Pleasanton council approves alternative design for Hopyard housing project

The Pleasanton City Council approved a design change for a developer’s plan to build eight, three story multi-family buildings at the site currently occupied by Harvest Valley Christian Church and its affiliated daycare during the April 16 council meeting.

Instead of building 57 townhome-style units, as the developer originally proposed, the council decided to go with what it said was the lesser of two evils and approve a 55-unit alternative even though most council members agreed with the dozens of residents who live near the future project site that the development is not a good fit for that neighborhood.

“This is all about a state power grab on housing,” Vice Mayor Julie Testa said during the meeting. “We always talked about ‘the city of planned progress’ and that’s what the state has taken away from us. There really is very little ability to do much with this project. It isn’t a project that most of us would have allowed or supported.”

The developer of the project — ​​Catalyst Development Partners LLC — first submitted an application to build this housing development, which would be located at 3200 Hopyard Road, back in October 2022. 

The Harvest Valley church located there is currently going through the permit process for moving the congregation to a new location at 5587 Sunol Blvd. after Pastor Derek Meekins previously said he agreed to a contract to sell the property to the developer. Meekins had said the church had been going through its emergency savings following the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced the closure of the church’s daycare.

Originally the developer planned on building nine three-story buildings with a total of 57 multi-family units made up of 48 townhomes and nine apartments. 

That plan went to the city’s Planning Commission on Feb. 28 but the commission pushed its vote to approve the project until March 13 after it heard from residents who live in the Valley Trails Drive neighborhood — which is in the same area as the project — speak out against the development.

Many of those same residents who voiced their concerns during the Planning Commission meeting showed out during the council meeting to voice their discontent with the fact that the city couldn’t deny the project, with the city’s lack of prior engagement with neighbors regarding the planned development and with how the apartments simply don’t fit the aesthetic of the area.

“No one likes this project,” Pleasanton resident Connie Cox said. “Several of you in this room have told me you don’t like it. The Planning Commission actually said they didn’t like it, we in this room don’t want it, Parkside doesn’t want it, Valley Trails really doesn’t want it and I hate it.”

Cox is a 44-year resident of the Valley Trails neighborhood who said that while she has been working to protect and improve her neighborhood for over 30 years, fighting against this recent housing project has exhausted her the most compared to any past development.

“People are going to drive by this abomination for the next 50 years or more and wonder who did that,” Cox said.

Residents like Cox and others who live in the Valley Trails neighborhood did, however, manage to meet with the lead project applicant, Bruce Myers, who voluntarily offered the now-approved alternative recommendation to bring the number of buildings down to eight and the number of units down to 55 — including 47 townhome-style units and eight one-bedroom apartment units. Apart from the eight buildings, there will also be two, two-story duet buildings.

The Planning Commission approved both the original and the alternative design during its March 13 meeting after finding both to be consistent with the city’s objective standards and the requirements of the state’s housing density bonus law.

The city’s Housing Commission also recommended the approval of the 55-unit option during its March 21 meeting.

Councilmember Valerie Arkin also pointed out that the project, per the city’s development process, would have not even gone to the City Council for discussion — but it did because the council had requested a review of the Planning Commission’s decision during its March 19 council meeting.

A lot of last week’s discussion revolved around several high-level topics that were discussed at the previous commission meetings such as parking, safety and traffic, which were all concerns many of the residents had called out.

Many residents said the six surface guest parking spaces along with the two-car garages for the townhomes and one-car garage for the one-bedroom apartments are going to lead to more cars parking on the surrounding neighborhood driveways, which could pose a risk to children who play and walk around those neighborhoods.

Others also called out the traffic study that was conducted for the project saying it did not accurately capture the impact that the 55 additional homes would have on the traffic.

But according to the city’s Traffic Engineer Mike Tassano, the housing development will not affect the number of trips people make at peak rush hours compared to when the church and daycare were fully operational.

“When we look at what sort of impacts we have, for this development it’s essentially the same as the impacts that the daycare would have if it opened back up. So our ability to say there’s some sort of new impact isn’t really there,” Tassano said. “Although it’s a vacant property, if this develops, the residents will see an increase over the closed daycare but if this didn’t come back in and the daycare opened back up, they would also see that increase.”

While some residents also said they thought the alternative 55-unit option was the favorable option compared to the original one, others still were upset that they did not receive any notice about the project until the last minute and urged the council to reject developing the project altogether.

But as Mayor Karla Brown had city attorney Dan Sodergren point out, if the city did deny the project, the developer would have had the option to sue the city.

“It would be subject to judicial review and there could be a possibility that the city would have to pay the plaintiffs attorneys fees,” Sodergren said.

The last major part of last week’s discussion, which took up most of the meeting, was the affordability aspect of the eight-one bedroom units which will be deed-restricted to lower-income households in order to meet the city’s inclusionary zoning requirements and to qualify for waivers and concessions pursuant to the state housing density bonus law.

The council ended up voting 4-1, with Testa dissenting, to allow the developer to make the units available for sale at $375,000 per unit, which is equivalent to 100% of the average median income (AMI) with a time limit to sell them in five years from the time the developer pulls the construction permits.

But the council’s main discussion revolved around using $250,000 from its lower income housing fund to close the affordability gap should the housing price not perform at the $375,000 price level.

“The goal is to deliver affordable housing at 100% AMI as our first goal, and potentially buy to a deeper subsidy or buy to a deeper level of AMI, if those opportunities present themselves at the time, but not exceeding $250,000,” City Manager Gerry Beaudin said.

The majority of the council did say it did not have an interest in using affordable housing dollars for the project but as Beaudin explained, the only way to keep the project’s affordability level at that 100% AMI was to allocate those $250,000 — even if the city ends up not having to use that money.

He said without that money, the eight one-bedroom units could go up to 120% AMI, which he said is not an attractive number for affordability.

“What it does is it helps us to guarantee that we could bring those units in at 100% AMI, it guarantees the applicant the $375,000 that they’re looking for for those units and then we would only add dollars to that project in the event the sale price based on the market conditions didn’t achieve the $375,000,” Beaudin said. “We’re not buying the units down to 80% (AMI) and we’re only gap filling in the event that the market doesn’t perform in the way that we’ve anticipated.”

Testa dissented because she said she could not support allocating money for a for-profit company, which her colleagues agreed wasn’t what they wanted to do either, but they said it was the only way to move forward.

“I absolutely do not support subsidizing a for-profit development with the affordable housing dollars,” Testa said. “I think that those dollars must go to affordable housing and they need to be used wisely.”