Bad Labor Relations Cited in Onni Project Demise
Emeryville’s planning director announced on Thursday that Onni, the corporate developer of a 54 story 650 foot residential tower proposed for Christie Avenue has withdrawn their application to build after refusing to pay fees associated with the project. Facing an aroused and generally displeased resident community, the ill fated 638 unit all rental Onni project faced several hurdles, including newly formed Emeryville family housing regulations that would preclude such a project. However, an Emeryville City Hall employee, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the Tattler the death knell for the controversial project ultimately came as a result of Onni’s poor relations among local Bay Area labor unions and their unwillingness to work with them on this project.
The Canadian based Onni has become a major developer in Southern California, especially Los Angeles where the company has more than 8000 housing units in the pipeline, primarily in the downtown area. The developer is facing increasing labor backlash as a result of unfair practices there as well, putting some of the projects in jeopardy with a city hall not wishing to stoke labor strife in that city. Meanwhile, in Seattle, Onni has recently cancelled a residential project because of COVID they say. Here in Emeryville, Onni has not yet announced their reasons for the withdraw of the project.
Onni watchers started getting suspicious that all was not well with the Christie Avenue project as the Planning Department’s predictions for the Environmental Impact Report publishing, initially slated for March, kept getting delayed. By June, staffers had stopped predicting the Onni EIR timeline altogether. The developer needed to complete the EIR for the project to move forward.
There is still a possibility Onni could re-apply for this project but that is widely seen as a non-starter at City Hall. Onni did not return calls to the Tattler for this story.
 |
| Hard to Miss The Onni project would have been more than twice as tall as Emeryville's next tallest building. |
Thanks Brian for your work on this. Residents have been paying attention to this company and its outrageous behaviors in Canada and the states.
ReplyDeleteThe boldness of it appealed to me in an adolescent way, a comic book fantasy right here on the edge of the bay, but the resulting traffic snarl and the building's potentially huge release of CO2 rendered it impractical.
ReplyDeleteAdolescent? Meaning the phallic nature of the tower?
DeletePeople still into Freud might enjoy that innuendo.
ReplyDeleteEmeryville is getting the reputation for being a pro labor town. It's a good reputation to have.
ReplyDeleteI think it is Emeryville's loss. All the naysayers in S.F. who opposed the Salesforce Tower were overruled, and look what they got. The Salesforce Tower has fit right in, and become an asset.
ReplyDeleteNote: Salesforce Tower has a BART stop one block away, delivered a public park that exceeds SF parks/development dictates, and didn't require overturning SF's family housing unit mix regulations. If it didn't do those things, it wouldn't be an asset (except to Salesforce shareholders).
DeleteOh!
DeleteToo bad it's such a blot on the environment and landscape.
DeleteConcentrated development closer to jobs is clearly a better solution than urban sprawl and clogged freeways. Not necessarily this project, but hopefully betters ones will come along.
ReplyDeleteAgreed, Mike. Suburban sprawl is a terrible thing. That’s why cities need municipal but even more importantly, regional planning. Here in the Bay Area, we have such planning in the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) of which Emeryville is a signatory. Like all urban planning, ABAG uses quantifiable metrics to determine the proper jobs/housing balance for each city in the region. Quantifiable, as in: they don’t just make it up. It’s studied and its measurable (like all public policy is supposed to be). And Emeryville as it turns out, has done more than its share of building market rate housing over the last 25 years according to ABAG. That doesn’t mean we can’t provide even more market rate housing than the huge amount we’ve done…way beyond our ABAG allotment. But if we collectively decide to do that, the people have a reasonable expectation that the planning we’ve done for our town, be adhered to. Having more than fulfilled our ABAG housing obligations, at this point, we can demand a livable town and future developers provide that in trade for approval of huge housing projects we don’t have to accept. Thanks for commenting.
DeleteAs someone who was actively involved with community groups concerned with the impact of Large Hi-Rise developments such as Onni, I can state that the housing mix and labor issues were just part of the panoply of reasons for opposition to the Onni SuperTower.
DeleteVery much at the core of community concern was how these projects actually exacerbate inequality and climate change.
The International Liveable City Council points out that "Tall buildings offer increased profits for developers. However, the higher a building rises, the more expensive is the construction. Thus, the tallest buildings tend to be luxury units, often for global investors. Tall buildings inflate the price of adjacent land, thus making the protection of historic buildings and affordable housing less achievable." In this way, counter to what many believe, simply increasing the supply does NOT reduce the price of housing.
Also while it may also seem counterintuitive, building high is NOT Green. Because of structural demands, High-rise buildings are built largely of glass, steel and concrete and are less sustainable than mid and low rise buildings built largely of wood. Steel and concrete produce a lot of GHG. Wood traps it. Concrete is 10 times more GHG-intensive than wood.
Ultimately, the Onni Project was not senior friendly, family friendly, safety friendly, traffic friendly, view friendly, and plain just not Planet Friendly.
PS. It was announced on Thursday at the Planning Commission.
Oops! Missed the day by one....corrected it...thanks!
DeleteSad. This would have meant homes for so many people very close to transit and jobs. When projects like this die, it means longer commutes and more traffic for the whole Bay Area. It's a pity that labor and the developer couldn't come to an agreement. If the Bay Area wants to take climate change and suburban sprawl seriously, we need projects like this one to succeed.
ReplyDeleteAgreed, Scott. Too bad labor (in the aggregate) and the developer couldn’t come to an agreement. But it’s all good that labor, not getting what it wants, told the developer it’s a ‘no go’. Too bad the developer couldn’t make labor happy because without that, the project is dead….as it should be. If the developer could have made labor happy, then of course he (developers are almost always a he) would have to make the people of Emeryville happy too. Without that, then it’s again, a no go. Perhaps a different developer can make it work with labor and the people. Until then, this project on this parcel and every other development project is a no go….as it should be.
Delete