s animal control calls about healthy stray cats to be directed to them. They can then trap, neuter and release the stray cats. Otherwise, Forney said the city risks having an explosion in its stray cat population.

“You can’t just have an open intake shelter, you can’t just have (trap-neuter-release), you can’t just have animal control that can help with the healthy cats. You need a combination of all of that,” Forney told San José Spotlight. “It has to be a whole encompassing solution where everyone is working together.”

She said the city needs to consider having a local facility that offers spay and neuter services. The nonprofit has been running a survey about animal care services in Sunnyvale, and almost every respondent so far said they wouldn’t be willing to drive to San Martin for spay and neuter services.
The city council unanimously voted to suspend a policy requiring Sunnyvale’s animal control to impound all healthy stray cats, because there’s nowhere the cats can be placed. Councilmembers want more information about the city’s animal service needs.

“I don’t think this is feasible in the long term,” Klein said. “It is an issue in the community, as we’ve seen … Suspending the ordinance is the right thing to do but having a long-term solution and answering some of those questions, ‘how do we figure out a stray is a stray,’ is an important thing.”

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The county has selected WeHope, a nonprofit homeless service provider, to work with up to 40 unhoused adults who will be temporarily housed at a hotel in Sunnyvale or Milpitas. The $1 million contract with WeHope will run through the end of the year or until the Palo Alto temporary housing site opens tentatively in the fall. It was originally planned to open February. WeHope will offer 30-day hotel stays with the option to extend if needed and provide case management services.

WeHope contracted with Sunnyvale last year to run two North County hotel shelter programs, including one which put people camping at the library into a hotel for 30 days. That program just ended.

“We are going to implement the same type of program because it’s already proven to be successful, in the way it’s getting people off the street, getting them into a safe environment and then getting them connected to services that they deserve to have,” Pastor Paul Bains, founder of WeHope, told San José Spotlight.

Having more shelter beds for single adults in North County is an urgent need since the county-owned Sunnyvale shelter no longer provides beds for this demographic. When nonprofit Bill Wilson Center took over shelter operations last year, it switched to servicing families. The shelter previously provided beds for up to 100 adults.

When the Bill Wilson Center changed the longstanding shelter model, it also displaced older, single adult shelter residents. The nonprofit was supposed to allow a number of homeless individuals to stay until the new Palo Alto modular tiny home site opened before fully switching to a family shelter, according to the transition plan outlined by the county. But soon after Bill Wilson Center took over, residents were told they had to go.

Some people couldn’t find suitable housing and ended up on the streets, including Sean Stein, who is sleeping in a friend’s car. Stein has been waiting for a spot in a tiny home site to open.

“I’m just slowly saving up for a car to sleep in,” Stein told San José Spotlight. “Just living day by day.”

Once the Palo Alto site opens in the fall, it’ll have the capacity to serve more than 200 people annually including families and up to 84 single adults.

Sunnyvale has about 471 homeless residents, according to a 2023 point-in-time count, though the tally is considered to be an undercount. While officials conducted a new count earlier this year, results haven’t been released yet.
Otto Lee, president of the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors, said he’d like to see more shelter options in North County to make up for the loss of beds for single adults.

“We are grappling with a shortage of both temporary and permanent housing across the county,” Lee said at an April 8 meeting. “Each additional bed in North County would help us get closer to meeting a need across the county.”

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Public Safety Chief Phan Ngo will step down at the end of April, after steering the city through its COVID-19 emergency response and bolstering community trust in the department. City Manager Tim Kirby will appoint an interim chief while officials search for Ngo permanent replacement. Sunnyvale’s Department of Public Safety is an integrated department, meaning all officers receive police, fire and EMT training. The city employs roughly 200 officers.

“I feel very fortunate to have been in a position to serve alongside the men and women in this department, who I am immensely amazed at the work they do,” Ngo told San José Spotlight. “I would put them up against any police department or fire department in terms of the work they produce day in, day out. The community has been so welcoming to me and supportive of our officers since day one.”

Ngo joined the city in 2017, and before that he worked for the San Jose Police Department since 1989. His retirement caps 36 years in Silicon Valley law enforcement.

He said he pursued a career in law enforcement partly because of a conversation in one of his criminal justice classes at San Jose State University about the lack of Vietnamese American representation in law enforcement. The discussion made Ngo, who is Vietnamese American, want to get more involved.

In his first years with SJPD, Ngo said he was given special assignments around the city’s Vietnamese American community, which affected his philosophy of policing as community service. He said it emphasized the importance of community policing and regularly engaging residents about their issues.

That focus helped Ngo begin and lead multiple community-centric programs once he got to Sunnyvale, including the Public Safety Citizens Academy and Emergency Preparedness programs. Sunnyvale Mayor Larry Klein said Ngo excelled in connecting with residents and maintaining community trust in the department, especially during the 2020 nationwide pushes for police accountability in the wake of George Floyd’s death.

“I think he’s really led the organization well and ensured that Sunnyvale continues to be the safest city, that we continue to have residents that really appreciate our Department of Public Safety,” Klein told San José Spotlight.

The next public safety chief will have to steer the department through multiple infrastructure projects, including renovating fire stations, and working on an analysis of the city’s need for paramedics.

City spokesperson Jennifer Garnett said the city will conduct a nationwide search and that residents can fill out a survey to weigh in on what they want to see in the next chief. The position is not yet open and a timeline hasn’t been ironed out yet, but Garnett said the listing is likely to open in the next two weeks and will close by the end of April. The position requires at least a bachelor’s degree in police science, fire science, public administration, political science or a related field and at least seven years in public safety.

Klein said he wants to find a chief with strong leadership skills who’s community-focused.

The Public Safety Officers Association ran an internal survey to see what its members want in a new chief. The survey found officers are looking for someone to advocate for the department and frontline officers, which was echoed by union President Devon Klein. He also said the department needs to continue modernizing its technology, especially data collection and analysis, pointing to the lack of data on medical responses.

“We’ve had our differences with Chief Ngo over the years, but at the same time (we) commend him on his dedicated 36 years of service to the public and to the community,” he told San José Spotlight. “Although we didn’t always agree, I can say we continuously worked to get past our differences to do what was best for the safety of Sunnyvale’s residents.”

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The Sunnyvale City Council voted unanimously Tuesday, with Councilmember Murali Srinivasan absent, to approve a retail preservation program for two aging retail centers slated to be turned into townhomes. The program would allow the developers to skirt affordable housing requirements if they add more commercial space. The initial proposals don’t include enough retail to sustain the neighborhoods, councilmembers and residents said.

Community Development Director Trudi Ryan said developers aren’t adding as much retail because there’s less financial incentive compared to housing. Since both sites’ development plans haven’t been finalized yet, Ryan said it’s possible this program could convince developers to increase their planned retail space, though that’s not a guarantee.

“In my conversations with the developers of both of those sites, they expressed interest in this program, but they have not made a commitment,” Ryan said at the meeting. “It’s an incentive, it’s not a requirement, and they’re still evaluating whether or not it’s financially worthwhile for them.”

Qualifications for the retail preservation program require the aging retail spaces, dubbed “village centers,” to be a certain distance away from other retail, a certain size and north of El Camino Real. Only two meet all the criteria: Fair Oaks Plaza and Lakewood Shopping Center. Both locations are in North Sunnyvale, a historically underserved community.

Residents have been sounding the alarm over the plans to eliminate retail, saying the proposals would turn North Sunnyvale into a food desert.

While councilmembers voiced unilateral support for maintaining retail in North Sunnyvale, city officials stressed they can’t outright deny the proposal. State laws, such as Senate Bill 330, make it easier to build affordable and moderately priced housing by limiting local government control.

City Attorney Rebecca Moon said denying the development would open the city up to potential lawsuits, which the city would likely lose.

“We need to do our best to preserve retail, to prevent food deserts,” District 6 Councilmember Eileen Le told San José Spotlight. “I am willing to go to bat for that, but I don’t think it’s feasible to go to court.”

Councilmembers said the original intention of village centers was to create walkable, mixed-use communities. There are seven village centers throughout the city, though not all of them have proposed redevelopments in the pipeline

The city council will update the Village Center Master Plan later this spring to protect retail space at other sites, particularly at the intersection of Mathilda Avenue and Maude Road, which is also in North Sunnyvale. The master plan was scheduled to be revised in early April, but was delayed. District 5 Councilmember Richard Mehlinger said it’s important to update the plan sooner rather than later to prevent other village centers from receiving similar proposals.

Residents were split on whether to support the program during public comment, some saying the program’s voluntary basis wasn’t reassuring enough. Lenora Erblich, whose family has lived next to Fair Oaks Plaza for more than 60 years, said the redevelopment would uproot community gathering spaces by removing the area’s small businesses.

Himanshu Sethi, who also lives near Fair Oaks Plaza, wanted the city council to reject the program. He said the city needs to find more ways to handle developments that displace small businesses and impairs the neighborhood’s ability to access resources like grocery stores.

“The city council’s not doing enough to listen to the community,” Sethi told San José Spotlight. “I don’t think they’re exploring their options efficiently enough.”

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