HOUSING DRAWS A REBUKE
Brisbane planners likely to recommend against mixed-use plan at former industrial site
BRISBANE — In the cozy community of Brisbane, a developer’s ambitious vision and the Bay Area’s desperate need for housing are clashing with a small town’s reluctance to change its laid-back character.
After more than a decade of planning, the city of roughly 4,000 residents is nearing big decisions on the future of the Baylands, a 684-acre former industrial site whose owner, Universal Paragon Corp., wants to transform it into 4,434 housing units and approximately 6.5 million square feet of office, retail, and research and development space. The mixed-used development would triple the city’s number of residential units.
On Thursday, the Planning Commission will consider whether to amend the city’s general plan to allow housing on the property, which surrounds an underutilized Caltrain station and runs from downtown Brisbane to the San Francisco boundary west of Highway 101. The commission has signaled it will vote to recommend that the City Council deny the amendment when the council takes up the issue this fall.
Sustainable development advocates are apoplectic. Matt Vander Sluis, program director for the nonprofit Greenbelt Alliance, accused the commission of “living in oblivion.”
“This is one of the best opportunities that the Bay Area has to tackle our housing affordability crisis and our traffic challenges and create great places to live,” said Vander
Sluis, whose organization promotes infill development as a way to prevent sprawl. “The housing crisis in the Bay Area demands solutions, not intransigence.”
In deliberations over the past year, the commission has weighed Universal Paragon’s preferred plan along with a few less intensive alternatives. Based on those discussions, city planners are recommending a blueprint with a maximum of 2 million square feet of new industrial, retail, and research and development space; 86 acres of renewable energy generation; 79 acres of gardens and open space; and no housing.
But without housing, Universal Paragon claims it would be difficult to make the project pencil out. The company estimates the cost to clean up the heavily polluted site, which held a Southern Pacific rail yard until the 1980s and a San Francisco landfill until the 1960s, and install infrastructure will exceed $1 billion.
“A mix of uses on this site is what’s going to be necessary to respond to the 20-30 year development period and changes in the market cycle,” said Jonathan Scharfman, the company’s general manager. “It’s very difficult to create a new neighborhood without a mix of uses that complement each other and create a sense of vibrancy.”
Beyond housing and business uses, Universal Paragon’s vision includes a variety of community benefits, from trails and open space to as many as 25 acres of solar panels. Southern Pacific’s historic but dilapidated former roundhouse would be rebuilt as the centerpiece of a public park.
But widespread opposition to the housing element may scuttle the painstakingly crafted plan. A 2015 community survey found that 43 percent of Brisbane residents opposed any housing on the site, while just 2 percent favored 4,000 units or more. The survey found residents were far more concerned about preserving open space and their quality of life than adding “housing that working families can afford.”
Meanwhile, three of the city’s five council members — Terry O’Connell, W. Clarke Conway and Madison Davis — have pledged in recent years to reject housing on the Baylands.
Mayor Cliff Lentz hasn’t drawn a line in the sand. His top concern is making the project as environmentally sustainable as possible. If the council ever approves housing on the site, he said, the issue would likely be put to the voters in the form of a referendum.
“We want to make sure what is developed down there doesn’t harm what the residents of Brisbane love about their city, why they moved here,” he said. “It’s a delicate balance.”
Adding to the headache for Universal Paragon is the California High-Speed Rail Authority’s consideration of the Baylands for a roughly 45-acre light maintenance facility for cleaning and spot repairs of bullet trains once the Peninsula segment of the high-speed line is built.
The authority is deciding between the Baylands and a spot in Gilroy, said Ben Tripousis, the authority’s regional director for Northern California. He said the Brisbane site, being just a few miles from the bullet train’s San Francisco terminus, has some advantages over the Gilroy location.
Universal Paragon is adamantly opposed to the idea, but it may not matter. The rail agency has the power to seize the property through eminent domain.
Nonetheless, the company will continue to make its case for a fully diversified “21st-century innovation hub” that includes housing.
“The Bay Area is in a historic housing crisis,” said Scharfman. “And while it would be naive to believe we could build our way out of the crisis, we cannot ignore the necessity to build housing in these opportunity sites, because there’s not many of them around.”