Location, Location, Location: Los Altos Hills, California
September 2, 2002
Silicon Valley wasn’t even a pixel on the screen when Los Altos Hills was incorporated in 1956. So the town’s charter writers, when drafting a residential community dedicated to the “preservation of the rural atmosphere of the foothills and orderly and unhurried growth,” had no idea how desirable their genteel ranch land would become when the tech industry later aggregated around it.
Now, with the stratospherically salaried whiz kids having to a great extent exited in the dust of the dot-com bust, Los Altos Hills remains home to the “enduring rich” of Silicon Valley—Hewlett-Packard’s CEO, Carly Fiorina, and Cisco Systems’ head, John Chambers. Los Altos Hills being the wealthiest of the Valley’s leafy-luxe communities, anything on the market below $3 million goes instantly. That’s real, not virtual, money.
The one purpose for incorporating Los Altos Hills was to keep it forever rustic and non-commercially zoned. There’s a town hall, a church, a public elementary school and a private high school. The downtown is borrowed. Neighboring Los Altos’ charming village serves both communities nicely. Los Altos Hills was once two large Spanish-Mexican land grants that evolved into vineyards and then fruit orchards; now it’s all preserves, trails, parks, creeks—acre upon acre of open space (or what looks like open space but is often privately owned)—and all about maintaining that openness.
The early townspeople were adamant about the concept of large-lot zoning: keeping big houses off small parcels. The floor-to-land-area ratio is 1,000 square feet to one acre (the minimum lot), meaning that on a 4-acre site, a residence can consist of a maximum of 4,500 square feet. Steep slopes are deemed unbuildable because of the increase in height and mass that the structures would demand. Deep setback requirements help keep houses out of sight.
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