Editorial Editorial (May 27, 2005)

The Vervais solution

At long last Janice and Robert Duclair have the money they've hoped to realize from their house on Vervais Avenue. At the same time, the city of Pleasanton, which bought it for $750,000, has another piece of prime real estate that it wants to use to expand Main Street Green, its small park that serves as a gateway to downtown at the Main Street bridge over the Arroyo del Valle. The City Council approved the sales agreement last week after a number of closed-door meetings to debate the purchase. Others wanted to buy the Duclairs' home at 4254 Vervais Ave., where they had lived since 1977 and raised their children, now grown. Several businesses offered up to $850,000 to convert the structure for commercial use, a zoning category the Duclairs thought they had. But those deals fell through when the bidders found that the city had rezoned the property as a park under terms of a new Downtown Specific Plan the City Council had approved several years earlier, without telling the Duclairs. Although the house could continue being used as a residence until the proposed park was actually developed, commercial uses were prohibited. No one wanted to buy a home that could be ordered torn down at any time, so the Duclairs found themselves with a house built in 1907 that nobody wanted.

Local Realtor Mike Carey and City Planning Commissioner Anne Fox deserve credit for urging the City Council and City Attorney Michael Roush to resolve the dilemma, either by rezoning the Duclairs' property back to residential or buying it now as an early start to developing Main Street Green. The council voted 3-1 to buy the house, with Councilman Steve Brozosky opposed. He said that besides the purchase price, another several hundred thousand dollars will be required to install a sewer line on Vervais and make other city code-required infrastructure improvements. Coupled with plans in place for the Main Street Green, total costs would be well over $1.5 million, money that Brozosky believes could be better used for capital projects already scheduled, such as sports fields on Bernal.

We agree with the majority who worried that unless the council acted now, other offers from investors could take away an opportunity to add scarce acreage for the North Main Street park. Besides, the money allocated for the purchase will come from a park contingency fund set aside long ago for the Happy Valley area, where a golf course, open space and trails will offer some of the best parkland in Pleasanton. Then, too, we like Deputy City Manager Steve Bocian's suggestion that the Duclair house be preserved for now and serve as a needed meeting place for the VFW, American Legion and other veterans organizations next year when the Veterans Memorial Building on Main Street is closed for extensive renovations.

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