Breaking News- Negoiations Complete, City Council Calls Developer's Bluff, Major Concessions for Residents

Market Place Developer Concedes: Will Build Affordable Family Friendly Housing

Progressive City Council Majority/Residents 

Emerge Victorious

Details are leaking out of City Hall today bringing light to what's shaping up to be a major victory for affordable housing in negotiations with the developer of the Market Place development at the hands of the progressive Council majority.  Details have not been confirmed but insiders tell the Tattler that City Center Realty Partners, the developer of the contentious Market Place development, finally folded and accepted the Council majority's terms for building more affordable units, now some 50 in total as well as increasing the number of family friendly units to match what is required by City Ordinance.

The project located at the existing Public Market on Shellmound Street, originally planned for 33 affordable units in the 456 total rental unit mix.  That plan was rejected by Council members Jac Asher, Dianne Martinez and Scott Donahue (the progressive majority).  The new plan, now agreed to by the developer calls for 50 affordable units, bring the project at or very nearly at parity with what exists in Emeryville as far as affordability goes town-wide in terms of percentage, a progressive Council majority goal.
In addition to rejecting the non-parity affordable housing, the progressive Council majority also rejected the "family flexible" plan put forth by the developer.  After negotiation, City Center Realty Partners now agrees to build actual family friendly units as called for by the City's new family friendly housing ordinance.  Originally the developer sought to ignore the new ordinance and instead build some number of what City Center called "family flexible" units, a cheapening of the provisions laid out in the ordinance.

Notably, veteran Council members Ruth Atkin and Nora Davis voted in favor of the previous iteration of the Market Place development, the deal favored by the developer, with only 33 affordable units and no family friendly units.

Details of the negotiations and the final agreement will be revealed at Tuesday's City Council meeting.

'Market Place' Developers Overturn Hard Fought Family Friendly Housing Policy

'Family Friendly' OUT,

Say Hello Instead to"Family Flexible" Housing

Developers Eviscerate New Guidelines 

Empty Euphemism Replaces Real Policy

The developers of Emeryville's largest residential development to be built in years, the 'Market Place' project on Shellmound Street, are requesting the City Council give final approval for their 456 unit all rental proposal Tuesday night but they're asking that the Council ignore Emeryville's new family friendly housing guidelines, protections the Council itself enacted recently to correct a chronic lack of suitable housing for families in town.  Instead the developers, City Center Realty Partners and Avalon Bay Communities Inc, are pushing something for their project they call "family flexible" design; a dramatically weakened version of the Council approved 'Family Friendly Design Guidelines', that critics say will result in precisely the kind of housing the City's new guidelines are meant to stop; namely apartment units taken up by students with roommates in place of families.
It's a critical distinction; the "family flexible" Market Place project in fact removes the most salient and essential protections of the Family Friendly Guidelines; the single master bedroom requirement, and separation of sleeping areas from living areas, rendering the Market Place proposal as essentially not different from any other Emeryville residential project built over the years that has failed to attract families.

Roommate Problem
The developers for their part insist their "family flexibility", that being the regular two and three bedroom apartments in the project's mix without any restrictions, is sufficient enough to do the job.

Mark Stephan
City Center Realty's
point man for the 
Market Place development.
"Family flexible" units are good.
It's got the word 'family' and 'flexible'
...that's good, right?...as opposed to rigid.

However if history is to be a judge, families won't move in to those units; instead the more likely outcome will be students and others will rent out the units and take on roommates for the extra bedrooms.  This is in fact what has happened with other apartment buildings built with multiple bedrooms over the years in Emeryville before the Family Friendly Design Guidelines were crafted.  The 'roommate problem' is exasperated by this "family flexible" every-bedroom-is-a-master-bedroom provision and is the primary reason the City wrote the new Guidelines.

Anti-Family Emeryville
Compared with all our neighboring cities, Emeryville is a city without families.  This is known by census information.  Formerly ignored by City Hall, appreciating Emeryville's lack of family friendly housing reached a nadir after passage of 2010's Measure J, the $95 million public school bond and its built in existential need to increase student enrollment at the new school.  Soon after, City Hall's come-to-Jesus moment came as a result of the civic embarrassment accompanying a paper released by the University of California's Goldman School of Public Policy.  The Goldman study found a primary reason for Emeryville's remarkable childless population was the family inappropriate housing stock; virtually all the new housing built is for singles or couples.  Families have been left out of the mix.  So even though the rhetoric at City Hall has been pro-family, the housing policy has not been supportive of that cause and the housing as built has stubbornly remained anti-family.
The Goldman report noted when developers had been convinced to provide some two and three bedroom units in their projects, instead of attracting families, they were generally rented out by college students.

$18,000 Family Housing Study
Last November's election brought a new pro-family City Council majority and earlier this year, the Council commissioned a six month policy study to ameliorate this lack of family housing.  The council spent $18,000 on consultants and lots of paid staff time on the study and the resultant policy is now official, encoded as the Family Friendly Design Guidelines.

Meet Emeryville's newest neighbors!
Build "family flexible" units and they will come.

Central to the new Guidelines are three provisions the Market Place's 'family flexible' designation overturns (J-53 through J-55 in the 'unit design'); among them the every-bedroom-is-a-master-bedroom, and a prohibition against bedrooms opening directly onto common living spaces.  Perhaps tellingly, the Market Place developer's "family flexible" designation removes what the consultants said are the most essential ingredients for attracting families.

Tuesday night the developers of the Market Place project will attempt to convince the new Council majority all their work and money invested in attempting to attract families to Emeryville has been wasted and public policy is best left up to developers who know what's best.  The developers of the Market Place, who did not return calls from the Tattler,  will try to tell the Council their "family flexible" idea is great for attracting families.  Perhaps the developers won't reveal that it just so happens they can maximize profits with the "family flexible" idea over the more regulatory and onerous Family Friendly Guidelines.
Will the new progressive majority of the Emeryville City Council hold?  Before the sun rises Wednesday morning in Emeryville, we'll know if the first stand of the new Family Friendly Design Guidelines was also its last stand.

Developer Seeks to Privatize Emeryville's Sidewalks at the Public Market

Private Grab of Public Commons

Opinion
Who owns Emeryville's streets?  In an earlier, more progressive era the answer would have been easy; it's us, the people of Emeryville.  Now, with the help of the Emeryville City Council the answer is increasingly; it's private business concerns that owns the streets.
Take Shellmound Street at the Public Market.  As of right now, if you want to walk along the sidewalks there, you're free unconditionally to do it.  It's a real public space.  But that's all going to change if the developer for the proposed Public Market expansion, City Center Realty Partners LLC gets its way.
The developer wants to seize control over our sidewalks on Shellmound, making them their own private property.
City Center Realty Partners is busy shopping this proposal around town to Emeryville decision makers right now.  The Council will decide about this in coming months.  If the Council is in a giving mood, like they were when developer Madison Marquette asked for and received control over the sidewalks on Bay Street, then chalk up another victory for the forces of privatization in Emeryville.

Welcome to Emeryville's great new manifestation of civic alienation: the faux sidewalk.  It looks like a real sidewalk but try using it like a real sidewalk and it's off to jail with you.

"Public" Sidewalk at Apple Store on Bay Street
Customers are free to line up to buy the latest gizmo
but if one of them pulls out a sign protesting Apple's
abuse of it's manufacturing workers in China,
it's private property... and it's off to jail.

City Center Reality Partners wishes to be able to control 'undesirable' traffic on Shellmound Street's sidewalks in order to increase the value for future corporate tenants in their planned expansion.  From their perspective it's all very understandable.  If they rented to a commercial tenant that engaged in unethical corporate behavior let's say, they would have financial interest in stopping a ready remedy the public has to show their displeasure at times like that; the protest.  Now it's going to be, 'Sorry, no protesting on our property in front of any businesses'.  Corporate tenants would really appreciate such an arrangement.  Probably willing to pay a premium to City Center Reality for it.

Got a lingering homeless person on the sidewalk?  No problem.  He has no right to be there!  How about some protesters?  Off they go!  It'll only be shoppers on Emeryville's formerly public sidewalks if City Center Reality Partners gets their way.
It's a wonderful way to ratchet up the corporatist notion that we're not really citizens, rather consumers to be sold to.  And so far the City Council is on board.

Funny thing is this Emeryville privatization juggernaut is happening at the same time City Hall is proudly proclaiming it's affinity for so called "complete streets", the city planning concept glommed onto by staff and the Council that claims that streets are public spaces at their core and that all forms of transportation are given equal treatment and even non transportation, as in lingering or what some might call transience.
Emeryville has received planning awards for it's promulgating of the complete street idea, just as we have for our Pedestrian/Bicycle Plan at the same time that the City Council has moved to eliminate bike and pedestrian paths.   Let's hope this Shellmound public land grab give-a-way isn't going to be another example of this kind of duplicitous nexus.

The sad part about this privatization of the public commons is it's all so unnecessary.  As at the Bay Street give-a-way, City Hall isn't getting a thing in return from City Center Reality Partners.  It's just another gift to the developers by this Council...if they give in to their usual pro-developer proclivities.

The Late Great Sidewalk
Formerly a dynamic and interactive public arena, 
a democratic space available for real civic engagement.
Now, a corridor for shoppers.