Fate of controversial Niles Gateway development to be decided Tuesday

City Council will consider an appeal of a Planning Commission denial of the project

FREMONT >> The fate of a controversial development proposed for one of the main entrance points to the city’s historic Niles district is expected to be decided Tuesday.

The decision by the Fremont City Council will likely culminate more than five years of planning efforts and legal wrangling over the Niles Gateway Project from developer Valley Oak Partners, which proposes to build 57 townhomes and 18 condominiums on a roughly 6-acre site at 37899 Niles Blvd., a former industrial site that once housed the Schuckl Cannery, among other uses. The city’s Planning Commission denied the project last year.

The original project, which included 98 units and about 7,000 squarefeet of commercial space, was proposed by Valley Oak in 2014 and approved by the City Council in March 2015.

However, the approval was later invalidated after a residents group called Protect Niles won a lawsuit against the city and the developer, forcing a full environmental review of the project, which the city initially tried to skip.

The council will consider a project that has been reworked in many ways, including building heights that have been lowered to two stories from three, design elements that have been changed to fit better with Niles’ style, elimination of all commercial space and the inclusion of three below-market rate units, as well as more landscaping, according to city reports.

All of the townhomes would have three bedrooms and range from approximately 1,462 to 1,785 square feet, while all the condominiums would have three bedrooms and range from approximately 1,531 to 1,993 square feet, city reports said. All units would have a two-car garage.

Even after the changes to the project, many of which were spurred by the developer working with Protect Niles members, some residents within the group splintered on their view of the project, underscoring how much development can sow discord in Fremont.

“I’m still quite opposed to the project for a number of reasons,” Renee Guild, a member of Protect Niles, said in an interview Friday. “This is a very small village; Niles is the jewel of Fremont and a historic town. And this project will forever change the nature of Niles.

“The developer started in the first place with an absolutely impossible number of units and yes he decreased it by 25% or so, but only under duress. He didn’t do that voluntarily.”

Guild said she’s still concerned about the project’s traffic impact with hundreds of additional car trips expected on Niles Boulevard and nearby Mission Boulevard, and she also wants to see lower-priced affordable homes included.

The developer is proposing to include three units at prices affordable to moderate income earners. A family of four in Alameda County earning up to $156,000 per year is considered to be in the moderate income bracket, according to county documents.

But Julie Cain, another member of Protect Niles, and a current Historic Architectural Review Board member, said she is now fully supporting the project because the group’s goal was to get a project on the site that fits into the Niles design guidelines and is compatible with the environmental impact report.

“Frankly, for putting a project there, this is as good as it’s going to get. We’re never going to have a golden opportunity to work directly with a developer again,” Cain said.

“Why would anybody in Protect Niles think it’s OK to move the goalposts?,” Cain asked, noting that debate over affordable housing units was not part of their original grievances.

“I’m not saying affordable housing isn’t important. But you can’t sue somebody for something, and then they do what you sued them for, and now you say, ‘Oh, well that’s just not good enough, sorry.’”

Valley Oak is appealing to the City Council a denial from the Planning Commission in July 2020, during which the commissioners deadlocked on a vote to approve it, 3-3, with one commissioner, Robert Daulton, a member of Protect Niles, recused from the vote.

The failure to pass a motion to approve the project is as good as a denial, city staff reports said. But this is not the first time the project has come back after being denied.

Before the council approved Valley Oak’s original project in March 2015, the historic architectural board recommended the council deny it because it was “incompatible with existing development,” in Niles.

Following redesigns and changes after the lawsuit, a similar project with 95 units and commercial space was again rejected by the Historic Architectural Review Board in October 2018, where many residents spoke against it.

Guild said she would be more comfortable with a 60-unit development, which was a possible project option outlined in the environmental impact report, and which several residents who spoke at prior meetings said they would support.

“The applicant has met repeatedly with city staff and members of the Niles neighborhood to revise the project and address concerns related to scale, site design, architecture, massing and transportation,” city staff reports said.

City staff is recommending the council approve the project in its latest form on Tuesday, which would require a general plan amendment to change the land use, and rezoning of the property from industrial to residential to allow homes to be built there.