How Awesomely Great are Emeryville's City Council Members? Their Bronze Plaques Tell Us

Why in Hell Would the Emeryville City Council

 Brag About Christie Park With its 

Shameful 2636 Residents Per Acre?

How About a Plaque Reading "On This Site, the City of Emeryville Sold Out the Residents"

Opinion
What’s the adage about mushrooms sprouting after a rainfall?  It’s been raining a lot in Emeryville recently and we’ve noticed mushrooms are popping up everywhere.  But so too are commemorative bronze plaques extolling the would be great works of our City Council members.  Unlike the mushroom/rain nexus, Emeryville’s bronze plaques don’t come as a result of rain, rather they pop up upon completion of any construction project that could be conceived as having public benefit. After the rains quit, the mushrooms disappear.  But embarrassingly, the bronze plaques in our town remain, their numbers only increasing over time.

Bronze Plaques Give Emeryville the Opportunity for
Over The Top Brobdingnagian Hyperbole
"A city is not gauged by its length and width, but by the broadness
of its vision and the height of its dreams" reads the Herb Caen
quote.  Emeryville dreams of a city with 2636 residents per acre
of parkland.  How's that for a vision? 
Hey Council members: Mr Caen wasn't talking about Emeryville
with its worst park-to-resident ratio in the Bay Area.
Stop devaluing his name.

With so many of these 'informative' plaques sprouted up in Emeryville, by now, there can be no question about it; the City Council members are all awesomely great.  Or at least so say the ubiquitous bronze plaques the Council shamelessly installs all over our town.

We’ve never seen a town so big on congratulating itself. Maybe it’s because they screw up so often, they're trying to show us when they don’t.  Maybe the plaques are meant to serve as a tail wagging the dog counter narrative. It’s like our City Council is repeatedly engaging in one big conspicuous, Trumpian, in-your-face selfie after another.  It’s all because they want us to know they’re doing the job we pay them to do.

Or not.
Sometimes a plaque will present a project associated with and in tribute of the Council members, but it’s all out of proportion to what’s actually been built.  Sometimes it directly contradicts what's been built.
Take the recently rebuilt Christie Park upgrade and expansion far example. The plaque installed on the site brags that the council members are responsible for the newly expanded park.  But what it is not telling us is that the park they provided is substandard and in gross violation of the City’s own General Plan.

Council member Jac Asher voted 'NO' to a plaque at the
Center of Community Life.  After she was rebuffed by her glory
seeking colleagues, she said at least to keep her name off the plaque.
But bronze plaques can't be fought apparently, even by
modest Council members.  
Emeryville has a bad case of plaque build up.  

The Christie Park expansion that the City Council thinks is so great is anemic at less than half an acre of new park land added to the existing park.  The park expansion was paid for by the developer of the Public Marketplace project in trade for all the new rental units being built there.  That small size of park expansion (.46 acres to be precise) clocks in at an astounding 2,636 new residents per acre of park land. That number is helping drag down Emeryville’s whole town existing total of residents per acre of park land (a little over 500), already the worst among Bay Area cities. The Marketplace development project will bring 1,213 new residents (using the standard Emeryville formula of 1.8 residents per housing unit times the planned total 674 units the project brings).

The park acreage per resident ratio for housing projects is not to exceed three acres per 1000 new residents according to our General Plan.  Therefore Christie Park should have been expanded by a minimum of 3.6 acres to properly offset the new residents the Market Place project brings.  An additional amount of approximately one acre would be needed to offset all the new workers in the retail and office spaces generated by the project according to the General Plan.  Combining the two, the total amount of park acres to offset this project needs to be approximately four and a half acres instead of .46 acre. 

So the total amount of park land the people of Emeryville were screwed out of when the Council approved the Market Place development was about four acres.  Hiding that colossal screw up, they audaciously installed a vanity plaque of disinformation at the park telling us how great they are.  Christie Park: Far more pan-worthy than praiseworthy….but it gets a bronze plaque regardless.

These plaques our Council keep putting up will someday be seen like index fossils in the world of paleontology: representative of a very specific time and place.  In this case, of and suited to this time of Trump's America when people felt justified to wallow in narcissism and when government felt less constrained by public service and more animated by tooting its own horn.  And in the case of the Christie Park plaque, lying by omission.
What we need is some righteous truth presented in the commons to serve as a counter narrative to what the City Council is serving up and with equal audacity.  Graffiti artists, if you're listening....   

City Council Revokes Noise Ordinance Waiver for Public Marketplace Developement

Council Majority Takes Unprecedented Move in Revocation

Dissenting Mayor Donahue Feels Developer's Pain; "They've Been Punished Enough"

Market Place Developer Tim Bacon
"Embarrassed" to be asking for a
third chance to honor his agreement. 

The developer of the Market Place project on Christie Avenue, by twice violating the terms of a waiver of the Noise Ordinance he received, drew a revocation of the waiver by the City Council at the regularly scheduled September 19th Council meeting.  After the City’s Planning Director issued Tim Bacon, Senior Vice President of Public Market LP an unprecedented stop work order on August 29th for job site violations to the waiver agreement, the City Council heard testimony from Mr Bacon who said he was sure the agreement would be followed if the Council would give him a third chance. Unimpressed, the Council voted 4-1 (Mayor Donahue dissenting) to revoke the waiver, a first for the City of Emeryville.

At issue was a 10:00 AM Saturday start up time for the construction as agreed upon as part of a waiver to the Noise Ordinance that precludes weekend construction.  During negotiations with the City Council, Mr Bacon had requested a 9:00AM start up time for his crew but was rebuffed, the Council citing letters of complaint from neighbors to the massive 13 acre 462 rental unit mixed use project.  After agreeing to the 10:00 starting time, workers on the site ignored the order and began starting work early anyway said Council member Christian Patz who documented the violations on two subsequent Saturday mornings.  The developer received a warning from the City after the first Saturday violation.  

Mayor Scott Donahue
The developer has been
"punished enough".

Before the vote on the 19th, a contrite Tim Bacon expressed dismay at his subcontractors whom he said had been violating the agreement and he told the Council he felt “embarrassed” to be even asking for a third chance. He added, “Frankly I was close to asking this be pulled from the agenda tonight because it didn’t seem fair to reconsider it because we didn’t hold up our end of the bargain”.  Mayor Donahue, breaking with his colleagues, said the developer had been “punished enough”.
Weekend work will now not be allowed for the duration of the construction project.

Not once has any developer been taken to task by the City Council for violating the Noise Ordinance or even for violating a waiver.  Since 2009 when the Noise Ordinance was enacted, waivers have been routinely given to developers and numerous violations have been brought to the City’s attention (the Tattler has highlighted several) but the City Council has never taken corrective action until now. 
The City of Emeryville has gotten a reputation over the years for not representing the resident’s interests and taking the developer’s side with regards to the Noise Ordinance and as such, both the stop work order and the subsequent revocation of the Saturday work waiver represents a new direction for the City.

Historic Document for Emeryville
A stop work order has never (before August 29th) been issued to any developer
for a Noise Ordinance violation despite the fact that nearly every developer
has violated the ordinance in our town since 2009.

 

Acquiescent City Council End Runs Around Noise Ordinance

All Developers Get Free Pass on 
Noise Ordinance 

New Interpretation Strips Ordinance of Meaning

"Public Benefit" Drives Waivers
Diminished Law Exists Only Now in Name

News Analysis/Opinion
The Emeryville City Council moved to greatly expand the conditions for noise ordinance waiver requests from developers on July 25th when the developer of the Public Marketplace was issued a permit to work on Saturdays in order to “finish the project more quickly”.  The new paradigm revealed itself when the Council majority (Patz, Medina dissenting) ceded to the pleading developer after they found that because the project has public benefit, ipso facto a waiver should therefore be granted.  The bold new idea is that any project that has public benefit should supersede and be allowed to bypass the public’s expectation for peace and quiet. To speed the benefit of the project to the public you understand.

How thoughtful of them.

In fact it was a remarkably egregious City Council assessment that turned a deaf ear to the original precepts for Emeryville’s beleaguered noise ordinance but perhaps more astonishing was not what was said, rather what was left unsaid: every development project approved by the City of Emeryville has public benefit.  They don’t get approved around here if they are found to not have public benefit.  And that means every development from now on gets a carte blanche noise ordinance waiver.  It’s taken as a tautology.  And that means there’s no need for the City of Emeryville to have a noise ordinance any more.

Mayor Scott Donahue &
Councilwoman Dianne Martinez
They swear to get developers their
noise ordinance waivers.

Frankly, we’ll miss watching developers squirm before the cameras.  For the new metrics of the noise ordinance finally puts to bed the endless procession of poor, woeful developers sheepishly appearing before the City Council asking for waivers for a host of reasons including the ever popular ‘rain delay’.  Because rain unexpectedly falling in the rainy season is not something that could be planned for so can you give us a break Emeryville City Council? (because who could have anticipated THAT?), made even more brazenly when it was invoked by Turner Construction as they built the ECCL during last year’s worse ever drought in California.  Sometimes developers will dispense with all that and report they should get a waiver just because they really, really want one (as Wareham Devlopment did recently). 
Each time since the ordinance was encoded, developers seeking waivers have publicly contorted or even debased themselves, the Council has felt their pain and granted a waiver, no matter the reason provided.  The groveling spectacle has brought much comic relief to the sometimes boring Council meetings; watching these greedy developers go through their stations of the cross before the Council (themselves also performing for the cameras, feigning resident fealty), on the road to delivering their maximized quarterly profits to their shareholders.

Vice Mayor John Bauters
It's best if we can speed
up these projects.
The noise ordinance only
slows them down.

The new interpretation of the ordinance; dispensing with the sideshow of developers carping about what constitutes a reasonable hardship and simply granting the waivers pell mell based on speeding up public benefit will certainly speed up the meetings and remove embarrassment for all concerned but we have an even better idea. Let’s stop the charade and finally get rid of this asinine noise ordinance of ours.  It’s never worked as it was intended to and has only served to give a sense of legitimacy for our town (see? Emeryville’s got a noise ordinance too, just like real cities).  

The removal of the Noise Ordinance, if the Council has the cajones to do it, will finally bring some kind of silence, if only poetic;  it’s abolishment will likely happen quietly in the night.  Residents will not notice any change whatsoever in the extra weekend traffic, dust and loud construction.  That goes on unabated in Emeryville, with or without a noise ordinance. 

Earns One Smiling Nora Davis!
Nora Davis Smiles Down on 
Scott Donahue, Dianne Martinez 
and John Bauters.

2015: A Watershed Year For Emeryville Residents

Year End Wrap Up:

In 2015 Emeryville Policy Turned Towards Residents, Away From Business 

Two Unprecedented & Consequential Decisions

More than a five changing to a six.
Real, fundamental and lasting change came
to Emeryville in 2015.

As 2015 fades from the rear view mirror in Emeryville, two incontrovertible and unprecedented City Council decisions made over the year stand as harbingers of a new pro-resident culture for our town: the landmark Minimum Wage Ordinance and the bellwether Market Place decision.  Emeryville's long standing regional reputation as a pro-business town died at the hands of these two game changing public policy decisions, making 2015 a year to remember; a year when residents replaced the business community as the power to be contended with here.  It was change shepherded along by the first year of the new progressive City Council majority of Jac Asher, Dianne Martinez and Scott Donahue. 

1- The Minimum Wage Ordinance

 Emeryville's City Council took on the intractable problem of increasing income inequality in 2015 (after years of exacerbating it by overseeing an Emeryville service sector building boom) with our new Minimum Wage Ordinance, putting every worker in town on a path to $15 per hour plus guaranteed paid sick leave.
Emeryville being a small town smack in the middle of the hottest economic region in the United States seemed like a likely place to take on growing inequality in our nation, a rare issue something all five City Council members could agree upon.  The amount per hour the Council settled on ($14.44 adjusted for inflation) is the amount it would take a worker, putting in 40 hours per week, to be ineligible for government assistance in the form of food stamps and other such programs.  As such, any hourly wage less than that amount effectively represents a taxpayer subsidy to the business sector.

The united City Council faced a united business community against the ordinance, predictably.  As they always do when asked to pay their fair share, those anti-minimum wage, pro-business voices predicted a wholesale failure and exodus of businesses in Emeryville, something that clearly has not happened half a year after the implementation of the ordinance.  The new ordinance puts Emeryville on the map as no longer serving to exacerbate regional problems but instead serving as a leader in solving problems.

2- The Market Place Development Decision

In 2015, Emeryville's City Council said NO to a developer.  That had never happened before and the effect has been very consequential and promises to be evermore so moving forward.
The developer in question, City Center Realty, wanted to build the Market Place development, a series of rental apartment towers clustered around the Public Market on Shellmound Street, some 456 units total.  The new progressive City Council said they wanted more affordable rental units than what City Center Realty proposed.  The Council wanted at least 50 units of affordable housing but the developer said they could only make the whole project profitable by building no more than 33 units...any more than that and the project "won't pencil out" City Center said.  The Council held firm as well on the new Family Friendly Housing Ordinance, something City Center said they also couldn't afford.
The City Council didn't buy that from the developer and they held their ground: 50 units or no project they said.  The developer threatened to build the project without ANY affordable units as a result of the Council's audacity.  That's when the right wing in Emeryville started screaming that the Council must do as the developer said; all pretty standard fare for Emeryville so far but the Council majority still said NO....an exceptional thing.
And then the developer caved on the affordability and the family friendly units.
Emeryville will now get 50 units of affordable housing; the same percentage rate (50:456) as exists now in the aggregate in the whole town; the Market Place development will not make Emeryville less affordable as a result of the City Council holding firm.

The Market Place decision is a game changer because it removes the former argument always posited by the right wing in Emeryville that if we don't do everything every developer says, they'll pack up and leave town: a horrible prospect for our town they say every time.  Now we know for sure: developers will lie to get their projects built and maximize their profits.  When they say a revision to their proposal won't pencil out, we know they're lying.  This new empowerment of City Hall over developers promises to have profound effects on all future development in Emeryville; now we get to have planning in our town, just like other towns.

Abject Propaganda Language Stripped From Market Place Development Documents

Improved Affordability for Well Planned Development

Project Will Contribute to the General Well Being of the Neighborhood

Development Will Contain Iconic Architecture

News Analysis/Opinion
The Market Place development will be a great project for Emeryville....oh wait...strike that.  Make that: the Market Place development will be a... project for Emeryville.

Shellmound Avenue's long planned albeit contentious Market Place development, a proposed series of residential towers with nearly 500 rental units, was finally approved by the Emeryville City Council last Tuesday night after the developer was forced to increase the number of affordable units as had been demanded by the Council majority last July.  In the interim months, City Center Realty Partners the San Francisco based development corporation, agreed under pressure to increase the number of affordable units from 33 to 50, as the Council majority had indicated would be necessary for a deal to be reached.
The increase in the affordability for the Market Place development is certainly good news for Emeryville as is the fact that the City Council majority also forced City Center Realty to honor our new family housing ordinance but unfortunately the final Development Agreement (DA) at the Market Place allows for a very large and deeply flawed project to be built in our town.  From the glut of parking spaces to the anemic Christie Park expansion to its lack of locally serving retail to its 100% rental make-up, this project never should have been approved, especially since the project will be revenue neutral for Emeryville.

Councilman Scott Donahue
The Market Place development
will make Emeryville worse
as far as traffic, park acreage per
resident, locally serving retail,
rental vs ownership housing,
revenue and architecture goes.
Other than that, it'll be a
wonderful project.

The myriad problems with the Market Place project are obviously not lost on Councilman Scott Donahue who even though he supported the project, ordered the imprecise euphemistic adjective language peppered throughout the ordinance document associated with the project to be stricken from the record.  Councilman Donahue said the affordability and family friendliness improvements the Council majority achieved through negotiations with the developer were good enough to vote for final approval for the project but he couldn't countenance the fawning language the City Attorney and the City Planning Directer had crafted in the ordinance written to give the developer the green light to proceed.  His colleges agreed with him and the document has now been changed to reflect a different set of findings by the Council.  Specifically, Mr Donahue said and his colleagues agreed the project is not well planned and the adjective in the sentence in the ordinance that makes that claim should be removed.  So now Emeryville residents digging through documents at City Hall will learn the Market Place was planned...just planned, not well planned.  That's good to know.

In addition City Hall is now on record noting the Market Place project will not contribute to the well being of the neighborhood but rather it will contribute in some unquantified non-specific way.  It'll contribute they tell us, but the City of Emeryville would rather not say precisely how.  They DO want us to know it'll contribute though.

Council member Donahue, unimpressed with the architectural integrity of the Market Place proposal attempted to remove the word 'iconic' from the ordinance's language but he failed to get support from his colleagues to that.  So now, if anyone thinks the buildings at the Market Place are anything but fabulous, will be corrected.  The buildings there are iconic, the City wants us to know.  You'd think they'd want us to realize that on our own by sheer dint of the groovy tour de force architectural awesomeness of the Market Place.  But any doubters, presumably, will be convinced by inclusion of the word iconic in the ordinance that the buildings are in fact iconic.

Apparently our Councilman Donahue feels a bit squeamish signing his name to a document that makes demonstrably false claims in flowery imprecise language permanently ensconced at City Hall.  That's new for Emeryville.  We're not sure how much value this has for residents but we think it has more than no value.  Maybe this rejection of hyperbole and expectation for more precise language at City Hall will translate into making better actual development.  Maybe with more people expecting a good development to be quietly delivered by City Hall rather than a promise to deliver a good development with some well placed euphemisms will mean a good development will turn into a good development.

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.

School Board Member Christian Patz: Willing to Agitate for Emery's Students

Member Patz Tells the City Council to Hold Out For a Family Friendly project

Emery School District Not Interested in Bringing Families to Emeryville Despite Claims to the Contrary

Opinion
For years now, the Emery Unified School District has decried the existential threat posed by falling student attendance and the critical need to bring more families to town to help with that.  Followers of the District know however that this kind of talk is just so much hot air because never have any District employees or School Board members ever actually done what it takes, impolitic though it may be seen by some, to facilitate that; none have summoned the courage to appear before the City Council to challenge a non-family friendly residential development project on the docket to press the District's interests.  For more than 20 years as the Emeryville City Council continued to approve residential projects, one after another, all built to attract singles or childless couples, never once did anyone from the School District press its case for holding out for building housing for families.  Not as the Center of 'Community' Life was being planned and built, not ever.  Not until the Tuesday before last.

Emery School Board Member
Christian Patz
Courageous agitator for the
students and the District. 

The Emeryville City Council meeting that Tuesday July 21st was historic in two ways: first the City Council said NO to a developer pushing a flawed project and second a School Board member came and testified for the need to build family friendly housing and to reject a residential development proposal, the Market Place project, for not being family friendly.  The City Council as it turned out, agreed with the School Board member and rejected the project, also something that's never happened before in Emeryville.

So who is this heroic and courageous School Board member?  None other than Christian Patz...the dissenting voice on the School Board...the voice for the citizens, students and parents; the same Board member that voted NO to the disastrous hiring of the now infamous Russom Mesfun, a vote incidentally that stands now as an archetype for political courage at the Emery School Board analogous to Senator Barack Obama's 2003's vote, so deeply unpopular at the time, against the Bush invasion of Iraq.

We applaud Mr Patz for his principled stand at the dais before the City Council on the 21st but we are chagrined it's taken this long for anyone from this District to have the cajones to get involved, for this is how democracy works and how change can happen. And so with a School District filled with administrators and politicians making political calculations all while the District fails for lack of revenue increased attendance would alleviate,  we are relieved finally someone has shown he will put his ass on the line and speak out for the students even though it may embarrass some entrenched aging politicians.

Emery School Superintendent John Rubio
Not willing to stand up for family friendly housing to
help the schools.  Not courageous. 

Emery School Board President
John Affeldt
Like the Superintendent, not courageous...
another 'C' word comes to mind:
rhymes with 'showered'.

To School Superintendent John Rubio and School Board president John Affeldt, both of whom have never had the temerity to so challenge the City Council in the District's interest, we say you two have just been humiliated.  Your colleague Christian Patz, the same one you routinely vote down 4-1 when important decisions come before the Board, has shown us all what principled courage looks like...done at your expense (even though he didn't intend for that to be the case probably).  Because where were you on the 21st when it was time to testify for family friendly housing?  We've heard your oft repeated but empty family friendly rhetoric, why though we ask, have you never followed through?
We're sad it's newsworthy when an Emery School Board member gets up before the City Council and tells it like it is because that's what's in the student's and the District's best interests.  This should happen every time a residential project appears before the City Council, not once in...well, once ever.

Breaking News: City Council Says NO to Market Place Development

Tuesday July 21st 2015, a red letter date in Emeryville history: tonight the City Council in a 3-2 vote said NO to the Development Agreement for the proposed Market Place development on Shellmound Street; the first time in at least 35 years the City Council has said no to a developer promoting a project.  The historic vote came down with the old guard (Davis, Atkin) standing against the new progressive majority (Asher, Donahue, Martinez) who cited a lack of public benefit as the reason for their vote.  The historic NO vote does not constitute a rejection of the project it should be noted, rather a rejection of the specific Development Agreement for the Market Place project, a controlling suite of development conditions, findings and parameters that can be re-drawn, presumably making the project more palatable to the Council majority.  It is not clear at this moment how the project will move forward and the developers hurriedly left the Council chambers refusing to comment to the Tattler.
Look to the Tattler to report on developing news as a result of tonight's astounding turn of events.

Public Interest Not on Display in Market Place Development Agreement

To the Emeryville City Council:

Let's Welcome the Market Place Project But 

Only If It Doesn't Make Our Town Worse

Opinion
The Tattler has much reported and opined on problems with the incipient Market Place residential development in anticipation (and dread) of the 456 unit all rental apartment project on Shellmound Street getting its approval.  That approval is scheduled for Tuesday night in the City Council chambers and there's much there in the developers' interests, but not a lot for the residents.   We hope the City Council will vote in the resident's interests and we only request they keep any pro-development bias out of the process.  We ask that they recognize this development will add a lot of traffic to our town and a lot of other negative impacts associated with high density projects like this one and we ask the developers not be allowed to degrade and erode what livability we have here now in Emeryville.

Public Interest: The Coin of the Realm
Development Agreements are arcane final planning documents that are supposed to forward projects that comport with the existing General Plan and are in the public interest exclusively.  The interests of developers are not supposed to be taken into account.  Historically, the staff at City Hall has played fast and loose with that basic idea.  The current Market Place Development Agreement the staff is presenting to the Council Tuesday makes no attempt to qualify or even mention much that the public would say is in their interest.
We say this Development Agreement is not in the public interest as it is currently written and we ask the following be quantified before we allow this project to move forward:

1. We have a ratio of park land acreage per resident in Emeryville now and we ask these developers not make that ratio worse in the aggregate for Emeryville with their proposed project.
2. We have a ratio of numbers of families per number of housing units in Emeryville now and we ask the developers not make that worse.
3. We have a ratio of number of affordable units per resident in Emeryville now and we ask the developers not make that worse.
4. We have a ratio of square footage of locally serving non formula retail per resident in Emeryville now and we ask these developers not make that worse.

Additionally, this agreement doesn't contain a labor agreement or specially allow for a Community Benefits Agreement (CBA); two important public interest provisions.

A NO Vote is a YES for Renegotiation
The people of Emeryville voted in November for a change in how this town gets developed even if the staff didn't seem to get that memo.  A NO vote Tuesday, while historic, wouldn't really be a radical thing.  A NO vote on Tuesday is not a NO to the Market Place development.  It's a NO to this specific Development Agreement (a document more reflective of Emeryville's past values).  The four points above are eminently reasonable things.  It's entirely reasonable to demand developers not make our town demonstrably worse.  They don't even necessarily have to improve our town with this project (although that would be nice), we just don't want the developers for this and all future projects to be allowed to leave our town worse off after they collect their profits and bug out.
A NO vote Tuesday also sends a powerful message to all the other developers lining up, wanting to make a killing here: You're welcome here but you're not going to leave our town worse off after you're finished.
To the Council: Let's hold out for a better agreement, shall we?

'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.

New Concept: Emeryville Doesn't Have to Get Worse Over Time

The 'Big Three':

Let Real Negotiations Begin 

Emeryville Can Get Better Over Time

News Analysis/Opinion
The Tattler has devoted much space to document how, in the last 25 years, Emeryville has remade itself.  It's morphed to its current state from a town of condos on the western waterfront and modest working class detached single family residences on the east side with the great middle comprised mostly of abandoned factories and empty warehouses, relics from a time when America made things.  Now Emeryville's become a place for business with large regional strip malls and lots of expensive drive-in drive-out luxury apartment buildings.  The density of our town has risen greatly but Emeryville has thus far been largely unsuccessful in delivering the good things that higher density  usually promises such as parks and other civic amenities, all the while getting the bad things higher densities bring; notably worse traffic.

The town we've made has been without central planning...it's been instead built by developers, done they way they've wanted it.  In fact, every single large building project on a specific parcel of land that's been proposed by developers in our town over the last 25 years has been OK'ed by the City Council.  A developer has never been turned down by the Council.  The success rate up 'til now has been 100% for developers in Emeryville.
However the City Council is there to negotiate on the resident's behalf.  The Council is supposed to extract concessions from the developers.  They're supposed to 'sell' our town at the market rate, not cheaper than what the market will bare.  In that equation, the residents have batted zero.  In 25 years, not one developer has walked away dejected.

We're Getting 100%, Should Be 75%
The developers themselves are aware of their incredible fortune of having this little city right in the middle of the most desirable real estate in the US, and how the local City Hall is ready to do their bidding.  That's how Emeryville has gotten its reputation for arguably being the most pro-business town in the Bay Area.  The developers are aware of how lucky they've been up 'til now...they're aware more than anyone about how contracting is really supposed to work, aware of the adage that in contracting, you're supposed to lose 25% of your bids.  If you're awarded every bid, then you're bidding too low.  These developers know Emeryville has been bidding too low.  Emeryville should be losing about 25% of every development project proposal owing to the hard bargaining that's supposed to be happening from the City Council.

This has been the culture at Emeryville City Hall up 'til now and it's how we've made a city so lacking in amenities for residents.  In the wake of the historic City Council elections last November, progressives seizing the majority, change now becomes possible.  It becomes possible the City Council may hold out for a better project than what a specific developer might propose, raising the possibility a developer might walk away without a project in Emeryville.  If ever there were hope for change in the course of Emeryville's dramatic twenty five year redevelopment, one has to think now is that time.

The Big Three
As we move forward now with developing the last three large parcels of Emeryville land, we're hoping the change residents voted for will be manifest.  The last 'Big Three'; the Market Place development, the Sherwin Williams development and the Anton (Nady) development will add hugely to the traffic of Emeryville and in a story June 23rd, the Tattler has shown how they will not improve our town in terms of park land.  The Big Three will actually make the town worse off in terms of people per acre of green space.
The Big Three will also be lacking in terms of providing locally serving retail residents want, the developers offering no guarantees for this rather only vague claims of delivering this kind of retail.  Those claims ring hollow without written guarantees because we've heard these promises from developers many times before in Emeryville.
Lack of affordability, lack of family friendly design and lack of ownership units all bring negative impacts for our town.  The Big Three represent our last chance to get it right and they are going to have to make up for a lot of the negative impacts the previous development has wrought.

Over the last 25 years, the City Council has kept capitulating to developers, what amounts to waiving a white flag to them.  The idea, unspoken, is Emeryville is really no good and we're in no position to bargain with developers. The mantra has been any project is better than no project.  And while it is a subversion of civic duty to capitulate like this, there has been a rational argument presented by the Council: these projects will bring us tax receipts.  Never mind that Emeryville's improved tax base has not delivered us the public amenities described above, it should be noted this argument falls on its face when considering residential or mostly residential projects like the Big Three.  Emeryville, or most any other city for that matter, doesn't profit from housing development.  Residents actually use more in services than what they pay in (this is especially true of more expensive housing).
So the Big Three should not be OK'ed using the prior metrics....clearly, the new City Council needs to drive a harder bargain with these three developers.

New Concept: Emeryville Doesn't Have to Get Worse Over Time
The old unspoken but realized adage that Emeryville must get worse over time is now long in the tooth.  We're proposing a new concept: Emeryville gets better over time.  As new development get approved, our town gets demonstrably better in the aggregate.  We're talking actually better with the negative impacts clearly over run by the positive effects of the civic amenities the Big Three deliver.  So that means the Big Three must take the whole town in a positive direction; they deliver park land per acre of resident MORE than what Emeryville has now, they INCREASE the existing Emeryville average of affordable spaces per capita, they INCREASE the whole town square footage per resident of locally serving non formula retail, they bring more families to Emeryville at a rate HIGHER than the town has now on a per resident basis, and they deliver ownership units at a HIGHER rate than the city's average.

No Project is Better Than a Flawed Project
Failure to achieve these goals for the Big Three means the last chance to get it right in Emeryville will have been squandered.  The City Council is free to negotiate with these developers to get funds to realize the required amenities off site from these projects, but there must be a clear link and ultimately, the amenities must be delivered in a timely manner.
The Council too, must be prepared to say NO to any of these developers because our new adage must be 'no project is better than a flawed project'.  By flawed, we mean one that takes us backwards in one of the key amenity areas outlined above.  We must remember what a NO vote by the Council on one these Big Three projects means; it means Emeryville stays as it is...it means Emeryville doesn't get worse, it's a vote of no change.  Traffic doesn't get much worse.  That's a perfectly fine vote.  We can wait for a better developer to make a proposal.  There's no emergency, it doesn't have to be developed NOW regardless what the developer might be saying.

To the City Council: It's Perfectly Legal to Vote NO
The developers of the Big Three will likely threaten to sue our city if the City Council ultimately votes NO to their projects.  This is to be expected.  But our City Council majority must remember, the State grants them the right to vote on these projects.  Inherent in that franchise is the right to vote NO.  The Emeryville City Council is legally entitled to vote NO to these projects even if it means saying NO to a billionaire.  There are certain things the Council must not say during the deliberative entitlement process for fear of unnecessarily bringing a lawsuit it's true, but ultimately voting NO isn't one of them.  We have every right and expectation that our independent City Council not be kowtowed with threats of legal action from developers.  We ask the staff: show us were it says the City Council must vote YES on the 'Development Agreement' for any of these projects.  Were that the case, there would be no vote at all, the project would simply be approved by right, bypassing the City Council.
We also recognize the lobbying City Council is going to get from interested residents with real estate material gains in the mix.  We realize these residents, who own real property nearby the Big Three stand to financially gain from a project being built owing to increased real estate values.   We know those among them who want short term financial benefit, will urge a YES vote.  To that we remind the Council their duty is not to prop up the fortunes of specific real estate investors who might also be residents but instead to build a livable city for the ages.  We aren't here to boost the fortunes of house flippers.

The first project under the scrutiny of the new progressive City Council majority is the Market Place development, coming soon.  The Council will be asked by staff to vote YES on the Development Agreement for the entire project.  Unless there's been real negotiations with regard to resident amenities that takes our town forward in terms of livability, we say NO.  It's a new day in Emeryville and we're not going to let the last undeveloped bits of our town contribute to the real problems here.  It's our last chance to get it right and we're perfectly positioned to use our clout and our legal entitlement to announce to these developers seeking to maximize their profits at our expense, we've finally arrived and we're no longer getting worse over time, instead we're getting better.

New Development Proposals Degrade Emeryville Parks/Open Space

'Big Three' Residential Developments Drag Emeryville Down

Tattler Investigation Shows Town Going Backwards on Parks/Open Space

News Analysis
As developers rush to build apartment projects on the last three large plots of fallow land left in Emeryville; the Market Place development, the Sherwin Williams project and the Anton (Nady) site, the Tattler has revealed these residential projects will negatively skew the ratio of residents per acre of park and open space land in our town.  An investigation reveals these projects will substantially increase the number of people per acre of park, exacerbating an already dramatically underserved Emeryville population.

The current lack of park land is something residents often cite as a problem in Emeryville; the General Plan clearly shows this as a problem, and taxpayer funded proposed parks aren't getting built owing to a lack of funds at City Hall.  But it's a subject begging our attention: Emeryville's current 472 residents per acre of park/open space land, a shamefully high number, towers over our neighbor Oakland's 67 residents per acre.  More troubling is the trajectory; if these last three projects get approved as they're proposed, the ratio of people to parks will get much worse in Emeryville with little chance to ever catch up with our neighbors.

The numbers tell the tale:

Emeryville
Population  10,777 (2013)*
Acres of Park/Open Space  22.82
Residents/Acre  472

Oakland
Population  406,253
Acres of Park/Open Space  6,063
Residents/Acre  67

Berkeley
Population  116,768
Acres of Park/Open Space  235
Residents/Acre  497

*Doesn't include the first phase of the Market Place project, Emme Apartments completed in May 2015; 190 units with approximately 380 total residents.  Other smaller residential projects are also not included.

It's worth noting is how Emeryville's park land is currently distributed; most of it is located in the marina neighborhood leaving the east side of town underserved.

The last three large residential projects will increase our population and two of the projects will increase our park land.  But the new ratio of acres of park land to residents in the Big Three will drive down the ratio of park land to residents for the whole town.
Here's how the 'Big Three' numbers by themselves break:

Market Place Development
Units  456
Acres Park Land Added  .46

Sherwin Williams Development
Units  540
Acres Park Land Added  2.08

Anton (Nady) Development
Units  211
Acres Park Land Added  0

Together these three projects add 1207 units and 2.54 acres of new park land.  Using the double formula (an average of two persons per unit), the total number of people added to Emeryville with these projects will be 2414.  It should be noted however City Hall has said they are pushing for more family friendly units and to the extent they are successful, there may be more than an average of two people per unit for these projects, skewing the numbers presented here, driving up the people per acre.
Here are the numbers of the projects by themselves against Emeryville currently:

Emeryville Currently (2013)
Residents/Acre  472

Market Place Proposal
New Residents  912
Residents/Acre  1983

Sherwin Williams Proposal
New Residents  1080
Residents/Acre  527

Anton (Nady) Proposal
New Residents  422
No Park Land Added

So it can be seen these housing projects actually take Emeryville backwards when it comes to residents per acre and subsequent crowding in our parks/open space.  When added to Emeryville's numbers, these big three projects will skew the numbers against our neighbors thusly:

Emeryville (add 'Big Three')
Population  13277
Acres Park/Open Space  25.36
Residents/Acre  524*

Oakland
Residents/Acre  67

Berkeley
Residents/Acre  497

*Doesn't include the first phase of the Market Place project, Emme Apartments on 64th Street completed in May 2015; 190 units with approximately 380 residents.  Adding these apartments after they're fully rented would change the total Emeryville number of residents per acre of park to 538.  Also, smaller residential development projects are not included in this calculation but they also will drive the number of residents per acre higher because no other of these proposed small developments will directly add to our park acreage.

Doyle Hollis Park
Emeryville residents can expect our parks to get a lot more
crowded if the 'Big Three' developments get approved.

Post Moratorium Debate, a Flawed 'Market Place' Development Moves Towards Approval

Mayor's Secret Plan For Better Housing Gets First Test

News Analysis
A huge residential apartment development proposal is just now rounding the corner in Emeryville, heading into the home stretch, headed for approval at City Hall.  It's the massive multi-phase 'Market Place' project on Shellmound Street with its 456 100% rental residential units, 70,000 square feet of retail and 1345 structured parking spaces.  Being all rental, this housing project is similar to most every other residential development project approved in Emeryville over the last many years.  It's also counter to what Emeryville residents say they want from new housing projects.

What's noteworthy about this project is that it's the first development proposal coming up for approval after a controversial residential building moratorium idea was proposed by the City Council but then rejected by Mayor Ruth Atkin and Councilwoman Nora Davis last February.  The three vote Council majority sought the moratorium to carve out time to strengthen the City's planning documents after so many years of flawed developments approved under the existing documents.  Lacking a four vote super-majority, the moratorium idea failed leaving only Ms Atkin's plan to fix Emeryville's weak planning documents.  However, Mayor Atkin has yet to reveal her plan to fix the problem, tantalizingly offering only "a moratorium is the wrong way to go about doing this".

Artist's Conception: Market Place Development
Featuring lots of deluxe White People.

For their part, developers aren't interested in waiting to hear about the Mayor's plan to stop flawed residential development; they're rapidly moving ahead in Emeryville.
One of the last three major residential developments left in Emeryville (the other two being  at the Sherwin Williams site and the 'Nady' site), the Market Place received approval for the first of its five parcels from the Planning Commission on May 28th.  The remaining four parcels are being presented rapid fire at subsequent meetings for the Planning Commission's approval.

A high density development, the Market Place project has the following characteristics identified by the public as being undesirable for future Emeryville residential development proposals:

• 100% rental, no for sale units
• No affordable units
• Automobile dependent
•  Not family friendly
• No guarantee for locally serving non-formula chain retail
• Exacerbates Emeryville's existing bad ratio of residents per acre of park/open space

The bullet points above are taken from goals highlighted by Emeryville's planning documents.  The Market Place project runs afoul of the following City Hall documents:

• The General Plan
• The Housing Element
• The Family Friendly Design Guidelines

After a 25 year building spree has left only three sites to get housing right in Emeryville, residents know the kind of housing development found in the Market Place proposal is flawed.  A contrite Mayor Atkin assured everyone she agrees the residential development that's been built over the last many years has been flawed.  Regardless of the fact that as a five term Council member, she herself has voted for all that flawed development, Ms Atkin has assured Emeryville residents now she gets it and this time she will deliver a Market Place development in line with what the residents have said they want.  However time is running short for Ms Atkin's plan to take shape and it appears with the vote to approve the first Market Place parcel already having been cast, the Planning Commission is simply doing what it has always done with regard to project approvals.  At this point, Ms Atkin's plan will require the Planning Commission's first vote on the Market Place be overturned.

The Planning Commission will continue to approve the project on a parcel by parcel basis and the City Council will vote on the final development agreement for the Market Place project sometime probably in August.  Watch this space.

President Richard Nixon
In 1968 before the election, Mr Nixon indicated he 
had a secret plan to end the war in Vietnam.  
Strangely, he refused to give details on the plan.  
The war continued on.

Mayor Ruth Atkin
She intimated she also has a secret plan:
 to bring better housing to Emeryville.
Like Nixon, she too has not given any
details for how it will be achieved.  
We hope for the resident's sake, it 
works out better than Nixon's plan.

Emeryville Closes Out Year With Lots of 100% Rental Development

More Than 1000 Residential Rental Units Coming

Change in Emeryville Demographics 

Where's the Public Debate?

Opinion
The City of Emeryville is ending the year with a big push to add new residents.  Lots of residents, all in four 100% rental development projects.  These four projects will deliver 1045 new units and increase the population of our town by 15%.  In a city with only 10,000 residents, that represents a substantial increase.  After years of condo building in Emeryville, these all rental projects are a real change and will dramatically transform the demographics for our town.

The following new projects are either already approved or moving to approval and are 100% rental:

• Sherwin Williams Project: 460 units
• Avalon Bay project: 260 units
• Marketplace phase one: 225 units
• Maz project: 100 units

At 1045 rental units, some with more than one dweller, the increase in population will probably be over 1500.  Adding to this number are other rental units at new development projects either approved, recently finished or in the pipeline that are not 100% rental but contain some condos.

A new Emeryville resident

Rental residents tend to be different from homeowner residents.  They aren't as vested in their towns and they tend to be less civically minded.  Recent renters in Emeryville specifically have been primarily made up of San Francisco tech workers looking for cheaper rent than San Francisco offers.  These workers tend to be single and work long hours meaning they tend to drive in, "cocoon" and drive out.  The result is an under utilized commons, with a populace that generally feels little allegiance to the neighborhood or the town.   Also, renters tend to look less critically at civic projects involving raises in property taxes, increasing the opportunity for abuses by decision makers and developers that would stand to benefit.

Emeryville is experiencing this 100% rental building boom because the rental market in the Bay Area is extremely robust right now and developers are eager to cash in.  With its well earned reputation for accommodating developers, City Hall has stepped up to the plate and quickly moved these projects forward.  

The City Council is letting this wave wash over us.  They're letting the developers do what they want to do...and what they want to do now is build rental units.  What the Council is not allowing is a public debate about this.

Emeryville City Council members have historically never been fond of city planning.  They've never been known to defer to planning regulations, opting instead to let developers build our town as the real estate market dictates....so there's no change here in that regard.  But what IS different, what HAS changed is that profit maximization in the market now dictates that 100% rental only projects be built, and that promises to change our town.  We need to be aware this resulting development will be here for generations to come.  Is this something we want?  Is it wise?  Is this something that will improve our town?  

There should be a public debate about this.