Possible progress for City Walk?

Oh, City Walk. I had such high hopes for you. I used to daydream about how nice you would look when you were all done as I gazed at your construction crane from the window by my cube in 555 12th St. I really thought your two hundred and fifty two units could go a long way towards livening up the West DTO. I dreamed that all your residents would come to my restaurant at night to eat. You had such pretty signs. There were rumors that you were going to house the world’s largest Starbucks. And you were supposed to be finished in December 2007.

But you weren’t. Instead, three years later, every time I go to AAMLO, I am forced to stare at this tremendous ugliness:

You guys know where I’m talking about, right? It’s the half-finished condo project between the Federal Building and Preservation Park, and it’s a giant freaking eyesore.

City Walk: Abandoned since 2007

City Walk suddenly halted constructed in July of 2007 when the developer, Olson Co., ran into, like, all sorts of problems. Olson insisted they were going to be able to get it together and finish, and in December of 2007, the City Council gave them an extension on their completion deadline. They were supposed to restart construction by the end of January 2008 and finish by July 2009.

Obviously, that didn’t happen. Then, like nine months later, Olson was all “Oh yeah, we will restart construction – in November!.” Hahaha. Finally, in February of 2009, Olson admitted defeat and asked the City to amend the DDA so the project would no longer be in default and they could sell it to a rental housing developer, which they said at the time was like, totally about to happen any day now. Construction was going to restart in May, and be finished by December 2010.

Big surprise, that plan didn’t work out either. So then, last summer, someone else decided they wanted to buy the building and finish it up as rental units, so the City once again extended the DDA, this time promising completion by the end of 2011. If you’re wondering at this point why we even bother having these construction deadlines, well, it’s a good question. I don’t have an answer for you.

New City Walk owners need help

Anyway, this time, the sale actually did go through. So that’s something. Unfortunately, this new company that owns it now and wants to finish the building off as a 264 apartment project (instead of the originally planned 252 condos) can’t get the all financing to finish construction. Or, I guess more precisely, they can’t get enough financing that they think it’s worth their while to finish construction.

So in order to just get the damn thing finished already and give the poor pedestrians of downtown Oakland their sidewalks back, Redevelopment Agency staff is now proposing that we just loan them $5 million of redevelopment money (PDF), which will be enough, apparently, to fill in the financing gaps that are preventing the project from getting restarted. I’ll let the report explain it to you:

The loan is required to decrease the equity and investor profit requirements in order to make the project financially feasible. Without this reduction in equity the investor does not meet its minimum return and is therefore unwilling to finance the project. Providing the loan will help complete the project and transform the blighted site into beautiful new rental housing.

I don’t know how “beautiful” the finished building it going to be, but “blighted” is definitely an accurate way to describe the site as it sits now. Here are the loan deets, also from the agenda report (PDF):

The loan terms will be at least as favorable as the other debt financing Wood Partners obtains for the project. The interest rate will be set after negotiations are completed with the other construction lender. The negotiations were under way at the time this report was being written. The interest rate will be at least 8%, but no less than one percentage point higher than the interest rate on other debt; the higher rate on the Agency loan is appropriate given that the loan will be in second priority position. Wood Partners’ latest offer from a construction lender is a loan at 7.5% interest, with a term of up to 7 years, a 1% origination fee and a 1% early termination fee, which would set the Agency loan interest rate at 8.5% assuming similar fees. The Agency loan would be interest-only until stabilized occupancy and then converted to a 25 year amortization schedule with a balloon payment (i.e. loan due in full) in 2015, five years from execution of the loan documents. The Agency could be repaid sooner if conditions are favorable for refinancing with a long term permanent loan. There will not be a prepayment penalty. Given 1) that this is a market rate loan, and 2) the troubled status of the housing market, no additional project development conditions are being proposed in return for the loan.

As far as I’m concerned, this is excellent. It is just like, downright shameful that the City could let that freaking eyesore just sit there unfinished, sometimes shrink-wrapped, sometimes not, for years and years, right in the middle of downtown! It’s blight, and it makes the City look like crap. It just needs to be finished, I don’t care what it takes.

The City Walk loan will be considered by the City Council’s Community and Economic Development Committee on Tuesday. The meeting starts at 2, but this is last on the agenda (PDF) and the first item is going to take like a year.

Remember This: Champions for wasting money

This afternoon, the Oakland City Council’s Community and Economic Development Committee will be asked to grant $182,000 of redevelopment funds (PDF) to the Oakland Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce Foundation to help them pay the costs of building a house-sized monstrosity and plopping in on top of downtown Oakland’s newest park.

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Tom Thurston: Why I killed Amber Tree Apartments

Amber Tree Apartments lay behind a fence along 200 feet of the south side of Foothill Boulevard between 25^th and 26^th Avenue. I first noticed them last summer when I was on a walking tour of the 23^rd Avenue area with other members of the Central City East Redevelopment Project Area Committee (CCE PAC). Walking west, the sidewalk abruptly narrows to accommodate the first of two motel-like structures. We look down the cluttered central courtyard and saw that the properties suffered from great disrepair. Staff members Theresa Navarro-Lopez and Doug Cole agreed to contact code compliance about the property.

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DTO parks get some love

Remember how Nancy Nadel advertised in her re-election campaign literature last year that she had “transformed Jefferson Park into a skate park for youth“? Well, that hadn’t actually happened then, and it isn’t happening now, but I am pleased to report that Jefferson Park will soon be getting a much needed facelift.

In case you haven’t visited lately, right now it looks like this:

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Becks and dto510, my heroes.

Okay, I feel like a jerk. I’m sorry to say that I am not going to have a post up laying out the Mayor’s budget proposal today like I said I would. After last night’s Council meeting, I was so happy about them not approving the parking lot, that I went out to celebrate instead of going home to write today’s blog, and well, a girl’s allowed to have a little fun once in a while, right? Anyway, that will hopefully go up tomorrow.

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Tom Thurston: CCE PAC meeting April 6–come early and speak freely.

The most interesting element to the upcoming meeting of the Central City East Redevelopment Project Area Committee (CCE PAC) on April 6 (Paton University cafeteria) is actually not officially part of the meeting at all.

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Fox night!

Sorry for not posting anything yesterday. My hiatus is over now, but during my month off, I sort of forgot how hard it is getting a solid blog up everyday. You stay up past midnight watching the Council meeting, then just want to go to bed and figure you’ll write about it in the morning, but then you wake up and life gets in the way. (Highlights: our Federal lobbyist telling At-large Councilmember Rebecca Kaplan that if she wants to influence criteria for stimulus fund distribution, she should send an e-mail to Obama at whitehouse.gov. Also, District Three Councilmember Nancy Nadel being all confused and disturbed upon learning that we can’t spend Federal law enforcement funds on restorative justice.)

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Grafitti and Blight in Downtown Oakland

So, one my all time favorite posts on any Oakland blog ever is the seventh post on Living in the O, where Becks shares an exercise from a writing class she took. She had to write two paragraphs describing a place (she choose the corner of Broadway and 14th), one from a positive angle, and one from a negative perspective.

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What is the City of Oakland’s subsidy to Forest City’s Uptown project?

Somehow, the comments on my election results post turned into a discussion of City subsidies to Forest City and the Uptown Apartments. There seems to be a lot of confusion about our agreement, so I’m just going to explain the whole deal.

The City of Oakland’s total funding contribution to the Uptown Project was $60,031,057. Read more

The importance of getting things right

So in last week’s East Bay Express, Robert Gammon had a story about the redevelopment agency buying some property out in East Oakland for more than they should have (I mentioned the sale last Monday). What could have been an opportunity to highlight some of the ineptness of Oakland’s bureaucracy instead devolves into a bizarre (and unclear) conspiracy theory involving Ignacio De La Fuente. I haven’t looked into the details of the ownership changes on this piece of property or the history of the City’s acquisition plans, nor do I plan to. But when I read the story, one line in particular made my eyebrows jump: Read more

Walking patrols in commercial districts

Wow! I expected my post about private security would generate a lot of interest, but not nearly this much. I wish so many people wanted to read about the candidate forums! That comments section is getting a little long, so I’m going add a few more thoughts, and give people a fresh place to be angry.

Anyway, the City Council approved the program last night, with no comment or discussion on the item.

I am very much in favor of using redevelopment funds to improve public safety, and I would like to see other redevelopment areas look at funding similar patrols. Hiring private security firms to provide the patrols doesn’t have to be a permanent solution. I know that Rebecca Kaplan has suggested previously that Oakland explore a program based on the Atlanta Ambassador Program, and I’m pretty sure I’ve heard Sean Sullivan talk about it as well, but I’m not 100% on that. Anyway, I know the suggestion has caused some confusion, with at least some people interpreting her plan as simply an expanded version of Jane Brunner’s Oakland Ambassadors plan, which involved paying at-risk youth to hang out at BART stations and walk people to their cars. They aren’t the same.

First, the Atlanta Ambassadors are adults, they are well trained, and they are full time City workers. They are unarmed foot patrols wearing distinctive (and kind of silly looking) helmets who walk downtown Atlanta. People can stop them and ask for directions and such, and they provide eyes on the street for the police, who they maintain radio contact with. During the first year of the patrols, downtown Atlanta saw a 60% reduction in crime.

I said yesterday in response to my first enraged comment that I’d be equally happy with the new patrols if they were unarmed, and I’d like to amend that now to say that I would prefer it, since it eliminates what appears to be most people’s objections to the program. Uniformed walking patrols, whether they have real power and authority or not, have proven to be an effective deterrent to crime – that’s why BIDs and neighborhood associations are hiring them. They provide eyes on the street for the police and discourage loitering, street drug dealing, and other low-level offenses that drive people away from commercial districts. There’s no reason that we couldn’t hire our own walking patrols that would work with the police (but not be staffed by sworn officers) instead of using a private security company. These positions would be more expensive than outsourced patrols, but cheaper than regular police and require less training. Philadelphia did it, and it’s been a huge success.

Oakland reduced to hiring private security

This is going to be short today, because I’m a slacker and put off my taxes until the last minute.

It’s a shame, because I think this is a pretty big deal. It isn’t news to anyone that Oakland has a serious police staffing problem or that we have a ever more serious crime problem. People wonder what the City is doing about it. The Consent to Search proposal has generated a lot of attention, but I haven’t seen anything yet about a much more important anti-crime initiative.

Tonight, the City Council will approve something we’re calling the Central City East Commercial Security Pilot Program. The 18 month project will be funded from $175,000 of redevelopment funds and $35,000 from Neighborhood Service Delivery Funds. You can read the staff reports on the program here (PDF!) and here (PDF!).

Part of the program involves providing crime prevention training to property owners and merchants. But most of the money will be used to pay for 4 armed private security officers to patrol the commercial districts five days a week. They will be patrolling Foothill Boulevard between 23rd and 73d, MacArthur Boulevard between 73rd and 77th, MacArthur Boulevard between 88th and the San Leandro border, Bancroft between 66th and 73rd, and International between 23rd and the San Leandro border.

I’m really glad we’re doing this. I have been advocating for the use of redevelopment funds to improve public safety for a while now. We do it a little bit, but we really should be doing more. There appears to be little or no political will within the Council to push for it. Anyway, I wanted to highlight this initiative for two reasons. First, it is incredibly depressing that our police staffing problem is so dire that we have been reduced to outsourcing neighborhood patrols. Second, this is a smart and appropriate temporary measure that the City is taking to combat crime, and people should know about it.

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