Tonight there is a meeting hosted by the Alameda Citizens Task Force regarding two park related issues, one, unsurprisingly involves the Beltline, the other involves the Neptune Pointe property. In advance of this meeting, an email was sent out regarding — what appears to be — the Sierra Club’s opinion on the matter of the Neptune Pointe property, which read:
The Sierra Club supports the East Bay Regional Park District’s plans to protect and improve Crown Beach State Park, which lies just beyond the southern end of Webster Street. The City of Alameda, however, does not and has forced the Park District to file a lawsuit against the City. The Park District’s suit asks that the County of Alameda Superior Court rescind a recent change in zoning on a 3.5 acre site across McKay Avenue from the Crab Cove Visitor’s Center, sometimes referred to as Neptune Point.
The City is stubbornly resisting rescinding the zoning change. The 95 units of housing, which the new zoning permits on the McKay Avenue site, could easily be accomodated on one, or a combination, of 23 other sites listed in the City’s housing element. The area of these other sites totals more than 120 acres, of which the 3.5 acre McKay Avenue site represents a small fraction.In 2012 a decades long housing campaign by the Sierra Club and others finally resulted in the City’s first housing element with State certification in 20 years. That certified housing element has given the City the flexibility it needs to zone to permit needed commercial development, housing, and more open space and parks on the limited land area available on our Island. Although the City’s public statements imply that the housing element requires that the City maintain the residential zoning on the McKay Avenue site, that implication is without merit.
Can I just point out the ridiculousness of the phrasing of this sentence:
The City of Alameda […] has forced the Park District to file a lawsuit against the City.
No one “forced” the East Bay Regional Park District to do jack shit. They determined that in order to get what they wanted, there was no need to pay the market rate for the property, oh no, they would just litigate their way into securing the property.
Here’s the thing that is still completely bullshit about the EBRPD’s argument, it doesn’t fucking matter what the zoning is for the land. The zoning could be for multi-level high rises and guess what? If EBRPD owned the land, they could still build whatever the hell they wanted to build on the land which is a parking lot and an administrative building or whatever. See how frustrating this whole business is, it’s gotten me to swear up a storm. The “rescinding the zoning change” would do one thing and one thing only. Render the land useless for the current land owner, thereby allowing the EBRPD to swoop in and get the land at a steal.
Let me repeat that. It doesn’t matter what the zoning is for the property. If EBRPD owned it, which they don’t, they could put anything they wanted there. So the lawsuit is designed to extort the City into doing what EBRPD wants in order to secure the property at a cheaper rate.
Despite City Manager John Russo and Marie Gilmore essentially explaining about the ridiculousness of the EBRPD lawsuit, yet again, at an earlier City Council meeting, apparently the message was unheard and resulted in the above letter essentially setting the aggressor — the EBRPD — as the victim.
Worth watching if you have a few minutes. Oh, the City Manager also points out that folks who have been saying that there are no utilities at the site are incorrect — did I mention that there are existing buildings on the property right now? — and is just a “baseless allegation”, his words, not mine.
Blogging Bayport Alameda 
I simply like to know how many houses or unit ar coming in the City , so far anywhere from 2000 to 2400 at the point , fruitvale bridge 100 or so , clement street 200 , former warehouse some 250 , and this neptune project 100 or so most are low to lower income housing .
this does not take in consideration all the houses which are being turned into multi unit {without parking space may I add ……
Using the so call state law Alameda is slowly turning into an East or west Oakland , can these low or lower income housing afford the taxes required to balance the payroll for our City Employees , regardless which dept , the answer ids clearly no ! so who will
Can anyone tell us where that traffic will go , oh yes they will ride the bicycles or take the bus , funny because I don’t see any at 7 am braving the freezing cold , nor fighting the rain , are they using the bus ? no they are empty as in the summer {there is an easy way to verify , the meters on the buses]
If pinochio was alive His nose would be 1/4 the lenght of all these nice self serving meeting
Comment by mijoka — January 16, 2013 @ 8:55 am
From Regional Transit Access Study
Comment by Lauren Do — January 16, 2013 @ 9:06 am
This post is odd, what does this mean, , “an email was sent out regarding — what appears to be — the Sierra Club’s opinion…” I think, if I’m reading this correctly, you’re suggesting it wasn’t the Sierra Club that sent the email (if not, who?). If it was really the Sierra Club that sent the email, than it’s their opinion the EBRPD was forced to file suit. So what?
It’s fun watching Russospiere wave his arms while defending Alameda’s bucolic innocence against EBRPD’s mean spirited parochialism.
Gilmore lays the decision to squish a bunch of new housing in the city on the few citizens of the city that voiced their support. If the citizens of Alameda really do support the housing element, put it to a vote instead of using a few cherry picked sycophants speak for everybody else.
Comment by Jack Richard — January 16, 2013 @ 9:47 am
The email was not sent out by the Sierra Club.
And the Housing Element must be adopted by the City, what would be the point of putting a Housing Element to a vote? If it’s not done, the City gets dinged by the State. Anyone could have come to the City Council and Planning Board to bitch about the Housing Element, people choose not to and then a few people want to bitch about it after the fact.
Comment by Lauren Do — January 16, 2013 @ 9:51 am
EBRPD has one simple solution to their problem that didn’t involve lawyers, it’s called: buy the land. If they owned it, they could do what they want regardless of the zoning. Whether it’s administrative/government use, residential, mixed use, whatever, if EBRPD owned the land, their plans could move forward. They elected not to purchase at the market rate value.
Comment by Lauren Do — January 16, 2013 @ 9:57 am
If anyone is interested in reading a timeline of events that happened before the lawsuit, here it is: http://islesay.wordpress.com/2012/12/20/neptune-point-timeline-events-leading-up-to-the-lawsuit/
Comment by Irene — January 16, 2013 @ 10:25 am
5
Your buddy Jon Spangler said the city made the situation worse. Reading the timeline of events one can’t help but agree with him.
Comment by Jack Richard — January 16, 2013 @ 12:14 pm
How did the City make the situation worse?
Comment by Lauren Do — January 16, 2013 @ 12:24 pm
Inquiring minds do want to know whether this is indeed the Sierra Club’s official position or not. The local “representative” of the Sierra Club – William Smith, has often misrepresented his authority. If this is the official Sierra Club position then it is disappointing to see them take a step back towards the environmental racism they engaged in in the 70’s and 80’s when they formulated positions opposing immigration, and supporting forced sterilization of low-income people.
In this case the Sierra Club – or Bill Smith, and EBRP isn’t putting parks before people, they are putting parking lots before people – denying working class families access to housing, while seeking to take over land that they could have gotten for free at the beginning of this whole process, to build a parking lot. It is very sad to see.
Comment by Doug Biggs — January 16, 2013 @ 12:43 pm
Thus is a ‘copy and paste’ from the Yodeler which is the Newsletter for the Bay Area Chapter of the Sierra Club
November 8, 2012 Leave a Comment
Park versus housing for Alameda parcel
Twitt
The popular Crab Cove visitor center is cramped and dated. If the East Bay Regional Park District can acquire the McKay Avenue property, the visitor center could double its public program area. The District could move its exhibition-design shop out of this building and across the street. The inadequate 44-space parking area could also move across the street to a larger lot, allowing the current parking area to be devoted to better park uses. The center deserves a major facelift, and we hope that the city will enable the Park District to acquire the McKay Avenue property to allow this. Photo by Richard Bangert.
The popular Crab Cove visitor center is cramped and dated. If the East Bay Regional Park District can acquire the McKay Avenue property, the visitor center could double its public program area. The District could move its exhibition-design shop out of this building and across the street. The inadequate 44-space parking area could also move across the street to a larger lot, allowing the current parking area to be devoted to better park uses. The center deserves a major facelift, and we hope that the city will enable the Park District to acquire the McKay Avenue property to allow this. Photo by Richard Bangert.
What would be the best use for four acres of surplus federal property across McKay Avenue from the Crab Cove visitor center in the city of Alameda?
The East Bay Regional Park District has long wanted to use the parcel to expand the popular visitor center, increase recreational and educational programs, and better separate parking and maintenance facilities from the heavily used picnic areas and beach at Crown Beach, which includes both the Robert W. Crown Memorial State Beach and the adjoining mile of beach along Shoreline Drive owned by the city. Taken together, these adjoining beaches are the largest swimming beach on the San Francisco Bay, with over 1.3 million annual visitors. There is no other suitable location for improving the visitor center without impinging on the existing park lands.
The city, however, recently rezoned the site as multi-family residential, and a private developer has submitted the high bid at auction to purchase it, with plans to build 48 single-family homes there.
Alameda’s rezoning of the property, along with 15 others in the city, was intended to satisfy state housing requirements for multi-family housing (see October-November Yodeler, page 7). Development of multi-family housing is one of the best alternatives to sprawl development on open space. But if the new owner builds single-family housing here, it stymies both park improvement and multi-family development. Further, the noise from the Park District’s adjacent maintenance yard would disturb adjacent residences.
According to the Alamedan, the Park District may sue the city.
WhatYouCanDo
Contact the Alameda City Council at:
Mayor Marie Gilmore and Councilmembers
2263 Santa Clara Ave.
Alameda, CA 94501.
(You don’t need to live in Alameda since this is an issue that concerns a regional park visited by people from all over.) Urge the Council to facilitate the Park District’s acquisition of the McKay Avenue parcel.
To work with the Sierra Club in support the Park District’s request for the property, contact Bill Smith, the Sierra Club’s lead Alameda activist on the park expansion
Comment by frank — January 16, 2013 @ 1:22 pm
Just to correct the Sierra Club’s version of the facts: the developer purchased the property before the City identified the site for the Housing Element and the rezoning happened during that process.
Comment by Lauren Do — January 16, 2013 @ 1:34 pm
9 Doug,
I’m not getting the environmental racism angle here. A brand new visitor center would benefit a whole lot more people, many of them not white, and many of them of modest means, (many of whom live in the immediate neighborhood, by the way) than would the eight affordable homes that would come on the market if the developer proceeds with a 48-home development at Neptune Point. The TLC project sounds more like “renewed hope” for a developer…and happy talk for the poor.
Comment by Richard Bangert — January 16, 2013 @ 1:51 pm
Why does this issue elicit so much indignation? I don’t get it.
Comment by Darcy Morrison — January 16, 2013 @ 2:48 pm
Richard, the Park Department had several opportunities to obtain the land – first through a no fee conveyance when the property was surplused – they failed to gather forces to make that happen. Then they had the opportunity to purchase the land – they failed to gather forces to make that happen. They were asleep at the wheel on both occasions. Now in order to cover for that, they are attempting to put a stop to all opportunities to provide affordable housing in Alameda by getting the Housing Element thrown out – and that disproportionally negatively impacts low income communities. In doing so, interestingly enough,they would also disqualify Alameda from being able to access state funds designated for community parks – ironic isn’t it? At the same time, the EBRP has never put forth a public plan or sought public input on this mythical new visitor center and parking area(where was the transparency then?). There seems to be a lot of unused parking and underutilized space over on Shoreline at the entrance to Crown Beach that might make for a more accessible visitor center, and the maintenance facility is already separate, and could not become more separate.
Darcy, for me this issue elicits a lot of indignation because throughout the process, EBRP has had numerous opportunities to engage, and to make a legitimate effort to get public support for securing the land, and they chose not too. Now out of all the potential actions they could still take (and there are several) they choose the one option that will deny housing for people who need it most. My career has been spent dealing with the fall-out caused when people are left homeless, and when another door is shut in their face, I don’t like it.
Comment by Doug Biggs — January 16, 2013 @ 3:18 pm
I always get annoyed when people and organizations feel a sense of entitlement because of who they are or what they are. In this case the East Bay Regional Park District seems to believe that the rules don’t apply to them, as Doug Biggs stated above they have had many opportunities to secure the Neptune Pointe property and after each time they just failed to execute. They still have options now to secure the land, but don’t want to fork over the money to do so, they feel they are entitled to that land at the cost they feel as though it is worth because, why? The word “Park” is attached to their name and they are the next closest neighbor?
Comment by Lauren Do — January 16, 2013 @ 3:29 pm
Doug,
EBRPD failed to get the land for free because this parcel, for who knows what reason – random choice maybe, was placed into a special GSA program that precluded giving the land to another agency under a Public Benefit Conveyance. And they refused to even negotiate with the park district over a direct sale. EBRPD was not asleep. They were kicked in the teeth.
The GSA’s special cost recovery program set a target price of, I believe, $3.2 million. They arrived at that figure because that was the cost of relocation/consolidation. It had nothing to do with appraised value. GSA wouldn’t even settle for the top bid – they asked for more and extended the escrow to the high bidder in order to get it.
And the only rational explanation as to why GSA would try to “extort” more money from a land developer (or why a land developer would outbid an agency trying to buy land zoned for offices in a market with an office glut) is because they had some reason to believe that the property was going to be zoned in their buyer’s favor. If they had done an appraisal prior to auction, they would have gotten the same comps as the park district got, which was at least $1 million less than the imaginary value. So, who’s kidding who here? The park district is prohibited from paying any more than appraised value. It’s to protect taxpayers from overzealous administrators blowing our tax money on artificially overpriced land. There’s nothing new about that concept. Had the property remained zoned as it was at the time of the opening auction bid, the winning bidder would likely have walked.
No, the word “park” does not entitle an agency to special treatment, but neither should it penalize them because they have fiduciary responsibilities. The value of the land was changed because it was rezoned during escrow when it was too late for the park district to re-appraise the property and meet the new appraised price. The city could have helped the park district, like it stated it would in its park master plan, by not rezoning, but it decided not to.
Tens of thousands of voters in two counties voted for Measure WW, which included acquisition of the McKay property. How many voters voted to rezone the McKay property? The official tally is five.
Comment by Richard Bangert — January 16, 2013 @ 6:11 pm
Thank you Richard!!!!!
Also a thanks to Irene for her timeline.
Comment by frank — January 16, 2013 @ 6:23 pm
I used to vote for everything that came along. I voted for Measure WW because I passionately believe in Parks as a legacy. I read the Ballot carefully as I do in every Election. I researched it from different sources and Voted YES. I opposed the use of Funds for the Boy’s Club not because I ‘hate children’ and not because “I am a Racist” but because it is simply not what I was led to believe what the Funds were to be used for when I voted. I went to the CC Meeting and learned that I should have realized this. In other words I was stupid. There is an old saying that applies. “Fool me once shame on you but fool me twice shame on me.”
I don’t understand why this Parcel was included in the Housing Element in the first place. I have no problem with any other Parcel but this one is a ‘gateway’ to other property that adjoins it. Any really the developer wants to build 48 single family units (more Urban spraw) that doesn’t really assist us with numbers for the Housing Element.
The City Council and City Manager should have anticipated this. Now they are paying the price. I am sorry Doug for the entire Housing Element being challenged but this should have been anticipated.
Comment by frank — January 16, 2013 @ 6:42 pm
Amen, frank…and I echo your #17 thanks to Richard. My sentiments put much better then I ever could.
Comment by Jack Richard — January 16, 2013 @ 7:33 pm
Lauren,
Thank you for posting an excerpt from the e-mail that I sent out encouraging people to attend the ACT (Alameda Community Taskforce Forum) tonight. The Improvement of Crown Beach was on the agenda and the meeting was well attended.
The issues around Crown Beach are very complex – Richard Bangert did an excellent job of explaining the issues from the Park District’s perspective.
The “error” you corrected in post 10 was actually no error – your correction was misinformed.
11.Just to correct the Sierra Club’s version of the facts: the developer purchased the property before the City identified the site for the Housing Element and the rezoning happened during that process.
The entire federal site, all 7 acres, was included in the 2007 draft housing element that the State did not certify. That was long before the developer submitted the winning bid for the site. The developer has still not purchased the site as escrow has yet to close. Could you check with your City sources to confirm a rumor I’ve heard that closure of escrow is contingent upon the residential zoning becoming final?
My thanks to Frank for posting the article in a recent Sierra Club Yodeler describing why the Sierra Club supports the East Bay Regional Park District’s acquistion of the almost 4 acres that make up the southern half of the Federal parcel. I’ve moved the photo caption at the beginning of Frank’s article to the end and reposted the article below – as well as a companion piece that appeared in the Sierra Club’s November East Bay Bulletin.
Bill
http://theyodeler.org/?p=5989
Park versus housing for Alameda parcel
What would be the best use for four acres of surplus federal property across McKay Avenue from the Crab Cove visitor center in the city of Alameda?
The East Bay Regional Park District has long wanted to use the parcel to expand the popular visitor center, increase recreational and educational programs, and better separate parking and maintenance facilities from the heavily used picnic areas and beach at Crown Beach, which includes both the Robert W. Crown Memorial State Beach and the adjoining mile of beach along Shoreline Drive owned by the city. Taken together, these adjoining beaches are the largest swimming beach on the San Francisco Bay, with over 1.3 million annual visitors. There is no other suitable location for improving the visitor center without impinging on the existing park lands.
The city, however, recently rezoned the site as multi-family residential, and a private developer has submitted the high bid at auction to purchase it, with plans to bThe popular Crab Cove visitor center is cramped and dated. If the East Bay Regional Park District can acquire the McKay Avenue property, the visitor center could double its public program area. The District could move its exhibition-design shop out of this building and across the street. The inadequate 44-space parking area could also move across the street to a larger lot, allowing the current parking area to be devoted to better park uses. The center deserves a major facelift, and we hope that the city will enable the Park District to acquire the McKay Avenue property to allow this. Photo by Richard Bangert.WhatYouCanDo
Contact the Alameda City Council at:
Mayor Marie Gilmore and Councilmembers
2263 Santa Clara Ave.
Alameda, CA 94501.
(You don’t need to live in Alameda since this is an issue that concerns a regional park visited by people from all over.) Urge the Council to facilitate the Park District’s acquisition of the McKay Avenue parcel.
To work with the Sierra Club in support the Park District’s request for the property, contact Bill Smith, the Sierra Club’s lead Alameda activist on the park expansion, at (510)522-0390 or WJASmith@aol.com
For photo to accompany caption below go to Sierra Club Yodeler article at http://theyodeler.org/?p=5989
The popular Crab Cove visitor center is cramped and dated. If the East Bay Regional Park District can acquire the McKay Avenue property, the visitor center could double its public program area. The District could move its exhibition-design shop out of this building and across the street. The inadequate 44-space parking area could also move across the street to a larger lot, allowing the current parking area to be devoted to better park uses. The center deserves a major facelift, and we hope that the city will enable the Park District to acquire the McKay Avenue property to allow this. Photo by Richard Bangert.
Comment by William Smith — January 16, 2013 @ 11:19 pm
Lauren, regarding your point that the Park District did not want to pay full price for the federal property is true and is a tradition that is codified in both State and Federal law. Occasionally government agencies, in this case both the GSA (Federal General Services Agency) and the City. team up to make a legal exception to that law. Both the GSA and the City want more revenue from the property. The East Bay Regional Park District has been able to use the laws that require government agencies to offer government land to other government agencies first to acquire and protect more open space than it otherwise could have. Thus EBRPD vigorously defends the application of the laws that grant preferential treatment to other government agencies when government property is surplused.
Judging from the City’s press releases, John Russo, who has a background in real estate, appears to ignore the tradition of government preference, or even be working to actively undermine it. I would be interested in comments from your readers as to whether we should keep the tradition of government preference alive.
Comment by William Smith — January 16, 2013 @ 11:32 pm
Richard: You’re entire retelling points to an EBRPD beef with the GSA, not with the City. Perhaps EBRPD’s legal money would be better spent suing the GSA for not playing the government handover game to the level that EBRPD felt as though they should have. While you may chalk up only five citizens as having voted for the zoning change, since this is a representative democracy we live in, those five citizens represent the thousands of Alamedans who voted them into office.
And Bill, you have been informed time and time again that the City of Alameda made no money on the sale of the parcel, I believe the Deputy City Manager responded to your allegation here on this blog as well. To continue to beat that drum is continuing to massage the facts to suit your argument. The timeline is simple and the only thing that matters, from a City of Alameda standpoint is this:
1. GSA offered up the land of auction, I knew about, you knew about it, the readers of this blog knew about it, EBRPD knew about, developers knew about it.
2. EBRPD decided that they didn’t want it at a high enough at the amount that the GSA wanted to sell it for.
3. City reboots the Housing Element process and is threatened by a lawsuit if it doesn’t.
4. Sites are identified, and rezoning commences, EBRPD doesn’t say anything during this entire Housing Element process
5. Housing Element is certified.
6. EBRPD becomes butt hurt because they finally realize what is happening.
7. EBRPD sues the City.
Comment by Lauren Do — January 17, 2013 @ 6:17 am
William, this may have been true in the past, but in today’s economy where federal and local governments are scrambling to find money to cover their budget deficits — it’s getting harder and harder for them to give money away. Look what’s happened to redevelopment. So it’s not surprising that the GSA wanted to take the highest bidder – it’s in their own interest to do so.
Given the new realm of reality we’re facing, we all need to start thinking outside of the box to get our park money. From where I sit, this is a workable situation – but suing the City and trying to hold up the city’s housing element only makes the situation worse.
I’d like to see the EBRPD work with the developer to come up with a solution to this problem. They may not get everything they want; but they may come pretty close to it if they are willing to talk to each other.
Comment by Karen Bey — January 17, 2013 @ 11:14 am
Lauren,
I agree with your point that if the sale of the excess Federal property goes through, the City will make no money on the sale. The City will make its money in the future – on its cut of the property taxes on the residential buildings and of the sales taxes the new residents spend in town. The City will still collect some additional sales taxes from additional visitors if the property passes to the Park District, but likely not a much as if it becomes residential.
Comment by William Smith — January 17, 2013 @ 1:08 pm
Doug,
When I first read the text of the EBRPD lawsuit against the City I was surprised to see that the Park District was suing to challenge all 17 or so housing sites in the houising element certified by the State. As you are well aware, I worked for nearly twenty years to convince the City to submit a housing element that the State would approve, supported by the Sierra Club. The Sierra Club still supports a certified housing element, but one that has complied with state environmental laws in its passage.
Upon reflection, I realized that even for noble ends, the means are not always justified. Legislative process matters and protects the interests of all and often results in projects that benefit more residents, not fewer.
If the City corrects some errors made in the legislative process used to adopt the housing element, more people could well be able to afford housing in Alameda, and certainly not fewer. The McKay Avenue site, with access to utilities questionable, should not have been included in the housing element in the first place. By moving its housing allocation to other locations sooner, rather than later, the housing is likely to get built sooner, especially as now the City is encouraging developers with pending applications to build more, not less housing than credited to other sites in the housing element. A court ruling that State Housing law overrides the charter ban on multi-family housing would also be more permanent and less easily reversed by future City councils.
A respected lawyer who once served on the Alameda Council, told me that the best legal way for the Council to have overridden the charter would have been to have requested a declaratory judgment from the courts to that effect. Now EBRPD has requested a judgment on that issue instead. Finally, as City Manager John Russo repeatedly points out at Council meetings, if the case does go to court and the City once again finds itself without a legal housing element, State law could require the City to permit around 4,000 homes between 2014 and 2021, the period of the next housing element. Currently, the draft housing requirements issued by the Association of Bay Area Governments require the City to permit around 1,700 homes, as compared to the 2,400 permitted in the current housing element. Finally, further evaluation of traffic as the Park District claims is needed, will likely lead to better mitigation of traffic problems and may encourage residents to support more housing than they would with less effective traffic mitigation measures.
Thus, in my view, the Sierra Club, by supporting the environemntal review process, is continuing its decades old campaign to set the stage in Alameda for the construction of more housing of all types, but especially more affordable housing.
Your original comment:
9.Inquiring minds do want to know whether this is indeed the Sierra Club’s official position or not. The local “representative” of the Sierra Club – William Smith, has often misrepresented his authority. If this is the official Sierra Club position then it is disappointing to see them take a step back towards the environmental racism they engaged in in the 70′s and 80′s when they formulated positions opposing immigration, and supporting forced sterilization of low-income people.
Comment by William Smith — January 17, 2013 @ 1:39 pm
There are two errors of fact in Bill Smith’s January 13 email, in which he forwarded the Alameda Citizen’s Task Force’s announcement of their January 16 meeting at Alameda Hospital, which I attended:
1. “The City of Alameda…as forced the Park District to file a lawsuit against the City.” (No force, violence, or coercion has been applied by the city against the EBRPD.)
2. “The City is stubbornly resisting rescinding the zoning change.” (Not true. The city has only insisted that any zoning changes be made in a public, open process, according to state and local laws.)
Bill’s email was not an official Sierra Club message, but Bill has confused and/or misrepresented his personal views as official SC policy in the past, for which SC officials have criticized him. (Some of the same SC officials also told me I could not even identify myself as a SC member in the bio accompanying my Alameda Sun commentary on December 6, 2012.)
The City of Alameda is far from blameless, however. Alameda officials failed to reach out to EBRPD staff or board members during the years of planning a new Housing Element and failed to accommodate well-known EBRPD plans when designing the multifamily housing overlay adopted last year. Alameda’s city manager and mayor apparently never communicated EBRPD top officials’ concerns about the McKay Avenue property to their own Planning Department staff.
The City of Alameda offered the opportunity of an open and public rezoning process to EBRPD officials before the district filed its lawsuit: why did EBRPD choose to file a lawsuit instead? (I wish I knew thew answer to this question. It is one of the more baffling ones I have come across during my research and in conversations about this issue with parties on both sides.)
In short, all three parties (the EBRPD and the City of Alameda, the two parties legally engaged), plus the Sierra Club) have all made mistakes of omission and commission,
shown incompetence and/or a lack of communication–or even not paid attention to basic governmental processes across jurisdictional lines.
The General Services Administration, by refusing to transfer the “Neptune Pointe” property to EBRPD at a low cost, is responsible for a serious miscarriage of federal policy. Why did the GSA ignore the public’s best interests in their decisions? In theory, the City of Alameda and EBRPD should be allies against the GSA in attempting to convey the McKay Avenue property to the park uses so Crab Cove can be expanded and improved.
All three local parties have deliberately made things worse by escalating instead of negotiating, and by fighting things out via press releases and commentaries instead of simply sitting down and resolving disputes in the public interest.
I agree with Doug Biggs and Laura Thomas of Renewed Hope that the EBRPD and SC need to be sensitive to environmental and housing justice issues but I am not willing to paint either organization as racist or unconcerned: a rational and public discussion of Alameda’s housing and recreational needs should be able to reconcile housing and park requirements in a fair and just manner.
But the EBRPD needs to be able to trust the City of Alameda as a negotiating partner to be able to withdraw its lawsuit, which is the necessary prerequisite to resolving the many related larger issues here.The City of Alameda–especially the city manager in his November 23 commentary–so far has not helped restore that atmosphere of trustworthiness that must precede the EBRPD’s withdrawal of the suit.
I hope that our mayor and city council will be willing, ready, and able to help defuse this legal confrontation and help put the City of Alameda and EBRPD back on the road to having the historically productive partnership that we all need them to have. It is long past time for the city and the park district to work together in a responsible, adult manner on behalf of their respective publics.
Comment by Jon Spangler — January 21, 2013 @ 2:47 pm
I don’t understand why we can have both? An expansion of the Crab Cove Visitor’s Center and the development of beach front homes would be a wonderful way to jumpstart new development on the West End and bring new vitality to the Historic Neptune Beach District. I’d like to see EBRPD work with the developer to make this happen. It would benefit both of the them, and the City as well.
Comment by Karen Bey — January 22, 2013 @ 7:33 am