In lieu

On tonight’s Planning Board agenda, one of the items up for discussion and consideration is Warmington’s Grand Marina  project.   This 40-unit development, like all new developments in Alameda is required to build a certain number of units as “affordable.”   Affordability as defined by the income limits set by the Department of Housing and Urban Development.   However, when Warmington first brought this project to the City, they were going to build 10 units as affordable, now, they are asking that the Planning Department recommend to the City Council to approve an amendment to their plan and allow them to build some of the required units offsite.

They sweetened the deal by proposing that they would build more units offsite to bring the total of affordable units as part of this project from 10 to 14.   The site in mind?   The old Island High school site on Eagle.   On its face it would seem as though this is a win-win situation for all parties involved.   Warmington gets to build more homes (both market rate and affordable) rather than less, the City has more housing to apply toward the ABAG allotted fair share.    But here is my problem with the site exchange, while the City staff makes a very compelling argument about the lack of land to build in the East End of Alameda (apparently the line designating East from West is Grand Street), it’s not as though the Island High site is smack dab in the middle of the Fernside area, it’s largely industrial and the part of Park Street it is near is a car repair shop and a gas station.  In fact the parcel itself is zoned M-1 Immediate Industrial.

And while proximity to services and transportation is also a good argument in favor of moving the units to the Island High site, considering that there are much more ill-placed affordable housing developments with even less access (Shinsei Gardens, Breakers at Bayport) coming on line in the near future than the Grand Marina site, it falls a bit short.    Because what we are really talking about Warmington building in this site is not very-low and low-income households that would benefit from the proximity to services that are easy to walk to and transportation lines, but rather moderate income families.   Corrected to add, apparently the units that Warmington is seeking to relocate are the vey-low and low income residences from the Grand Marina site to the Island High site to replace those with market rate homes.   Does this make me feel any better?  Nope.  In fact, it makes me a little bit more uncomfortable with the notion that Warmington wants to move all the very-low and low income housing units and keep the moderate income residences within the development itself to meet their quota of affordable units. 

I would prefer that Warmington be asked to build what was initially planned in its initial plan and the decision of what to do with the Island High site can wait until the North of Lincoln plans start moving forward and a better idea of how that area will be shaped is formulated, since it appears that the old Island High site is included as part of the Park Street North of Lincoln project area.   I think that affordable housing units are more successful when they are integrated into a project seamlessly and not shunted off to and concentrated in another location or off to the side of a development project.

Unless, of course, the Island High site will be declared as surplus and Wamington will purchase at full market value the land on which Island High sits, thereby adding some much needed cash to AUSD coffers.