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The Pleasanton City Council decided last week to rezone the Boulder Street site for potential housing development as part of the city’s 2023-31 Housing Element document following the news of a Kaiser Permanente site not being an option anymore.
At the June 20 meeting, city staff told the council — minus Councilmember Jeff Nibert who was absent — that the city’s sixth Housing Element is nearing the finish line to reach state certification. But when Kaiser officials told city staff on June 6 that they did not want to let go of their property on 5600 Stoneridge Mall Road, it forced staff to quickly find a replacement that would meet the state’s housing requirements.
“We have a locally adopted Housing Element and it included that Kaiser site,” City Manager Gerry Beaudin said. “So when Kaiser, five months after the approval, removed their site from the list, we were left trying to fill this hole in our higher density housing site inventory.”
The council had previously signed off on its sixth Housing Element document during a special meeting on Jan. 26 after making modifications to the list of sites, which started as a list of 24 potential locations for redevelopment that had been cut down to 19 sites.
In order to accommodate Pleasanton’s state-mandated Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA) of 5,965 new units — 2,758 of which are targeted toward lower-income households — the city was supposed to get its Housing Element certified so that the sites could be officially zoned for potential housing in the near future.
But after city staff had resubmitted the Housing Element on Feb. 14 for state certification, officials from the California Department of Housing and Community Development told the city in April that it needed to make some additional modifications in order for the document to be approved.
Those revisions, which staff also brought to the council for approval on Tuesday, addressed three major topics: information to demonstrate viability of some of the non-vacant housing sites; program modifications to address environmental and regulatory constraints to housing development; and enhancement of Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) policies and programs.
Since then, city staff have been working on the document and were even ready to bring it back for council approval at the June 6 meeting — but it was on that same day that staff received the notice letter from Kaiser that they did not want to build housing at their property anymore.
The Kaiser site, which was originally zoned for housing during the city’s fourth Housing Element cycle, had planned to house up to 182 high-density, lower-income residential units at its property on 5600 Stoneridge Mall Road — which was supposed to give the city a surplus buffer of lower-income units in this current housing cycle.
But now that the site is no longer viable, the city’s surplus of low-income units has gone down from 189 units to seven units.
That is when staff said they began looking at the other sites and decided that the Boulder Street site — located on 3400 and 3500 Boulder Street — was the best option because it is not being utilized and because HCD, along with the public, did not have any concerns with the site.
“I think, predominantly, the low intensity use out there on the site and the fact that we didn’t have any prior concerns on the site and there were really no public comments on this property, it seemed like a good choice,” said Megan Campbell, associate planner at the city. “We’ve notified the owners, we’ve contacted them (but) we haven’t received any information saying that they’re not interested in developing it. But they have not indicated either way.”
While Campbell did point out that staff have notified and contacted the owners of the property, they have not received any information saying they are or are not interested in developing housing there.
However, community development director Ellen Clark said that affirmation by the property owner isn’t necessarily needed and that while it is nice to have, she wouldn’t say it’s a requirement of the law.
While there wasn’t much debate surrounding the Boulder Street site, one piece of the staff recommendation that was eventually taken off by the council as part of Vice Mayor Jack Balch’s motion was the idea of the Old Santa Rita site as a backup site, in case HCD found issues with the Boulder Street site.
With about 40 parcels and dozens of potential property owners, Balch said that he preferred not to include that site — not just because of the group of public speakers who advocated against using that area for housing during the meeting, but because it could bring future problems such as displacing businesses.
“Boulder at least has a slightly easier path forward with still the similar challenges, but I think staff has analyzed them sufficiently,” Balch said.
However, Councilmember Julie Testa — while she did vote yes at the end — used the discussion to bring up several talking points including how she believed the city shouldn’t have brought back the Boulder Street site and should have just kept the surplus buffer on the lower end.
“We don’t need to add a site back in, we’re fine the way it is,” Testa said. “We’ve met the statutory requirement without adding another site.”
When Testa asked staff about the layers of buffers that are included in the Housing Element — such as density bonuses and other projects that could be identified for development in the next eight years — staff told her it comes down to achieving state certification and following what neighboring cities, which have already received certification, have done with having high buffers.
“We’ve done some research and asked our consultants to look into the question and the majority of cities who have certified Housing Elements at this point, have incorporated a buffer of some sort into their housing elements,” Clark said.
Beaudin also added by saying that the buffer helps out with no net loss, which according to the Association of Bay Area Governments website, aims to “ensure development opportunities remain available throughout the planning period to accommodate a jurisdiction’s regional housing need allocation, especially for lower- and moderate- income households.”
“The buffer is intended to be a backstop so we don’t have to keep coming back and looking at new sites,” Beaudin said. “It also is a guideline from HCD and we know that other cities around us that have successfully certified their Housing Element, or had HCD certify their Housing Element, have a buffer.”
The addition of the Boulder Street site will now add 284 units from the lower income category and increase the buffer to 291 units within to meet the city’s RHNA requirements.
Following the decision last week, staff will now be submitting the amended Housing Element to HCD for review and certification. HCD has up to 60 days for it to review.
