Rezoning plan to allow housing at Baylands property in the lead

The small town of Brisbane took center stage in the fight over the Bay Area’s housing shortage Tuesday night as voters were narrowly approving a plan to allow up to 2,200 residential units and 7 million square feet of commercial space on a portion of the 684-acre Baylands property that sits just to the south of the San Francisco border.

Measure JJ, which would rezone the Baylands to allow for residential uses, was winning, 54.3 percent to 45.7 percent. The site is now zoned for commercial use only. Takeaway: Some of the main themes in the fight over how to fix the Bay Area’s housing crisis — the obligations of cities to allow more development, the need to maintain local character, the interests of longtime residents vs. the need to accommodate newcomers — played out in Brisbane, a city of 4,700 people. Background: Proponents argued that the development could bring a range of community benefits, including park lands, jobs, a school and retail space.

Measure JJ would amend Brisbane’s zoning plan to allow housing on about 20 percent of the property at its northern end. The housing would start at the top of Industrial Way and extend to the former Schlage Lock property across the San Francisco border, where the owner of the Baylands property, Universal Paragon Corp., is in the early stages of developing 1,650 housing units.

Opponents argued that the Baylands, a former rail yard and landfill, is too contaminated to be safe for human habitation and that adding as many as 4,000 new residents would ruin Brisbane’s small-town character.