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The Pleasanton Planning Commission unanimously approved the Villages at the Quarry project, which aims to develop over 400 housing units at the southeast corner of Busch Road and Valley Avenue during Wednesday’s commission meeting.
Also known as the Kiewit property, the vacant site — located at 3300 Busch Road — is one of the largest that the City Council zoned for housing as part of the city’s sixth Housing Element cycle in 2022.
Even though there were a few discussion points during the meeting regarding traffic, driveway size and getting assurance that the 101 affordable units will actually be built, the development team reiterated that they are committed to see this project come to fruition.
“I’m excited to see that something is actually getting built within this (Regional Housing Needs Allocation) cycle as opposed to many of the other sites which are there but not getting built,” Commissioner Anurag Jain said during the April 23 meeting.
Jason Quintel, who works for Seefried Properties and is one of the applicant team members, told the commission that the applicant started acquiring the property in East Pleasanton back in early 2022. According to the city, the applicant for this project is Square Mile Pleasanton, LLC
The original project back then was much smaller and after hearing feedback from the previous Housing Element cycle discussion from the council and the community, Quintel said the applicant team decided to come back with a bigger plan that had more housing options — including affordable housing.
This newer version of the plan is what eventually led to the commission’s hearing on Wednesday regarding its environmental documentation, housing site compliance review and vesting tentative map.
According to city associate planner Jenny Soo, the design plan includes building a total of 412 residential units across the 51.62-acre site.
Soo said the project will construct 310 detached single-family market rate homes with 62 junior accessory dwelling units and 102 multi-family, apartment rental units, which would all be deed-restricted affordable units, except for one manager’s unit. The homes will be broken up into four villages that would separate the different styles of homes and units.
Villages one through three would be for the detached, single-family homes varying in size and the fourth village would be for the multi-family rental units.
In order to meet inclusionary housing requirements, the applicant will plan to make 101 out of the 102 multi-family rental units available to households with incomes at or below 80% (low-income) of the area median income.Â
Caleb Roope, founder and CEO of The Pacific Companies — a real estate development firm that specializes in affordable housing — said that his company will be handling the construction of the affordable housing units and that apart from the support they are getting from the development team behind the market rate homes, his company is also doing everything it can to assure those affordable housing units get built.
“I would say if we have 25 projects in the Bay Area that we are working on right now, this is one of the top five most likely ones that will move forward because of what’s been done on the upfront phase of the project,” Roope said.
Steve Reilly of 330 Land Company, which is handling the development of the market rate units, also said that they are committed to making sure the affordable units are built concurrently or even before the market rate homes.
“We are paying the fees for the inclusionary housing ordinance, which the total fees for the project would be approximately $15 million,” Reilly said. “So we have every incentive to produce those units.”
“That’s kind of the safety valve we’ve given the city, (by saying) ‘hey if we don’t do that, we are jeopardizing $15 million of affordable housing fees that we would have to put up,'” he added.
The plans also include the construction of an approximately two-acre park, which would be owned and maintained by the development’s homeowners association and would be accessible to the general public as well as other on-site and off-site improvements for streets, utilities, stormwater retention, and trails.
City traffic engineer Mike Tassano said that some of the street improvements that will come with the project will help alleviate traffic congestion in that area. Some of these proposed improvements include signal controlled intersection upgrades, adding left turn lanes on Santa Rita Road and Valley Avenue, adding a push button pedestrian signal, and roundabout — among other improvements.
However, Tassano also touched on one of Commissioner Vivek Mohan’s concerns, which was the additional traffic that could come with all of the other proposed developments that East Pleasanton could see in the future.
That’s where Tassano said the long-debated extension to El Charro Road will have to come into play and that staff have been discussing internally about plans to pursue different financing options for that pricey road extension.
“East Pleasanton has a whole bunch of traffic,” Tassano said. “Kiewit is one, East Lakes is also very large … but that combination of all the trips makes it where El Charro Road is a requirement.”
While Mohan wanted to add an amendment regarding El Charro Road to the commission’s decision to approve the project, the dais ended up agreeing that they should work on ways to push for a plan to be developed for that extension project in a different setting.
One point of contention — which many agreed wasn’t as big of an issue at the end — was the driveway length and specifically Commission Chair Ken Morgan’s concerns with future residents at the site parking their cars on the driveways.
Morgan said this was a safety issue and had asked to include verbiage so that the HOA for the site could let residents know they should limit parking their cars in the two car garages for the market rate homes and not in the driveways.
However, Commissioner Brandon Pace said he was not comfortable with mandating what people should do at their homes and he also didn’t want to impose more requests for the applicant.
Ultimately, it was noted through discussion that the applicant had already been amenable to addressing this issue and while Morgan’s alternate motion to include that verbiage for the HOA failed, the overall project passed unanimously.
“There was a lot of really good work that was done by the applicant to try to do the right thing here,” Pace said. “I also think it’s remarkable … where we are building 400 something units next door to existing hundreds of units of homes, there is not one person here to complain.”
The commission’s decision also included a recommendation to the City Council to enter into an affordable housing agreement for the project, which the council will review and either accept or deny at a future meeting. The council will also be able to appeal the commission’s decision to approve the project if it wishes to do so at a later date.
