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The Pleasanton City Council had a lengthy discussion Tuesday regarding the East Lakes housing project that is being planned for development in East Pleasanton, with members expressing differing outlooks on age restriction and number of units, among other aspects of the proposal.
While the March 18 discussion was solely focused on the council providing feedback for the project applicant — SteelWave LLC, a San Mateo-based real estate developer — to consider as it gets set to submit a formal project application within the next two to three months, the council remained almost evenly split on keeping the project’s current preferred plan to build 697 units that includes a mix of housing types and unit sizes.
Mayor Jack Balch said he couldn’t support the project being 100% age-restricted — meaning it would only house seniors — and that SteelWave should at least analyze the environmental impacts of building the 697 units of mixed housing.
“I personally can’t imagine this being 100% senior-restricted,” Balch said. “This project put forward by the applicant, not saying this would be a final one, has seven different types of housing … we have to stand up and lead our community to provide for the future generations.”
Councilmember Julie Testa and Vice Mayor Jeff Nibert, however, said that even though they still support annexing the land into the city, they would have preferred to see the developer’s original proposal to the county to build 445 age-restricted units move forward.
“The project that came before that was 100% age-restricted was a really lovely community,” Testa said. “It was a really nice plan … It had so much benefit to the entire Pleasanton community by having less traffic.”
Dubbed the East Lakes project, Tuesday’s latest update for the residential development application comes a month after the council directed staff to begin the process to annex the project site — along with another large residential development called the Arroyo Lago project.
The two developments would be located in the East Pleasanton planning area, which is a 1,100-acre area located east of Valley Avenue and Busch Road, north of Stanley Boulevard and south of Arroyo Mocho. Both properties are owned by SteelWave LLC.
SteelWave originally submitted an application last June to Alameda County under the builder’s remedy state provision — which allows developers to build housing projects that don’t comply with local zoning or general plans — that sought to build 569 residential units exclusively for seniors.
The applicant then submitted a revised preliminary application to the county that reduced the total unit count to 357 single-family, age-restricted homes and 88 age-restricted assisted living units, according to the staff report, for a total of 445 units across 61.6 acres located east of the Arroyo Lago site.
On Feb. 18, the council unanimously voted in favor of moving forward with the process of annexing properties in East Pleasanton. But at the time, the plans for the East Lakes project were not quite finalized.
Although the plans are still not finalized, SteelWave now has to conduct different environmental impact analyses before returning to the council to present final design plans. The developer brought forward its newest “preferred plan” to the dais on Tuesday.
Among the total 697 units in the preferred alternative are 490 non-age-restricted, 107 age-restricted and 100 multi-family affordable units. It also includes two parks that are each just under an acre in size.
Those units, according to staff, will also be a mix of for-sale and rental units and will vary in sizes such as single family homes, townhomes and multi-family apartments.
The size of the project was among the project features the council provided feedback on.
Nibert, like Testa, said he didn’t understand why the applicant decided to move away from the original proposal submitted to the county.
“The applicant came before the City Council with a, what I consider, beautiful plan of 445 units all together, age-restricted,” Nibert said.
He said he was disappointed in the shift from the majority of the council to favor the mixed housing plan, especially after SteelWave director Steve Dunn said during the meeting that one of the reasons the applicant went with its preferred plan was because it heard from certain council members that they wanted to see different options other than the 445-unit age-restricted plan.
Nibert also said he had concerns with the potential traffic impacts that would come if the city decides to move forward with the 697-unit plan in the future, which traffic engineer Mike Tassano said would create more trips in the area.
One major discussion point in regard to traffic that came up during the meeting was the potential plans to extend El Charro Road to Stanley Boulevard, which the city calculated would cost around $110 million to carry out those road improvements.
“It’s definitely needed,” Tassano said in regards to the El Charro extension.
If the city were to go with the higher unit count plan for the project, community development director Ellen Clark told the council that there could be cost-sharing options to finance the street improvements and Tassano added that after some calculations, the city could incur $60 million of those costs. But as Clark pointed out, if the project has a lower unit count it won’t be able to help finance the extension project.
“Being able to spread that cost across more units may be beneficial to actually making projects feasible and that cost sharing more bearable overall,” Clark said.
That’s also one of the reasons why Councilmember Craig Eicher said he wanted the applicant to move forward with conducting environmental analysis for the larger unit count because it could help finance that extension project.
Several residents also agreed that the El Charro extension will be a necessity if the project moves forward, but some also pointed out that the developers still need to work with the community to address other issues such as height of surrounding fencing and the plans to elevate the ground at the site.
“I implore you to recognize that the east side needs to be developed … thoughtfully,” longtime resident Linda Kelly said during the meeting. “It needs to be developed in conjunction with the cooperation of all parties involved.”
The council also gave feedback on building within the Livermore Airport Protection Area but Testa was the only one who expressly opposed it because the original 445-unit proposal did not have plans within that zone.
One aspect the entire council agreed on is that the senior-only area of the larger plan should have a gate. However, Councilmember Matt Gaidos and others on the dais noted that they still want to see other options in the future.
“I’d like to see options … and what the impact will be on the city,” Gaidos said.
He said he agreed with Nibert that the 100% age-restricted plan was preferable but that he is still open to hear other plans as the developer moves forward with analyzing the greater impacts the larger mixed unit plans will have on the city.
Testa maintained her stance throughout the meeting that she would have liked to see the annexation of a smaller plan and even proposed increasing the unit count for the age-restricted only plan if that meant it could help finance the El Charro extension.
She also pointed out that there are other projects throughout the city that will provide housing for other populations who are not senior citizens.
“If the project was 100% age-restricted, of course that would be allowing for housing for vulnerable seniors,” Testa added. “We know that seniors are the highest … growing population of unhoused (people). It’s a very vulnerable population.”
But Balch said he still wants to see a project that offers housing for more diverse groups of people and that allowing the developer to move forward with analyzing the impacts of the highest number of units will allow for better decision making in the future.
“I would be willing to suffer some traffic challenges if (that means) a firefighter or a teacher could live in my community,” Balch said in regard to supporting 15% of the project being age-restricted housing.
I am a senior. I am fortunate enough to be able to continue living in my home of some 50 years. I also am aware that many studies are showing what a great benefit to seniors the interaction with younger generations is. So beneficial that nursing homes and skilled care facilities are adopting programs that actively encourage the interactions between generations.
Isolation has been identified as one of the worst things that can happen to us as we age. We lose spouses, children move away, and peers who are in more fragile physical condition are out
In my own case, I have neighbors with high school children who are attentive and their parents look out for me. It helps to keep me in touch with the world around me, and is most beneficial in retaining a healthy quality of life.
Mental health of elders is of concern, and isolation contributes to the decline of mental health. Many of us don’t have family living nearby, often because of the high cost of housing in the Bay Area. This mixed-use project, while not firmly determined in numbers yet, would be a tremendous asset on many counts.
Annexation is simply a no-brainer. From the proposed new water and wastewater treatment plants in the county proposal to the loss of revenue to county coffers, annexation is clearly the only feasible fiscal option for Pleasanton. Add RHNA requirements, which this goes a long way toward meeting, and an age-restricted development should be simply out of the question.
This project also helps balance the additional units required by RHNA so the northwestern quadrant doesn’t bear the traffic and other impacts without the balance on the east side. El Charro extension will be needed and has been needed for a long time. Time to get off the dime and get this underway.
Paying for the El Charro buildout requires Pleasanton and developers working out a cost sharing agreement structure. The overall cost is estimated to be north of $110 million. Hence the massive scope of the multiple housing developments in East Pleasanton.
If only there was a certain tax measure that would have helped generate revenue towards the total cost of the buildout…
Without a financing framework for the El Charro buildout materializing in the next few years, the lack of plan puts pressure on Pleasanton. The city is forced to approve stack-n-pack development to grow revenue and pay for the things and services we already maintain.
Perhaps this was the mayor’s plan all along?
Measure PP would have allowed Pleasanton’s slow-growth model to be sustained for at least another 10 years.