Mountain View eyes Google land lease for new pickleball park

Mountain View has a new answer to a problem that has hung over its pickleball planning for years: 485 and 495 Clyde Ave., two vacant Google-owned parcels totaling 3.72 acres near the Sunnyvale border. The city is weighing a seven-year lease that would turn the land into a public park with up to a dozen courts, plus parking and restrooms, instead of trying to squeeze more play into already crowded recreation space.

The site sits in the eastern part of the city near Middlefield Road and State Route 237, next to Sunnyvale Municipal Golf Course. Mountain View’s project page describes it as a future city park, with some acreage reserved for future park and open-space uses. If council signs off on the lease terms, staff would move into concept layouts and preliminary work on environmental, noise, traffic, parking and other site impacts.

The deal is unusually cheap on paper and expensive in the background. Mountain View would pay Google $1 a year, but the city would still carry property taxes and property-management costs, a first-year total estimated at about $131,000. The lease would not start until Google demolishes the existing buildings, a step the city says is expected before the end of the year. The June 23 council agenda item also includes an option for Google to sell the property to the city, and the arrangement could give Google park-and-open-space credits equal to the 3.72 acres.

That private-land angle is what makes this proposal different from the city’s earlier search. In August 2025, more than 200 people showed up at a community meeting where staff said they were looking at privately owned sites with minimal impact on nearby homes or wildlife. That approach came after organized opposition formed around proposals for Cuesta Park, Cuesta Annex and the 12.5-acre Cuesta Annex site, along with a San Rafael Avenue property the city had recently acquired for park use. Those plans ran headfirst into residents who did not want green space paved over for courts.

Clyde Avenue avoids that fight by shifting the burden away from an existing park. It is not a public lawn being converted, and it is not a site ringed by backyards. For a city that has spent years hunting for a workable location, that matters more than the lease’s symbolic price.

Mountain View already has three dedicated outdoor pickleball courts at Rengstorff Park, added dual-court hours there on July 7, 2025, and still offers indoor drop-in play at Mountain View Sports Pavilion. The Parks and Recreation Commission also directed staff on June 29, 2022 to pilot dual-striping at the Rengstorff tennis courts. A dozen new courts at Clyde Avenue would not just add supply. They would give Mountain View a real outdoor pickleball park on land that was empty enough to make the politics work.