В Пало-Альто вынесли запрет на строительство банка, где нелегально устроили игровую зону

On the outside, the boarded up bank building on California Avenue is not much to look at. But the inside, reportedly equipped with a couch, 60-inch television and a fridge full of food and beer, sounds like an ideal place to kick back and play video games. The only problem is that none of it is legal, according to city code inspectors, who earlier this month issued a stop work order after finding that the property did not have the required permits for its uses. “Electrical work inside and outside. … has been done on this building; no permits were pulled,” the complaint states. “There is a lot of equipment and furniture to suggest someone is living in there.” The complaint further noted several features of the interior, including a hammock, microwave, refrigerator, dog crate and gym equipment. The first stop work notice was placed outside the building on May 21 after the city received a complaint of construction going on inside without a proper permit. Senior building inspector Daniel Mauldin wrote that he was unable to enter the building and the windows were boarded up, preventing anyone from peering inside. A second stop work notice was issued on July 9, this time stating that the building owners needed to file a proper use and occupancy permit, and that the space could not be used “for any purpose” until the proper permit was issued by the city. The current owner of the property is 414 California, LLC, and according to publicly available documents, the company is solely managed by Emmett Kilgariff, vice president of GPU architecture at NVIDIA. Kilgariff did not respond to a request for comment. Kilgariff and his company have also filed plans with the city to demolish the derelict building and replace it with housing and ground-floor retail. The design of the proposal, which has caught some flak from city officials and members of the public, is inspired by traditional Ohlone basket weaving, according to the project plans. Before the site was ever considered for housing, it was home to Bank of the West, which closed in February 2022. Silicon Valley Bank was preparing to open a branch there a few months later, but those plans fell apart after the bank collapsed in March 2023. “The building was vacated mid-renovation and is not usable in its current condition,” the housing application for 414 California Ave. states. The building has remained vacant since, and its exterior has become increasingly covered with local event flyers and advertisements. It remains unclear how long the building has been occupied and who, if anyone, has actually been living there. According to the city’s municipal code, violators of a stop work order can be charged with a misdemeanor, and the offending party has five days from the date of the order to coordinate with the city on how to be brought back into compliance. The housing proposal for 414 Cal Ave. was first filed last year and hoped to lean on Palo Alto’s planned home zoning process, whereby city officials can grant height and density exceptions for projects that have a certain amount of affordable housing. At six stories tall and with 37 units, the developers at the time had no other way to bypass the existing zoning regulations that govern Cal Ave. But on July 1, a new state law took effect that “upzoned” the half-mile radius around each Caltrain station in Palo Alto, and the development team was quick to reapply under that designation to bypass the planned home zoning process entirely — in other words, the developers and architects no longer needed to petition the City Council to get their project approved. The project changed slightly between the two iterations. The latest version calls for 39 units instead of 37, with two stories of underground parking and ground-floor retail and restaurant space. At its tallest, the building rises to 72 feet, where the new state law SB 79 allows up to 75 feet given its proximity to the Caltrain station. “What we’re trying to achieve is a really true mixed-used project,” project architect Zolan Pali told the council in September, during the prescreening hearing for the previous version of the project. “Most mixed-use projects, you often see a bunch of housing with very low amount of retail. This is all about the ground-floor experience and what happens along the street, along California.”