The City Council moved methodically toward buildout Tuesday, citing various locations where the 1,373 residential units left to be built in Pleasanton could be located as the city moves toward its 29,000-unit voter-mandated housing cap.
The action taken at the end of a near-five-hour meeting of the council and the city Planning Commission only stipulated a range of possible developments to use for new traffic studies. Once those are completed, planners and the council will meet again to see how the proposals would affect traffic patterns in a city already affected by peak hour congestions on most weekdays.
Officials agreed to consider a plan for up to 350 rental units next to the new West BART station that will be built this year, another 400 units in the Hacienda Business Park and 100 more housing units downtown and at Kottinger Place, a senior housing complex.
Although no decisions were made in what was billed as a workshop session, a request by the Pleasanton Evangelical Free Church in Valley Trails to sell six acres of its nine-acre site to Ponderosa Homes for new homes was quickly scuttled, with all five members of the council agreeing that they would never support that move. The Valley Trails Homeowners Association has long objected to the church’s effort to convert part of its property into additional housing.
Answering to comments that more housing should be committed to low and very-low income occupants, Mayor Jennifer Hosterman insisted that Pleasanton will carefully plan the number and types of housing left to be built here. She said housing mandates ordered by the state’s Housing Authority in 2003, which totaled more than 1,000, would exceed the city’s housing cap when added to residential units already planned.
Affordable housing advocates have warned that the state could require Pleasanton to build more housing for those with low to very-low incomes, which is also a proposal by the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG).
“I don’t really care what the state’s housing department says to Pleasanton,” Hosterman said. “They don’t have a mandate, their numbers don’t make sense for this city and I have absolutely no interest in complying with a state unfunded mandate, which theirs’ is.”
At the Tuesday meeting, representatives of the Shaklee Corporation said they are prepared to move forward on plans for two high-density apartment buildings near their headquarters in Hacienda Business Park. The request for up to 400 rental units in four- and five-story buildings has been on hold pending completion of the housing numbers and traffic impact surveys, which are part of the General Plan the council is now updating.
City officials said there would be enough available land in Hacienda to rezone for residential to accommodate all of the 1,373 housing units left to be built in Pleasanton, if planners and the council want to keep all future development in that area.
A majority on the council indicated that wouldn’t happen, however. Most said they are concerned about adding more housing in Hacienda at the expense of keeping open space there now for future business growth.
