Delay everything a year and hope it gets better

My heart sank when I read yesterday that the Oak Knoll project is now on hold. Read more

Mark your calendars - Zoning Update meeting next Saturday

So I went to like, the best meeting ever last night. Well, not quite. The meeting actually kind of sucked and I was really bored most of the time. But it was also totally great.

Okay, this isn’t making any sense. Let me start over. Read more

Still waiting to learn about WIA

So, remember back in June when the Community and Economic Development (CED) Committee was supposed to get a report about what goes on with the millions of dollars of we get through the Workforce Investment Act? Read more

Chris Kidd: Planning on the Estuary

ABO readers, do not adjust your computer screens. Chris Kidd here, that impertinent young scamp you often see shooting his mouth off in comments. I have to admit that I totally geeked out to V about the upcoming Estuary Specific Plan and she asked me to write up a post about it while she was taking the week off.

As mentioned above, I’m super psyched about the Estuary Specific Plan process. Most people give me blank stare when I mention the ESP, so I suppose I should give some background. It’d be best to start where all things start: the beginning.

This all started with the Estuary Policy Plan (EPP) (PDF), a project developed from 1997-1999. This was a update of the city’s General Plan designed to help transition land that was previously heavy industry into a mix of light industry, commercial, park land, residential, and mixed-use residential. The Plan was really forward-thinking in recognizing the value of Oakland’s waterfront areas, but the EPP sadly had no plan for implementation. It was only a suggestion for the city to follow.

The central area of the EPP is bound by 19th, 50th, the estuary and I-880. So far, the only sections in the central estuary closely resembling the EPP’s intent are Union Point Park and the Kennedy Tract neighborhood area (also known as Jingletown). Here’s the map (PDF) from the original project for the central estuary area.

Fast forward to 2005/2006. The EPP isn’t much closer to fruition than when its recommendations were first presented. I don’t know who thought of it first, but between developers and the city planner’s office, the concept of a specific plan for the central estuary region began to take shape. Carlos Plazola was part of a group that wanted to design a privately invested specific plan for this area in this time period. You can read his own words on the subject here. I don’t know what role Dan Lindheim had in killing the project (I won’t make those kinds of assumptions). I can tell you that when the proposal to initiate a specific plan went before the city council, staff recommended a city-run specific plan process over a developer run process. Read into that what you will.

This still brings us back to, “What the heck is a Specific Plan?” SPUR just had a great article in their July issue of The Urbanist which dealt with a similar specific plan process that took place in the Market/Van Ness/Octavia neighborhood from 2002-2007. It’s a great read (I <3 SPUR), and you can find it here. For those disinclined to click on the link, I’ll do a worse job explaining it right now:

A specific plan is broken up into two major purposes/points of involvement. The first purpose involves the creation of new zoning and building specifications for the area encompassed by the specific plan (in this instance, most likely zoned closer to the Estuary Policy Plan recommendations). The second purpose harnesses this change in zoning/specifications in order to secure fees from developers to improve the specific plan area.

To carry out a specific plan, the city completes an Environmental Impact Review (EIR) for the area the specific plan encompasses. The EIR explores the environmental ramifications of a range of building specifications and zoning changes. If a developer decides to build in this area, and the planned project falls within the guidelines of the zoning and EIR performed by the city, the city allows the developer to bypass the CEQA/EIR stage and streamline the project’s approach to the planning commission. This can sometimes remove a year or more from the pre-construction phase for a developer. For the right to cut costs, and especially for the right to shorten the time to get approval, the city will extract a fee from any developers building projects within the specific plan area. The fee is usually based on a dollar-per-square-foot amount for the property being developed. All of these funds extracted from new development go into a piggy bank that can only be used for purposes in the specific plan area.

In the central area of the estuary, these funds could be used to great effect. Improving waterfront access, roads and infrastructure, and sewer systems (some of which, I am told, still have wood-frame sections); putting Measure DD projects online; and increasing police presence–these potential improvements only scratch the surface of what could be accomplished in the area with funds gathered by the implementation of a specific plan.

What causes me to geek out about this specific plan is that the slate is almost currently blank. The decisions for what kind of buildings will be covered under the EIR is wide open; the uses of the funds generated from the specific plan are wide open. It’s all contingent upon the plans drawn up by the consulting company hired and the public input received. The city planner’s office is currently asking for RFP submissions (PDF) from consulting companies. The only current piece of direction is the old 1997 Estuary Policy Plan. It will need a serious updating, considering how the area has changed in eleven years.

The planning process is supposed to take 18-24 months. Hopefully we’ll be able to see concrete effects of this plan in the very near future. Personally, I would love to see the full implementation of the bay trail throughout the specific plan area (with the increase in waterfront access it would entail), encouragement of industry to develop towards biotech/greentech, creation of denser housing concentrations in an area in close proximity to a transportation hub, and the retention of high levels of work/live space (being that it is a zero-commute type of housing). But that’s the great thing about a specific plan at this stage: It can be almost anything.

I’d love to hear what everyone else thinks is possible. If you live in the specific area, I suggest you keep tabs on whomever wins the bidding for creating the specific plan. They will be required to hold at least eight public stakeholder meetings during the process. If you show up, you’ll probably have a great chance to create tangible change in your neighborhood. There’s a flip side to that, however: if you don’t show up, you can be sure there are a lot of other interests that will. This is a huge project that has the potential to generate substantial funds for a small area of the city. Myriad people will want to dip their fingers into that honey pot. It’s the responsibility of all of us to make sure that the type of buildings zoned in the EIR are acceptable and that the fees generated are spent in the best possible manner.

I’ll be out of town for the rest of the week, so don’t expect me to respond to any posts/questions. Corrections and scoldings are always welcome.

An alternative CBD zoning update

So the Planning Commission’s Zoning Update Committee (ZUC) will meet today to discuss again the zoning update for the Central Business District (CBD). I’ve written about the zoning update process at length already, and at this point, I’m kind of bored with it all. I’m tired of writing the same things about how this plan is just terrible in every way. It stifles architectural creativity. It does not take into account the demands or realities of the market. Looking at the rules about minimum lot sizes and maximum buildable lot areas, you have to seriously question whether anyone even took a walk around the CBD and looked at what land there is to develop before trying to write rules for it. Read more

Can you make laws about building heights when you don’t know how tall buildings are?

Planning staff seems to think so.

We went over this, already, of course, after a meeting way back in March about the proposed CBD height limits, where a handout (PDF!) was distributed to help illustrate for the audience what these height limits would mean. That is, what does a 300 foot tall building look like, a 200 foot tall building, and so on. The heights on the handout were off, not just a little, but by measures of as much as 170 feet!

Another handout listed existing building heights downtown (PDF!), and the numbers there were wildly off as well. Here’s the breakdown: Read more

Army Base, quickly

Aah, I had so wanted to write a whole bunch of posts about the Army Base last week before the item came to Community and Economic Development Committee (CED) today, but I just couldn’t find the time, and while I still hope to get to it later this week, I wanted to say something before the meeting.

Okay, so when we last visited the Army Base question, Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums wanted what he referred to as a “vision-based” development strategy for the Army Base, which basically involved asking developers to come up with a plan that would incorporate like every conceivable use on the land. In one of their better moments last year, CED wisely rejected the recommended “Mixed-Use Oakland” plan, dismissing the “vision” with one of my favorite lines from Jane Brunner ever, “This isn’t a vision. It’s a list.” Henry Chang had had enough, and awesomely suggested that we just wash our hands of this neverending saga and just sell all the land to the Port, and then use the money for like, affordable housing, or whatever. Read more

Deep. Structural. Problems.

So everyone is still all caught up in the Edgerly scandal and nobody seems to want to talk about anything else. Meanwhile, I’m still sitting by myself in the corner all upset about structural flaws in Oakland’s government that make it difficult for elected officials to accomplish anything. And a perfect example of the sort of disfunction I’m complaining about just happened to fall into my lap at Tuesday’s CED committee meeting.

Okay, a little background. Oakland has this thing called the Workforce Investment Board (WIB). The WIB gets to allocate the millions and millions of dollars worth of federal job training money that flow into this city. The bulk of this money currently goes to the Oakland Private Industry Council (PIC), run by Gay Plair Cobb. PIC has previously come under fire for their high cost per trainee ($11,000/person, compared to say, $1,880/per person at the Unity Council).

So the WIB contracts are awarded in July, with some organizations getting two year or three year contracts and other getting only one. The WIB is currently working on next year’s budgets and will make decisions about what programs they fund next month. At the Community and Economic Development Committee (CED) on Tuesday, the Committee was supposed to hear and discuss an evaluation of the programs that are currently receiving said funding. But when they got to the item, there was, to the extreme consternation of the Committee members, no report.

This prompted an argument with the City Attorney’s representative about whether or not they could discuss the item without the report. The Attorney’s office said no, that without a report, the item had not been properly noticed to the public, and therefore the Councilmembers were not allowed to discuss it. Jane Brunner and Ignacio De La Fuente were insistent that they should at the very least be allowed to ask questions about why they didn’t get a report. Jane Brunner was on fire, righteously pissed about the whole situation:

I don’t care! I don’t care! You can take me to court! We are discussing this item, I don’t care! Staff had a conversation with me, they told me they weren’t ready, I said “Put something in so we know what your procedure is and what you’re gonna do”, and it’s blank!

After the discussion, the City Attorney’s office clarified their position, that the Council was indeed allowed to ask why there was no report, but that they couldn’t talk about anything beyond that.

Ignacio De La Fuente was right there with her:

That’s a discussion we should have. The reality is that seven million dollars a year comes into this program. And the reality that there’s no report, there has been no updated reports and no information provided to the public, that’s the point of discussion. Ms. Brunner’s correct, I’m sorry, Ms. Brunner’s correct. If all we’re going to do is that staff don’t write reports, and that way items don’t be discussed, I think that we have to absolutely, the system is not working. Obviously, there’s a reason that nobody wants to submit a report. Mr. Lindheim, I know that you are new to the CEDA agency, but the reality is that it is a problem where the WIB and the job training programs are not providing reports, and there’s a reason why they’re not providing reports. Because every report that was provided two years ago and three years ago showed that they had spent ten times more than any other organization provided per individual. So it is a discussion that we should have, and I think there’s a reason why Ms. Brunner is upset, and I think that I absolutely disagree with the ruling that if an item is on an agenda, and all you have to do is not submit a report and we’re not going to discuss it, excuse me, but that’s not acceptable.

When Brunner asked Community and Economic Development Agency director Dan Lindheim why there was no report, the response she got was smug, rude, and curt:

There’s no report because there’s no report written.

Then he told her he could probably get a report written for her by October. I really can’t imagine what Lindheim could have possibly done or said to make his contempt for the City Council more clear. It was just shocking. Brunner kept pressing him, saying that it was completely innappropriate that the WIB would be making decisions about funding in the next month with no evaluations of the programs they’re looking at, and Lindheim just sitting there, just totally uninterested in acknowledging there was any sort of problem, or doing a damn thing about it:

I can answer that in about three different ways, none of which are going to be satisfactory to you.

After it became clear that there wasn’t anything they could do to get some information for the board to make their decisions by July, Brunner suggested they just allocate funding month by month until they got an evaluation report, which she wanted to see at the first committee meeting after recess, in September. Dan Lindheim basically told her that she could schedule the report whenever she wanted, but that he wasn’t going to write it for then.

This is exactly what I’m talking about. This isn’t a new problem. I have complained before about the total lawlessness of the bureaucracy in City Hall. And it isn’t like that culture of disrespect for elected officials and their requests didn’t exist at the top levels of government before. But Lindheim has taken it to an entirely new level. It’s just jaw-dropping. The man just sits there in public meetings telling the Council and everyone else that he’s just not going to do what they direct him to. And there isn’t a damn thing anyone on the Council can do about it! Deep. Structural. Problems.

Chris Kidd: Finding “Flex Space”

Chris Kidd here, letting our beloved Vsmoothe take the day off from ABO. You should recognize me as the pragmatic, socialist-leaning planning enthusiast and Eucalyptus hater from comments. I’m going to take my first stab at writing for ABO, so take it easy on me, huh? I know the swan song of Deborah Edgerley is the topic du jour, but let’s take a break from all the doom ‘n’ gloom surrounding our fair city and throw on our thinking caps. Read more

CBD, back at ZUC

The Central Business District (that means downtown) zoning update is back at the Zoning Update Committee today, and even though the Commissioners directed staff at the last meeting to come back with a new proposal that does not have height limits except in the historic areas, staff has, naturally, returned with a proposal that still has height/size restrictions everywhere. Why they insist on this bizarre tower/base architectural style is beyond me. Anyway, read all about it over at theoakbook.com.

Reinventing the wheel. Slowly.

I write today for Novometro about the Oakland Partnership.

I hope to find the time to write more about last Friday’s Economic Summit soon, although I am, as usual, behind on my blogging schedule. Anyway, I wanted to comment on something Dan Lindheim talked about in one of the panels, and was also quoted in the newspaper about:

Dan Lindheim, the director of the Community and Economic Development Agency, said finding spots for business to locate is not as easy as finding spots for housing opportunities, in part because many businesses are content to stay where they are even if they are only making a low-level profit.

He did say the city continued its work on a data base on what parcels are available for different types of commercial opportunities.

“We’ll certainly be able to (operate the data base) with staff,” he said. “What we want to ultimately be able to do is to get it so that it’s available online so people can really have individual access. We’re not quite there yet.”

I just don’t understand why Oakland’s city government feels the need to constantly reinvent the wheel. In case you don’t know much about commercial real estate, let me give you the rundown. There are these things called commercial real estate brokerages. When you see those big signs on the buildings or vacant lots saying things like “For lease. Call so and so,” that’s the number for the broker representing that property. Of course, most properties don’t get leased simply by having someone drive by and seeing a sign and thinking a building looks pretty. Most properties get leased when someone calls up a broker and says something like “Hi Jake, I want to move my business to Oakland and I need at least 10,000 square feet near a freeway with at least 2 grade level loading doors.” Then the broker sends an e-mail to one of their market researchers and says “all the spaces in Oakland, Emeryville, Alameda, and Berkeley half mile from freeway, 10k-12k sf 2 grade doors, asap.” It’s the same with office space, although needs there tends to be more generic.

Then the researcher will look that up in their database of available properties. Large brokerage houses usually maintain their own databases, based on the monthly listings released by all the other brokerages and marketing flyers sent out and a variety of other sources. Smaller companies usually can’t afford their own researcher on staff, so they just buy a subscription to two existing databases, CoStar and LoopNet. Both are up to date and comprehensive. A LoopNet searching subscription costs less than $40/month if you pay for a year upfront.

Anyway, I realize that what Lindheim is describing isn’t the exact same thing, but it’s close enough to be totally pointless and wasteful. I mean, do the taxpayers of Oakland really need to be paying someone to make and maintain a list of available properties when we could instead just be like “You want to space for your biotech company, here’s a broker’s number?” (Although in that case, the answer would be more like “We don’t have any. Go to Emeryville.”) Opportunity maps made sense for housing development, but with business attraction, especially industrial business attraction where the needs are complicated and unique to each company, there’s just no point in replicating work that other people are already doing, and are doing a better job of it that the government ever will.

Worth reading this weekend

• Becks sounds the alarm about a new Berkeley initiative to halt BRT:
  

  Regardless of any issues one may have with AC Transit’s current BRT proposal, this is just bad planning. This initiative would mean that anytime the City wanted to convert lanes to transit-only lanes, the decision would have to be made by the Berkeley electorate. Even if the dedicated bus lane only extended one block into Berkeley from Oakland or another neighboring city, Berkeley residents would have the final say. Projects could be held up for months or even years if an election wasn’t approaching (I don’t see the city holding special elections for this issue).

Read more

Filed Under: AC Transit, BRT, CEDA, army base, downtown, oakland, public transit, redevelopment agency, worth reading, zoning
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