Several environmental groups are suing the County of San Diego for its plans to use carbon credits to offset greenhouse gas emissions from new housing and commercial developments. The County recently redrafted its Climate Action Plan under court order and the new document includes a plan that would allow developers to offset air pollution by purchasing carbon credits purchased through carbon registries. The suit, filed in San Diego Superior Court, argues the county has no way to verify the quality of the credits and should require all such off-set programs to be located within the county. The suit notes that the revised plan would facilitate the county’s approval of sprawl development over thousands of acres of greenfield lands in unincorporated areas, including nearly 20,000 new residential units already in the pipeline. Plaintiffs include the Center for Biological Diversity, the Sierra Club, the Endangered Habitats League, Cleveland National Forest Foundation, Climate Action Campaign, and Preserve Wild Santee.
City of Oakland Negotiates for Full Ownership of Coliseum
Alameda County and the City of Oakland are negotiating a deal to sever their 52-year joint ownership of the Oakland Coliseum sports complex and surrounding land in the hope that a single owner would make it easier to build housing. City Administrator Sabrina Landreth said in a statement, “the city of Oakland and Alameda County are aligned in the view that development of the Coliseum property would be simplified and streamlined with a single owner that controls all aspects of the future development process.” The city would keep the land and would pay the county, however the county still owes about $38 million to the Bank of New York Mellon Corp.
Los Angeles School District Tries to Assess its Real Estate Holdings
A Los Angeles Unified School District task force recently analyzed the school system’s vast real estate holdings, which cost millions of dollars a year to maintain. The LA Unified Advisory Task Force made three recommendations: 1) Take a careful inventory; 2) figure out how best to utilize these properties; and 3) engage the community along the way. The group recommends LA Unified hires real estate experts to complete an analysis. The nation’s second-largest school system owns 6,400 acres and includes 1,200 schools and centers. In its portfolio are also vacant lots, administrative buildings, operation plants and parking lots. The report states, “The district lacks a comprehensive strategy to manage these properties and utilize each asset at its highest and best use to support the district’s goals.”
Court Decision Halts Martis Valley West Project
Sierra Watch, Mountain Area Preservation, and the League to Save Lake Tahoe celebrate a court decision handed down Monday that halts the controversial Martis Valley West Project, a 7,428-acre project in North Tahoe that would include more than six acres of retail stores, restaurants, offices and sports equipment rentals as well as the homes.. Placer County Superior Court Judge Michael W. Jones issued an order to vacate and set aside Placer County’s 2016 approvals of the project, focusing on Placer County’s failure to provide sufficient CEQA analysis of the project’s impacts on emergency evacuation, such as in the event of a wildfire. The proposed project is located in a very high severity fire zone. The conservation groups contend that the region’s community will benefit from the stoppage of a project that would threaten public safety, the local environment, and Lake Tahoe.
Discovery of Faultline Prompts Redesign of San Diego Waterfront Redevelopment
Unified Port of San Diego officials voiced approval for major alterations on Protea Waterfront Development plans after major earthquake fault lines were discovered on-site. The government agency that oversees the redevelopment of Seaport Village would not vote on changes until September. The big changes include moving the hotel and aquarium and turning the fault line into a pedestrian mall surrounded by trees. Manchester Grand Hyatt San Diego submitted a letter to the board saying the new design would block view of the bay from the hotel, create traffic problems, and is disproportionate to the amount of land adjacent to the hotel. However CEO of Protea said he had a meeting planned with Hyatt later in the week to discuss solutions.
Quick Hits & Updates
Some farmers in Oceanside are opposed to a proposed ballot measure that could preserve the city’s disappearing agricultural land. The group filed a complaint with the city clerk, the county district attorney, and the state Fair Political Practices Commission saying the nonprofit Save Open Space and Agricultural Resources are violating state and local campaign laws by not filing the financial disclosure forms required by the FPPC. Neil Nagata, an Oceanside farmer and president of the San Diego County Farm Bureau wrote in the complaint, “Oceanside voters deserve to know who really is behind this measure.”
Recent technical documents in the High Speed Rail Authority 2018 business plan indicate that a 30-mile stretch south of San Francisco no longer has dedicated tracks designed for speeds of up to 220 mph. Instead the stretch between San Jose and Gilroy would operate at 110 mph on ground-level tracks on or adjacent to an existing right of way owned by Union Pacific. This change in design may add several minutes to the trip but will save about $1.7 billion. The original design included elevated tracks and the use of significant private land.
Facebook has announced plans for a new 465,000 square-foot office building at its headquarters in Menlo Park. Just eight months ago Facebook unveiled its plans for a Willow Campus with 1.75 million square-feet of offices, 1,500 homes, and 125,000 square-feet of retail space.
According to San Jose’s latest annual housing report the city only issued 475, or 20 percent, of its target number of affordable units last year. During the same time, the city issued permits for 2,622 new market rate units. Mayor Sam Liccardo said, “I would challenge other mayors and cities to step up and present their own plans because we are not going to build our way out of this housing crisis by confining our efforts to the city of San Jose. This is a regional problem.”
The developer of a 27-story tech office center is San Francisco is proposing temporarily moving the historic Flower Mart to the congest Embarcadero to Piers 19 and 23. However many vendors and customers are concerned that the proposed location has many tourists which will not appreciate the trucks and semi trucks clogging Embarcadero. Flower Mart vendors were promised they’ll return to the new space at Sixth and Brannan after construction in two to three years.
Ground was broken on a $13 million effort to restore a wildlife corridor that will connect the Cleveland National Forest with Orange County wild coastal terrains. The project has been in the making for more than two decades and will encourage biological diversity in the animals that dwell in more than 20,000 acres of coastal chaparral surrounding Laguna Beach. The corridor is being funded by the Great Park developer, FivePoint Holdings, and is estimated to be completed by mid-2019.
The San Francisco Police Department reported last spring that Lyft and Uber drivers were responsible for two-thirds of all traffic violations in downtown San Francisco. Bicycle activists in the city are protesting about the dangerous conditions and need for protected bike lanes as many ride-hailing drivers pull into bike lanes to load or unload passengers. In May 2017, the late Mayor Ed Lee proposed a pilot program of loading zones that would allow ride-hailing drivers some curb space to allow for loading and unloading of passengers. In exchange, the city would get data about where Uber and Lyft rides were happening.
A consortium of developers wants to build 1,100 new homes around Balboa Reservoir in San Francisco but the group Save CCSF says eliminating the existing 2,000 parking spaces would hurt the City College. The group has now filed initial paperwork for a ballot measure that would prohibit development on the Balboa Reservoir site until a planned Performing Arts Education Center on an adjacent site is “built, completed and opened to the public.” The proposed development would include 80 homes at 55 percent AMI and 24 rental homes at 105 percent AMI, and 83 homes at 120 percent AMI.
Los Angeles City Councilmembers pledged last week to build at least 222 units of permanent supportive housing in each of the 15 districts over the next three years. If they accomplish the goal, they would bring 3,330 supportive housing units to “every corner” of the city by July 2020. The construction of the buildings would come from Measure HHH, the $1.2 billion bond measure to finance the construction of 10,000 units of permanent supportive housing over the next ten years.
Travis Kalanick, the former CEO of Uber, has announced he will head City Storage Systems, a holding company that redevelops distressed real estate particularly for parking, retail, and industrial properties. Kalanick was ousted from Uber in June has bought controlling interest worth $150 million in the new company and says it is a 15-person start-up based in Los Angeles.
Orange County Supervisors and various OC city councils have voiced concern over a recent proposal to place a homeless shelter on the site of an abandoned landfill in Huntington Beach. The opposition underscores the challenges Orange County faces as it tries to find housing for homeless people who have been evicted from massive camps along the Santa Ana River. A federal judge has said the county needs to find solutions.
The Metropolitan Transportation Commission adopted a 10-year investment strategy, which will direct $3.8 billion to 20 Bay Area projects. The focus will be primarily on Interstate Corridors and the Port of Oakland in Alameda County. MTC and the Alameda County Transportation Commission (ACTC) adopted a Goods Movement Plan in 2016 that will be implemented the plan and will confer many benefits for the region. Some of the benefits of the strategy will be to deliver projects that can improve mobility and economic vitality, addressing community and environmental concerns of freight, and enable the region to coordinate and compete for state and federal fund sources.
According to a new report by the Governors Highway Safety Association, walking across the street is more dangerous than it has been in more than a quarter-century. Nearly 6,000 pedestrians were killed by automobiles nationwide for the second straight year. In California, there were an estimated 352 pedestrian deaths between January and June 2017 making it the 15th-highest rate in the country.
