Council approves housing project
The Terraces of Lafayette apartments finally can be built, almost a decade after a group of residents first started fighting against any development on the 22-acre parcel.
The City Council, by a 4-1 vote on Monday, approved the 315 apartments at the end of a meeting that stretched almost nine hours, in addition to seemingly endless public hearings.
“It’s not been an easy process,” Mayor Mike Anderson said. “But we got there.”
The saga could have had a different ending, one with a scaled-down project on the site at Deer Hill and Pleasant Hills roads just north of Highway 24.
The site earlier had been approved for a smaller project — 44 houses — thanks to a compromise the City Council had reached with the developer, O’Brien Homes of Menlo Park. But even that was too much for the ad hoc group Save Lafayette, which gathered enough signatures to force a referendum in 2018 on whether the proposed houses could be built.
Within days of Lafayette voters saying no to the houses, the developer filed paperwork with the city to build the apartment complex on a former quarry. The developer’s actions should not have come as a surprise to anyone, since the City Council had warned repeatedly that if the 44 houses were rejected, the developer could revive its larger apartment project application, which was still valid.
With laws designed to help ease the state’s housing crisis on the side of the developers, the city had little choice but to allow the apartments. The state’s Housing Accountability Act takes away some local control on affordable housing projects. The Terraces project has set aside 20 percent of its 315 apartments — 63 in total — for affordable housing.
The developer vowed to file a lawsuit if the city rejected the Terraces, and Lafayette would likely lose, O’Brien Homes’ attorney Bryan Wenter wrote in a letter to the city. If that happened, Lafayette could be on the hook for more than $15 million in fines and legal fees, city staffers warned the council.
“This is the biggest land use (decision) we will ever make,” Councilman Cameron Burks said at Monday’s meeting.
Supporters of the Terraces said the project will bring a more diverse population to affluent Lafayette, which is almost 85 percent white.
In addition, it will help ease the Bay Area’s housing crisis, plus allow more people to live near where they work, advocates said. Lafayette has approved few affordable housing projects, especially in recent years.
But those opposing the Terraces said it could affect traffic at Acalanes High School and Springhill Elementary School.
Richard Whitmore, superintendent of the Lafayette school district, said in a letter Monday to the city that local schools could accommodate future students that might live in the Terraces.
Lafayette resident Randall Whitney wrote the city opposing the project, maintaining it will cause neighborhood traffic to jump.
Others said adding more residents could make evacuation more difficult, noting two wildfires burned in that part of Lafayette last October.
However, both Lafayette police and the Contra Costa County Fire Protection District said they did not have concerns that the Terraces would cause “material delays to emergency response,” according to a staff report, and said the project was “well situated to be evacuated quickly” because it was close to Highway 24.
Vice Mayor Susan Candell, who cast the lone no vote early Tuesday morning, said she was concerned about building apartments in an area that could be vulnerable to wildfires.
“I am really concerned about that,” Candell said during the meeting.
Candell, in her 2018 council campaign, was vocal in opposing the development of the site. She recused herself from the Terraces project last year, but then changed her mind and decided to weigh in.
O’Brien Homes’ attorney Wenter sent a letter to the city, saying Candell should recuse herself because, he said, she had “crossed the constitutional line” in making “up her mind and prejudged the project.” “This project has been studied to the ‘nth’ degree to every possible issue,” Wenter said at the council meeting.
The apartments will be built in 14 buildings. The project also includes a two-story clubhouse and a leasing office, as well as 550 parking spaces.
“Hopefully, we can make this a project everybody is proud of,” Dave Baker, project manager for the Terraces of Lafayette, said at the meeting that stretched into early Tuesday morning.
Developer Dennis O’Brien thanked the city after the vote.
“We are enormously grateful to the many supporters in the community who spoke in favor of this important project, city staff for their years of hard work, and the council for their confidence in us in the face of relentless pressure,” he said in an email Tuesday.
“Although it has been frustrating to see this project take nearly a decade to obtain approval, we are happy that we have finally reached that point, and we look forward to our project becoming a part of the Lafayette community.”