They did it, the Feds filed that condemnation claim against McKay Avenue as promised:
April 22, 2014
August 22, 2013
Master of your eminent domain
A few days ago I tweeted out that residents around the Neptune Pointe parcel (McKay Ave aka the parcel that East Bay Regional Park District believes should be handed over to them) received a notice by the General Services Administration (aka the Feds) that they would be starting eminent domain proceedings because of the disagreement as to who owns McKay Avenue and utility easements or who has the right to access whatever.
From the letter:
Due to claims by the East Bay Regional Park District regarding the Federal government’s rights to McKay Avenue, the United States has initiated eminent domain proceedings to secure ownership of McKay Avenue subject to reservation of rights for the State of California and residents of McKay Avenue. By taking ownership of this roadway, the Federal government can facilitate the modernization of the roadway and utilities retained by the Government and ensure all security requirements are met.
The letter goes on to assure the public that the eminent domain will not affect them and that the site will still remain open to the public. It will be interesting to see how this proceeds because, generally eminent domain has to have a “public benefit.” If the EBRPD wasn’t in the process of suing the City of Alameda over the zoning of the Neptune Pointe parcel perhaps they would have had a strong ally in this battle against the Feds.
June 25, 2013
Knock down some buildings and put up a parking lot
You know what I enjoy, when someone else designs plans for a parcel of land that they don’t even own. Apparently the East Bay Regional Park District in order to be further divisive decided to throw their own plans into the mix because, according to their letter, the City should be studying alternatives as part of the EIR for the Neptune Beach project so they’re submitting an alternative to be studied.
So here is EBRPD’s alternative. Looks nice right when you see it all green and lovely like that. The problem is most people have no idea what they are looking at and I would guess think that it’s all a replacement for those awful housing plans.
January 16, 2013
Force of nature
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.
(more…)
November 28, 2012
A fence of real chain link
I tweeted this the other day:
Oh and speaking of tweets, on Monday I tweeted about how I witnessed a huge truck flattening the signal and street light at Buena Vista and Grand. Apparently one of those wide load trucks was turning on to Buena Vista from Grand Street (truck route) to get to the Target location. It was carrying a huge concrete beam-y thing. It turned the corner a bit too shallow and ended up clipping the street light and taking it down.
Anyway, the East Bay Regional Park District has made good on their threats, and found a local Alamedan to file suit with them, probably because they neglected to make a comment during the Housing Element planning period and therefore might not have had standing to file suit. Essentially their suit is based on the the contention that the City of Alameda should have performed a full fledged Environmental Impact Report with the Housing Element.
November 20, 2012
Can’t get no love from EBRPD
I haven’t written about this yet, but wanted to circle back to the lawsuit that has been filed by the East Bay Regional Park District over a little piece of land the federal government decided to name: Neptune Point. The City is not taking this lawsuit lying down and last week sent out a strongly worded press release essentially saying what I summarized above.
To quickly recap what has been going down, in 2008 the federal government declared that Neptune Pointe property as surplus and held an auction in the summer of 2011 to sell off the property.
Before that, during open Council Communications in May of 2011, Mayor Marie Gilmore had indicated that EBRPD was very interested in purchasing the property so the assumption that most people thought was that EBRPD would probably put a bid in for the property.
About two weeks into the auction and no one had yet placed a bid on the property, there were finally two takers. It took until June 15 until someone placed the minimum bid of $1 million and the next day a second bidder upped the bid $50K.
In the end, EBRPD either didn’t put in a bid or they were out bid for the parcel because it went to Tim Lewis Communities who paid somewhere in the realm of $1.8 million for the property.
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