Bracing for impact

Tonight, City Council has the impact report for the Neptune Pointe/McKay Avenue ballot measure in its hot little hands and there’s nothing really shocking in it.  I imagine that anyone on the side of the ballot measure feels as though the possible impacts were overstated, but it’s not too alarmist.  For example I found this portion interesting when discussing the three possible ownership scenarios:

Even a Federal Government lessee is not required to obtain a permit from a city in compliance with local zoning ordinances. For instance, the United States Postal Service need not comply with local zoning regulations in construction of a post office on land owned or leased by the Federal Government

When I mentioned that the impact report was not overly alarmist, this was one of the points I was thinking about.  Using the Post Office as an example of a possible lessee was pretty benign, but a lessee doesn’t necessarily have to be a government agency.  It could be anyone, including, say, a private developer.   Of course the big hangup is the question about McKay Avenue itself as the whole condemnation thing is winding its way through the courts.

Fed up

They did it, the Feds filed that condemnation claim against McKay Avenue as promised:

Giving me the shingles

Tonight the Neptune Pointe parcel is up before the Planning Board for the EIR scoping session design review, but they’re calling this thing “Neptune Beach” which I’m sure will annoy some people with great fondness for the old real Neptune Beach.   Here’s the number you are looking for: 48.   Thats how many units are slated to be built, 15% of those would be available for low income housing.   It appears that Tim Lewis Communities, the developer, will not be seeking a density bonus on this sucker.

But, to the graphics…

Site plan, aka how the units will look on the parcel:

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.

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.