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The Pleasanton school board voted last week to resell the district-owned Neal property located along Vineyard Avenue between Thiessen Street and Manoir Lane for $34,695,000 to a new housing developer after the last one decided to back out of the purchase at the last minute.
The new developer — Trumark Homes, LLC, which is based in San Ramon — agreed to maintain all of the terms and conditions from Pleasanton Unified School District’s previous purchase agreement with Landsea Homes of California, which had backed out of the sale due to the company’s decision to shift its resources to a different project.
Ahmad Sheikholeslami, PUSD’s assistant superintendent of business services, told the board at its March 14 meeting the goal is to close and finalize the purchase within a year or less.
Years ago, the district wanted to look at its surplus property and identify sites to place on the city’s latest Housing Element.
After the Pleasanton City Council voted last year to reduce the developable area at the 10-acre site to 7 acres and have three to four units per acre, the district decided to form a committee, which helped the district identify the Neal property as surplus land the district could sell.
PUSD then issued a request for proposal last October and received six proposals for the property — including ones from Landsea and Trumark.
When Landsea backed out of the agreement, Sheikholeslami said the district was quickly able to contact Trumark, which had been interested in the property and agreed to the same purchase price and terms.
If kept the same as Landsea’s plans, the new developer could build up to 27 homes — the city had previously approved a capacity of 21 to 28 units — along with three acres of some type of greenbelt park space that goes through the development, which was something the city, district and community members wanted for the site.
If the developer decides to build any additional residential lots apart from the 27 homes listed in the agreement, it would have to pay the district an additional $1.2 million for each one.
Sheikholeslami said Landsea had also already made significant progress with the preliminary work, including a tentative plan on where the homes and park would be located and obtaining city comments on the plans.
“We have a lot of (the) work that was done and so we will be regrouping with the new developer and the city to kind of flush that out,” he said. “They may have some new ideas that they want to bring forward, or they want to kind of continue some of the work that was done … so we’ll try to as much as we can kind of go from where we were rather than a full kind of review.”
Trustee Kelly Mokashi asked about how the district and city plan on safeguarding things like building height and how the development will fit into the surrounding neighborhood to which Sheikholeslami said that while Trumark will have to meet state law requirements and go through the city’s planning process the district will make sure to encourage the developer to meet the needs of neighbors.
However, City Councilmember Valerie Arkin said during the meeting that PUSD should have used its leverage on owning the land and made it a condition of the sale to split the open space and have half along Vineyard Avenue and half at the other end, adjacent to the Old Vineyard Road Trail.
She said state laws on housing don’t allow a lot of discretion from the city regarding developments and wanted the board to use that condition of the sale as a way to help mitigate the impact to neighbors.
“Anything that the school district and the city can do to help mitigate the impacts to these neighbors, I think is the right thing to do,” said Arkin, who is a former PUSD trustee.
That’s why Mokashi motioned to postpone the vote on March 14 so the board could consider certain design elements in the condition of the sale agreement. But that motion failed, which is why Mokashi voted against the sale, not because she disagreed with the sale in general but because she wanted to undergo that process of reviewing the design elements.
Sheikholeslami said postponing the vote could possibly not bode well with Trumark and could have affected the sale.
Trustee Justin Brown said that the district was lucky that Trumark had agreed to the purchase agreement, even though it originally wanted to buy the land at a lower price, and that changing the terms could change the price.
Sheikholeslami also said he met with individuals from Trumark, who gave their commitment to work on community outreach with neighbors to make sure their concerns are heard.
As I understand Pleasanton hasn’t made much progress on meeting RHNA goals and I guess, they will not be able to. Builders Remedy is just matter of time across Pleasanton, where the builder can build many more and by all means, they are needed and essential for bringing most desperately needed housing and income to Pleasanton (to bridge defecits). Housing is under deep crisis and its badly needed. City should encourage all kinds of housing. When you are hungry (and no money to afford) any food is great food. Any housing is great housing, embrace it and help people.