In Support of New Transit Oriented Housing in Downtown San Leandro

-

There is a new 687-unit apartment complex planned for 899 Alvarado Street that I believe our community should support. The 899 Alvarado project is coming before a City Commission for review and approval on Thursday, March 7, at 7 p.m. at San Leandro City Hall.
Let me start with a point we can all agree upon: San Leandro should be a great city in which to raise a family. When our children go off to college or a career, we want them one day to consider moving back to San Leandro to raise their families. This requires market-rate housing that’s affordable for young adults.
At the same time, part of what has always made San Leandro special are our residential neighborhoods. While we need new housing, developers should not be permitted to build large, dense apartment complexes in residential neighborhoods that violate our zoning code. 
Instead, such projects should be built within close proximity to the BART stations. Doing so preserves our residential neighborhoods and creates new housing in areas where residents will not have to rely solely on cars for their transportation needs.
This is why the City should approve the proposed 899 Alvarado Street apartment complex. It constitutes the largest remaining vacant property close to the downtown BART station. The site is behind the FH Dailey car dealership on Davis Street and bound on the west by the Union Pacific Railroad track and on the east by an office building owned by Wells Fargo.
The City’s General Plan, updated in 2016, and the earlier Transit Oriented Development Strategy, specifically called for dense residential housing development in the future to be built on the site. The future is now. A developer proposes to construct a 687-unit apartment complex. The project complies with the zoning code in regard to height, density and parking requirements.
The 899 Alvarado Street apartment complex is precisely why the City adopted a Transit Oriented Development Strategy for our downtown. It will help make San Leandro an attractive city for our children and succeeding generations of San Leandrans.
Again, the 899 Alvarado project is coming before a City Commission this Thursday night, at 7 pm at City Hall. Please consider coming and speaking in favor of the project. If you can't attend, you can send Tom Liao, San Leandro Community Development Director, an email message in support of the project for him to relay to the Commissioners. Liao's email address is tliao@sanleandro.org

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Looking Back: Measure B Transformed San Leandro Public Schools

-
Image
Our tax dollars can make a real difference in the lives of our children and prosperity of a community. Twelve years ago San Leandro High School was grossly overcrowded leading to discipline problems and undermining academic performance, no theater in the school district existed for student performances, and many restrooms at schools were in such poor condition that the students would not use them. That all changed in August 2006 when the School Board voted to place Measure  B on the ballot. The largest school construction bond in San Leandro’s history, Measure B received overwhelming support and led to the physical transformation of San Leandro public school (combined with the passage of two subsequent bond measures and one earlier measure). With better public schools, San Leandro has become a more desirable city to live, helping attract and retain families who previously would have never moved to San Leandro or moved away when the children were in middle school. Here is a
Read more

How Juan Gonzalez won the San Leandro Mayor's office at the end of the counting of votes

-
Image
On November 18, 2022, the Alameda County Registrar of Voters released the vote count for nearly all votes cast in the November 2022 general election. After being behind for the entire vote count, Juan Gonzalez effectively won the race.  How did this happen? First, from election night through 11/17, the Registrar had reported a total of 13,746 first choice ballots in the Mayor's race. On 11/18, the number of votes reported increased by 6,436 to 20,185 total votes. That was a nearly 47% jump in the reported votes. Another way of looking at the data is that prior to 11/18, all previous vote counts released by the Registrar did not include roughly one-third of the votes that were cast in the race. Second, Gonzalez  decisively took the lead in the the first choice ballots that were released by the Registrar on 11/18. Gonzalez took these votes by 39% to 33% margin. With the exception of the first vote count released by the Registrar on election night right after the polls closed when Br
Read more

San Leandro's Unsustainable City Budget

-
Yesterday, I attended a meeting of the San Leandro City Council Finance Committee. The committee consists of Mayor Santos and Councilmembers Prola and Gregory. Gregory was absent. In short, if significant action is not taken, the city will burn through all of its reserves, including eventually reserves for natural disasters and other emergencies. By 2015, San Leandro could join the City of Vallejo in declaring bankruptcy. Summary of Finance Committee Presentation Perry Carter, the Interim Finance Director, gave an update on the budget. In analyzing a budget, you need to examine at least three years of data - the previous, current and next fiscal years. Carter first reported on the "preliminary actual" numbers for the fiscal year which just ended on June 30, 2009. Illustrating how quickly the city finances collapsed last year, the original city budget for fiscal year 2008-09 assumed $76.2 million (hereafter simply "M") in revenues and $81.6 M in expenditures.
Read more