|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
The Pleasanton Planning Commission unanimously voted earlier this month to recommend that the City Council rezone three commercial properties in the city for high-density residential housing, which could result in nearly 1,500 new units if developers decide to build at those sites.
The decision, which was heavily debated during the Sept. 9 commission meeting, was not an easy one for the commissioners – but it was one that they all agreed had to be done in order to satisfy a settlement agreement brought forward by a housing coalition that challenged the city’s most recent Housing Element.
“We, the Planning Commission, and city staff are not the ones who came up with the fact that this is what we’re doing as a city,” Commissioner Dave Jagoe said during the meeting. “What we’re here to do is (say) ‘OK, we may not agree with this, but if we’re going to, these are the three sites that we would like to select.’ “
Three years ago, the city adopted its 2023-2031 Housing Element, a state-mandated document that outlines how the city plans to accommodate new housing for various levels of income. The document was later certified by the California Department of Housing and Community Development in September 2023 after the city made additional revisions required by the state.
However, right after the state certified the city’s document, the Housing Action Coalition — an affordable housing advocacy nonprofit — sent a letter to the city which claimed the city’s Housing Element was inadequate.
Shweta Bonn, a senior planner with the city, said the fundamental complaint was related to the sites inventory list and the adequacy of the sites. She said the coalition challenged the fact that the city did not obtain approval from the property owners at some of the sites from the original list, even though she said the city was not legally required to do so.
She said the other issue the coalition had was that some of the sites were not vacant, which suggests that the likelihood of those sites being turned into housing within the 2023-2031 timeframe is unlikely.
In its letter to the city, the housing coalition threatened to sue the city. So, to avoid litigation, the city negotiated with the coalition and, as part of a settlement agreement, identified three additional sites to be rezoned for future housing.
Katherine Wisinski, assistant city attorney, said that even though the city strenuously disagreed with the housing coalition’s findings, “the council opted to enter into a settlement agreement to essentially rezone and redesignate three sites that have been selected between the parties.”
The three sites in question are the Hacienda West site, located at 3825 and 3875 Hopyard Road; the Metro 580 site, located at 4515 Rosewood Drive; and the property at 5960 Inglewood Drive. All are within the Hacienda Specific Plan area and within a few miles of each other.
The specifications about the sites are as follows: the Hacienda West site proposes a density of 30 to 40 dwelling units per acre across 14.19 acres and a maximum of 567 units. That site is currently occupied by a 208,806-square-foot commercial building.
The Metro 580 site, 5 acres of which had already been zoned for housing units in the Housing Element, proposed 30 to 60 dwelling units per acre for a total of up to 631 net new units across 10.52 acres. That site is occupied by 167,441 square feet of commercial retail stores.
Lastly, the 5960 Inglewood Drive, which is the smallest of the three sites, proposed 30 to 40 dwelling units per acre across six acres, for a total of 240 units maximum. Similarly, this site is occupied by a 103,600-square-foot commercial office building.
These proposed sites, according to assistant director of community and economic development and planning manager Derek Farmer, must be rezoned by Dec. 31 as stipulated by the settlement agreement. It does not mean the city or developers have to build anything — nor is anything being proposed for construction at the moment.
“This is just for the land use changes to the three sites,” Farmer said. “There is no development proposed on any of the sites or all of the sites at this time. Whether there is in the future is up to the development community.”
During the Sept. 9 commission meeting, all of the four commissioners on the dais mostly agreed on the fact that their hands were tied, given that the three sites were already negotiated and decided on as part of the settlement agreement.
And for the most part, they agreed that the sites were viable and good locations for additional housing.
“If we’re going to need to pick three sites, and we are required to, in my opinion these are three great sites,” Jagoe said.
What did dominate most of the discussion was how the city even got to the point of the settlement agreement when they thought the Housing Element was, as one commissioner described, “bulletproof”.
Commission Chair Brandon Pace specifically called out the housing coalition and the person who sent that initial letter to the city threatening litigation.
He said, and others agreed, that the city should have done more to challenge those claims that the Housing Element was inadequate because, as they are seeing now, there could be a likelihood that these same groups come back to do the same thing during the next Housing Element cycle.
“Almost everyone is frustrated with this impacting their neighborhoods,” Pace said. “If there’s ways that we can learn about what we did here that would influence how we’re going to do something in three years, when we’re going to have to go through something like this again … I think that’s what we’re trying to figure out.”
Others like Commissioner Anurag Jain called out the overall Housing Element process. “No matter how much rezoning we do, ultimately it’s not something which the city can do to meet HCD requirements,” Jain said. “This whole process is just flawed.”
He also said he took issue with how the city simply negotiated with the housing coalition to identify these three additional sites without input from the commission or the public.
But at the end, all four commissioners voted in favor of recommending the council rezone these sites, with the caveat that, at some point in the future, the city should look into whether these three sites could be added to the city’s next Housing Element document.
“Other parties, outbound of us that we’re not a part of, have picked these three sites. Everybody that’s picked them says these are the three best sites that are going to alleviate this issue,” Jagoe said. “It’s our job to vote on these three sites whether we like them or we don’t, but all I hear is a bunch of questions that have nothing to do with what we’re supposed to vote on.”
According to Farmer, the tentative plan is to bring the rezoning item before the council for approval on Oct. 20.
