East Bay housing eyed near toxic dump
In 2007 there were high hopes for Bay Point’s marinas and the 250 acres that lie east of the railroad tracks in hardscrabble Contra Costa County.
A redevelopment plan for this land that lies along Suisun Bay called for an expanded and upgraded harbor with housing, restaurants and a new boardwalk along the waterfront. Pacific Gas and Electric Co, which owns the property, had plans to clean up the metals and toxic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons that Shell Oil Products Co. had dumped there decades earlier. That portion would be restored as wetlands. An adjacent parcel, which doesn’t require environmental remediation, would be developed into apartment buildings and restaurants and ball fields.
That plan never happened — the victim of former Gov. Jerry Brown’s 2012 elimination of redevelopment agencies. Since then, while PG&E has been working on the cleanup, the rest of the property has remained a fencedoff wetland with mounds of dirt that stretches all the way to the Delta Energy Center in Pittsburg, the Bay Area’s largest power plant. A sign on the fence along the plot says “PG&E Environmental Restoration Project.”
But, despite the fact that there has not been an active plan to redevelop it in 15 years, the PG&E property plays a prominent role in the Contra Costa County housing element, the state-mandated eight-year housing plan that California cities and counties were obligated to submit last month.
The housing element for unincorporated Contra Costa County designates 500 low-income housing units for the property, according to the draft of the document, which has yet to be certified by the state. In total, the county is on the hook to plan for 7,610 units, of which 2,072 must be “very low” and 1,211 “low-income.”
Came as a surprise
e The fact that the property is targeted for housing development came as a surprise to Contra Costa County Supervisor Federal Glover, whose district covers Bay Point.
The property has no water or sewer service, no streets or sidewalks, no nearby schools or retail. Any development would probably require grade separation under or over the railroad tracks that run on the western edge of the property. Infrastructure alone would probably cost tens of millions of dollars.
“There’s an awful lot of things that would have to happen before that piece of property would be appropriate for housing,” Glover said. “Maybe on a piece of paper it says ‘housing,’ but we are a long, long way from that being a reality.”
Bay Point native Debra Mason, who is president of the Bay Point Municipal Advisory Council — the closest thing that the unincorporated city has to a City Council — said all the discussion in recent years has focused on restoring the wetlands on that property and, perhaps, expanding the East Bay Regional Park trails that stretch across the marshes on the north side of the marina.
She and other residents have pushed for an interpretive center where students could learn about wetlands and the birds — owls, red-tailed hawks, peregrine falcons, American kestrels — could be observed along the Bay Point waterfront.
“The kids are so unaware of all the wildlife that is out there,” she
said.
The fact that Contra Costa County seems to be focused on putting a big chunk of its affordable housing requirement in Bay Point raises issues of equity and whether the plan is staying true to the state-mandate that it “affirmatively further fair housing” by building affordable homes in high resource neighborhoods with good schools, well-maintained parks, transportation and retail, according to some housing advocates.
“Other areas of the county love to use Bay Point to fulfill their low-income housing needs,” Mason said. “Don’t get me wrong — we are all for affordable housing in Bay Point. But we shouldn’t be fulfilling the whole county’s obligation.”
Like much of the Bay Area, unincorporated Contra Costa County is home to extreme disparities in wealth and opportunity. The median household income in Alamo is $250,000, and the median house sells for $3.2 million. In Bay Point, meanwhile, the median household earns $71,000 and the median home price is about $500,000.
Statewide, Bay Point is in the top 10% in density of hazardous waste facilities, susceptibility to groundwater threats, traffic density and concentration of cleanup sites, according to a report by Contra Costa 2040. It is in the top
1% statewide in asthma-induced emergency room visits and top 3% in heart-attack induced ER visits.
Housing advocate Kevin Burke, who grew up in Alamo and lives in Walnut Creek, pointed to several potential development sites in wealthier parts of unincorporated Contra Costa County that were either not included in the housing element or were targeted for surprisingly low densities.
“If you think this density is appropriate in Bay Point or Crockett, why is it not appropriate in Alamo or Walnut Creek or Kensington?” Burke said.
Housing opportunities
The housing element points to two significant, lower-income housing opportunities in Bay Point: One is a mobile home lot that the owner would like to sell to a nonprofit developer; that could accommodate 650 units. The other is the PG&E property next to Shell Pond.
While the housing element acknowledges that “this area is designated as low-resource,” the vision for the site would include “new retail, sources and amenities.” It adds that “locating these units here is not expected to negatively concentrate lower-income residents in areas with limited access to resources.”
Maureen Toms, deputy director of policy planning for the county, said that the project would be a “plus plus.” She said that the planning that was done for the property in 2007 means “it has already gone through a community process.”
“It would revitalize the marina and accommodate a bunch of new residents,” she said.
Burke said that it has been clear from the housing element review process that wealthier county residents have an outsize influence on the plan. Alamo residents, for example, make up 12% of the 176,000 residents of the unincorporated county, but provided 80% of the comments on the housing element. Burke is advocating for teacher housing to be built on a grassy lot across the street from Monte Vista High School, a top 100 school in California, according to U.S. News and World Report, which straddles the Danville-Alamo line.
“The reason why we are in this crisis is nobody is looking at the big picture,” Burke said. “They come (to Bay Point) and say, ‘We want investment, we want housing,’ and then go to Alamo and get screamed at for two hours.”
Toms said that the county is planning to upzone Danville Boulevard and are proposing teacher housing on a parcel behind Mauzey School in Alamo. But that project has been met with fierce opposition.
Alamo Elementary school teacher Rick LaTorra says he is one of the few teachers in town who can afford to live nearby — his wife is a doctor — and he was dismayed by the opposition to adding density that he witnessed at a housing element meeting last fall. “It was 100 people screaming at the supervisors,” he said. “I was really depressed afterward.”
Meanwhile, Toms said that there is no timetable for the Bay Point site. No development can go forward until PG&E finishes the cleanup and then splits the Shell Pond lot from the adjacent 250 acres that will be developed. After that there will be years of environmental review.
“It depends on the property owner and their timetable for finishing the clean up and finding a developer,” Toms said.