Pleasanton school board approves sale of vacant lot to housing developer for $34.7M

The Pleasanton school board voted unanimously last week to sell the district-owned Neal property located along Vineyard Avenue between Thiessen Street and Manoir Lane to a housing developer for $34,695,000.

The purchase agreement for the property, also known as the Neal property or the Vineyard site, would have the buyer — Landsea Homes of California — also pay an additional $1.2 million for “each residential lot approved by the city” on top of the 27 homes that the developer plans on building.

Initially, Landsea Homes wanted to go up to 41 homes, but according to Dominic Dutra — CEO and founder of 3D Strategies, a real estate consulting firm for educational institutions — that option was eliminated after listening to community input.

“We were able to, as you know, work with the district to remain at 28 — actually, they’re doing 27 homes, less than what the neighbors wanted,” Dutra said during the Dec. 14 board meeting. “That is, in essence, to retain the ability to have three acres of park and open space that I think the neighborhood is going to be very, very happy with.”

Several years ago, the Pleasanton Unified School District wanted to look at its surplus property and identify some sites to place on the city’s latest Housing Element.

The Pleasanton City Council voted in December to reduce the developable area at the 10-acre site to 7 acres and have three to four units per acre, which adds up to an assumed capacity of 21 to 28 units. Councilmembers also voted to add three acres of some type of greenbelt park space that goes through the development.

As the city finalized its Housing Element late last year, the district decided to form a 7-11 Committee — made up of seven to 11 different community stakeholders, helped the district decide how to best utilize some of its property assets and ended up identifying the Vineyard site as surplus property that the district could sell.

“Doing that was strategically really prudent because that property in that location was not needed,” Ahmad Sheikholeslami, assistant superintendent of business services, told the board.

He said some of the reasons the 7-11 Committee and the district decided it was in their best interest to sell was that looking at the demographics of that area, there would be no use to build another school there.

He also said the property itself was too costly because of the money the district put in cutting grass for fire mitigation and clearing debris.

“It’s really not benefiting the district,” Sheikholeslami said. “So the district took a strategic review of what it is doing with its assets and we determined that the best way really is to monetize that asset and reallocate it into other facilities.”

That’s why the district took the necessary steps over the past year to lawfully sell the property by declaring the property as exempt surplus land, which was then submitted and approved as exempt surplus land by the California Department of Housing and Community Development.

The district then made certain offers to government agencies to submit the land to be used for park and recreational purposes, as required by educational codes, but the district did not receive any responses to those offers.

That’s when the district decided to seek a waiver for competitive bidding requirements, instead seeking to sell the land via a request for proposals (RFP) process, which was approved by the state on Nov. 8. The state, however, imposed conditions that the board needed to determine the most desirable proposal within 30 to 60 days following a public meeting in which they received that proposal, and that the selected proposal be on the agenda in a public meeting prior to its approval.

Then during the Oct. 26 board meeting, six proposals were presented to the board. While the dais did not select a proposal back then, they did direct staff to negotiate a formal purchase and sale agreement with Landsea Homes.

“We’ve been engaged in that work for the last several weeks and we’re really excited about bringing forward this agreement,” Sheikholeslami said.

Now, after the board first approved a resolution declaring its intent to sell the property, the sale has been approved.

“Through the RFP process, we have received very competitive bids,” Sheikholeslami said. “Landsea was not only the most competitive bid and pricing, but we believe offers the best value and the best product in terms of their ability to build these homes and develop this property.”

According to the Dec. 14 agenda report for the meeting, Landsea Homes will have a 60-day feasibility period where it will investigate the property and perform testing.

“The purchase price will be reduced by any costs to satisfy conditions imposed by the city to improve or dedicate land for park or vineyard purposes, with a cap on those costs to be agreed upon by the parties during the feasibility period,” according to the staff report.

Dutra told the board that while there isn’t a concrete site plan as the developers still need to go through the design process with the city’s Planning Commission, the initial site plan that Landsea has right now reflects what the neighbors of that area have incorporated in a letter they previously sent and that the site will likely mirror the adjoining properties.

“I think it really is a win-win for the district, the city and the neighbors,” Dutra said.

“There’s no specific plan that is approved other than the direction from the City Council to make sure that there’s three acres retained for a park or open space,” he added. “The developer still has to work with the city to get through a tentative map process. That’s an approximate 15-month period.”

That design review process will include times for the public to provide input and reiterate their ideas and requests for how they want the housing to look like at the property.

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