By Lauren McSherry

Los Altos Hills officials continue to delve into how notification that Stanford University planned to develop 430,000 square feet of office space along Arastradero Road slipped through the cracks.

City staff and the council were unaware until about a month ago that as part of the Mayfield Agreement between Palo Alto and Stanford, the university could build out its research park at the triangle formed by Foothill Expressway, Arastradero Road and Hillview Avenue.

The agreement also includes plans to install two stoplights on the winding country road that serves as a border between the two cities.

Somehow Palo Alto’s Draft Environmental Impact Report and several other notices required under the California Environmental Quality Act never reached Hills city staff.

Planning Director Carl Cahill said he could not speculate on why the city never received the documents.

It is possible the notices were lost or misdirected. The city has moved its operations twice in the past year - to the former Bullis-Purissima School site and back to city property on Fremont Road - because of the construction of its new town hall.

The two cities’ only communication related to the project occurred earlier this year through e-mail exchanged between Hills City Engineer Dave Ross and a Palo Alto traffic engineer about one of the proposed stoplights. Cahill said the e-mails were not “a comprehensive discussion of the agreement.”

Los Altos Hills’ early involvement in the planning process probably wouldn’t have changed anything, but public perception would have been improved if Palo Alto had made more of an effort to include the city, Cahill said.

“I don’t see evidence that effort was made up front to get involved with the town and see what its concerns were,” Cahill said. “When I say town I don’t just mean the planning department but residents who would be affected.”

When the Palo Alto council approved the agreement, Wynne Furth, Palo Alto assistant city attorney, said the city fulfilled its noticing requirements.

The advertisement printed in the Palo Alto Weekly was sufficient notice for Hills residents and the more than 2,000 fliers mailed to residents along Arastradero Road were done as a courtesy; they were not legally required, she said.

Hills City Attorney Steve Mattas said the fliers mailed to residents were “not worded in such a way to put residents of Los Altos Hills on notice of what will be the impact to them.”

Under the Mayfield Agreement, Stanford will lease the 6-acre Mayfield site at the corner of El Camino Real and Page Mill Road to Palo Alto for $1 per year for 51 years and will construct soccer fields there at no cost to the city.

In exchange for Stanford’s building 250 units of housing along California Avenue, Palo Alto granted Stanford the right to relocate office space to the Hillview site.