Former VMT site operating without permits
VMT principals recently plead guilty to conspiracy to bribe a city official in San Francisco
Vallejo’s Sperry Mill site, owned by Vallejo Marine Terminal, appears to be operating industrial uses there without permits, a Times-Herald investigation shows.
VMT has been doing so since the City of Vallejo sent a cease and desist notice to it two years ago.
Plans to work with Cal Maritime on a new development on the site are also unclear after VMT’s owners were indicted for conspiring to bribe San Francisco’s head of Public Works.
VMT is owned by Alan Varela and William Gilmartin, who both plead guilty in May to conspiring to obtain city contracts through former San Francisco head of public works Mohammed Nuru.
The pair were arrested by the FBI for bribing Nuru with a $40,000, air-conditioned tractor, as well as thousands of dollars in extravagant meals.
Currently, large equipment and trucks can be seen at the mill site, located at 800 Derr St. Workers are also on the site in yellow vests. The storage of heavy equipment or any work done on sites requires permits, especially since there are environmental concerns.
One source was present at an Aug. 23, 2019 inspection of the
Sperry Mill site that led to the city sending the cease and desist letter to VMT. This person said the inspection officially put the onus on the city to act once unpermitted industrial activity was discovered.
“I personally observed crews moving heavy equipment and trucks to and from the site, as well as conducting automotive repair on heavy tractor equipment inside the buildings,” the source told the Times-Herald. “There was even an employee hosing a caterpillar bulldozer down just 15 feet from the shoreline, letting the runoff drain on the ground and into the river.”
In emails obtained from a California Public Records Act request, in October of last year, a month after they were indicted, VMT told the city that it wanted to apply for an interim use permit for the property. Varela and Gilmartin wanted to sublease to another outfit they own, a construction materials company based in Oakland called ProVen Management.
VMT told the City of Vallejo that it wanted to use the Sperry Mill site for “temporary vehicle and automotive parking, temporary and occasional storage of dry construction materials, and minor building materials assembly.”
VMT also requested a “private” meeting with then-City Manager Greg Nyhoff in October, one month after its principals were indicted by the FBI. Interim Deputy City Manager Gillian Hayes replied to the request with, “I’m betting Greg won’t meet without me there but I will request it.”
It is not known what the meeting was about or if it happened.
“Staff does not know if Greg had any meetings with them,” city spokesperson Christina Lee told the Times-Herald.
Prior to the permit request letter from VMT last fall, emails from Hayes to representatives of VMT spanning back to 2019 requested that the company remove trucks and other heavy equipment from the site before code enforcement arrived.
Initially, Gilmartin acknowledged the C&D letter from August of 2019 and replied that same month in an email, “Please be advised that VMT has temporarily ceased operations on the property until this matter is resolved.” VMT also said it would attempt to get a temporary use permit.
But nearly two years later, permits still have not been issued. The TimesHerald visited the VMT site on Derr Street on July 2 and heavy equipment was still being stored there.
Asked if permitting has been finalized, Lee responded to the Times-Herald on July 9: “The application is still incomplete, so no approvals have been made.”
Hayes has previously contacted VMT to press them to get their permit applications finalized.
“Our staff has spent so much time trying to help you on this site and will continue to do so,” wrote Hayes in an email to a VMT representative in September. “But as always, we are asking for resolution ASAP otherwise enforcement will proceed.”
In another email that same month, Hayes further presses VMT to get up to code and remove a trucking company from the site.
“As far as the trucking company, I know that we were very clear that the fleet use is not allowed on the site. The last conversation that we had with you was to make sure that you moved the fleet off the site … I can’t stop the enforcement process without a direction.”
VMT has a long history with the City of Vallejo for blowing off meetings and side-stepping deadlines. When VMT was working with Orcem to try and open a “green” cement plant on the spot — eventually abandoning the project after dropping the appeal — the city reported a lack of cooperation and necessary information from VMT during the process, as previously reported in the Times-Herald.
VMT was repeatedly AWOL during its appeal of the Vallejo Planning Commission’s rejection of the Orcem deal. In April of 2019, a letter to Varela and Gilmartin from then-Assistant City Attorney Shannon Eckmeyer said that the city had “received minimal communication from any of you on any of our requests … The city has now determined that the VMT/ Orcem Project application has been abandoned.”
In the months leading up to the April letter from the assistant city attorney to Varela and Gilmartin, the FBI outlined a series of expensive wining and dining gifts bestowed upon the San Francisco Public Works Director from the VMT principals, who were hoping to get a contract to operate an asphalt plant at the Port of San Francisco. It is not apparent whether or not the asphalt would originate from the proposed Orcem “green cement” plant.
“I estimate that Gilmartin spent in excess of $20,000 on meals with Nuru using a ProVen company credit card,” reads the FBI criminal complaint filed in September.
After the Orcem deal was abandoned, Nyhoff emailed Hayes in June of 2020 saying that he was “very concerned” about proposed uses on the same site.
“Several months ago there were discussions between the city and VMT about this property moving to the new General Plan designation and the industrial use would not continue,” he wrote. “It appears this (proposal) designates a change to prior commitments to VMT.”
Nyhoff appears to be referring to an amendment to the General Plan discussed at a November 2019 Vallejo City Council meeting, in which the site would move from an “industrial” designation to “business/limited residential” with mixed-use and “public facilities use.”
Cal Maritime was in discussions with VMT to create a public/private partnership in order to build a sub-campus on the site, which would have included housing, educational and office space, and even a much-needed south Vallejo grocery store. The current status of that development is not clear and the site is still zoned industrial.
The Times-Herald reached out to Cal Maritime about the status of the project in the wake of Varela and Gilmartin’s guilty pleas.
“The Sperry Mill site is a waterfront neighbor to Cal Maritime and we eagerly look forward to the day that progress can be achieved in repurposing this historic area, blighted for too long,” said university executive Robert Arp in an email statement to the Times-Herald. “Cal Maritime welcomes the opportunity to work with the City of Vallejo and any outside partners in developing this property to its fullest potential.”
The Times-Herald reached out to Alan Varela at ProVen Management for this story but did not receive a response by press time.