ACTION ALAMEDA News

Residents of the 2500 block of Eagle Avenue held a block party yesterday to cement the unity of the “Wedgewood” neighborhood of Alameda.
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High-density planned developments like SunCal’s Calthorpe-designed proposal for 6000 homes at Alameda Point, are intended to create automobile congestion in the hopes that such congestion will force everyone to take public transit, thereby removing the automobile as a transportation option.

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Not only did Warmington Homes not get an affordable housing agreement last night that would permit them to build a 16 to 36 unit rental apartment complex on the former Alameda Island High School site, they were denied by City Council, sitting as the Community Improvement Commission the privilege of transferring any affordable housing units offsite from the Grand Marina Village project to the Island High site.

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Dear Editor,

Please join us tonight at City Hall!

This is the subject on the agenda tonight 8/5/2008 with the Alameda CIC. I would like to invite everyone who opposes of a builder coming into our town and making policy decisions to please help fight at City Hall tonight.

I disapprove of Warmingtons request to renege on their original agreement made with the City of Alameda. The amendment made on June 23, 2008 is not in compliance with inclusionary housing laws. Moving the very-low and low income housing off-site is not in fairness with the distribution of income diversity. This amendment creates an inappropriate financial imbalance causing the two neighborhoods to be weighted in opposite directions. The request to shift these units to another location only benefits the developers by making the developers property more profitable. This transfer is only about the Builders PROFITS.

Even with these low-income units remaining in the builders development the market value of their new homes will still be double to triple that of the IHS neighborhood homes; as this tiny neighborhoods home values are already below current market rates. The builders profits should not be at the expense of a neighborhood; which is one of the only entry-level housing markets east of Webster. These units should be incorporated into the builders market-rate development in compliance with the Inclusionary Housing Policy. New developments in the City of Alameda should be done in an equitable way. City Policy should be intact with contracts written with severe penalties to deter builders from such greedy amendments.

Please join us and ask the CIC to reconsider the approval made on June 23, 2008 and transfer the builders units back to their inclusionary development.

- Nanette Burdick, Alameda Native

Tonight, Alameda City Council sits as the Community Improvement Commission and will vote on a resolution approving an affordable housing agreement between the CIC and Warmington Homes.
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The City of Alameda Community Improvement Commission (CIC) meets on Tuesday, August 5th at City Hall. Before them that evening will be a draft agreement between the CIC and Warmington Homes for an 18 to 36 unit rental apartment complex at the site of the former Island High School, land owned by the Alameda Unified School District.

At the July 28 Planning Board meeting, 30 to 40 people opposed to the project filled seats in City Council Chambers and raised their hands to identify themselves as in opposition to the project. As reported earlier, virtually all residents in the neighborhood are opposed to this project.

The density bonus law is up for discussion before the City of Alameda Planning Board and the public, as part of the effort to pull together a state-mandated 2007 - 2014 Housing Element for the city. Long-time readers know that Action Alameda has advocated an examination of the density bonus law as a potential means to provide transit-oriented, mid-density development with affordable housing for the official affordable housing classes of very-low, low and moderate income households, as well as for those households with income levels just above the moderate income classification, but without changing Measure A or exempting Alameda Point from Measure A.

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Dear Editor,

Anyone who has been duped by Helen Sause and her developer friends and the local politicians and city planners who are actively trying to turn Alameda over to the developers by supporting the repeal of Measure A for Alameda Point (and ultimately for all of the Island) ought to read the excellent article in today’s Chronicle about the SF Redevelopment Agency’s disastrous destruction of the Fillmore district. This was first great triumph of the Justin Herman redevelopment machine back in the 1960s.  Justin Herman was Helen Sause’s mentor — she received an award in his name upon retirement from the SF Redevelopment agency where she spent most of her career.  Sause has been a zealous true-believing advocate of redevelopment who regards Measure A as the last great impediment to the transformation of this lovely island into a kind of Manhattan in the Bay with high-rise condominiums and tall office buildings — anything the developers want and the politicians who receive their contributions from them and the city staff can deliver to their friends.

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At the Monday July 28 Planning Board meeting, the Board will hold a housing workshop which is intended to gather public input about, among other things, the use of the density bonus law in Alameda. Action Alameda has long advocated that use of the density bonus law be examined as a way of providing affordable housing without changing or repealing Measure A.

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Addendum - the average salary for a school teacher in Alameda was $61,018 for the 2006-’07 school year. A school teacher living alone would be ineligible to occupy a unit in this project.

Roughly 30 people filed into the meeting room at Alameda Library on Wednesday night to hear AE3 Partners, an architecture firm based in Oakland, present their vision for a 36 unit affordable housing apartment complex that Warmington Homes (Catellus) wants to put on the site of the former Alameda Island High School, at the corner of Everett Street and Eagle Avenue, just one block east of Park Street.

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