Stop, Drop and Roll

03 January 2007 | Alameda City Council, Alameda Community Development Forum | John Knox White

 

At last night’s council meeting, the council majority (all five) wisely voted to hold off on approving the proposed Commercial Development Agreement (DA) for Alameda Landing. The entire council requested that city staff work with Catellus/Prologis to put into place a mechanism that allows for increasing funds for the projects Transportation Demand Management (TDM) program that is the backbone of the traffic mitigation plan for the project. It gave hope that in the year to come, with many difficult issues ahead, the new council will act proactively, but not unnecessaryliy quickly on major development issues.

The council quickly identified the need to re-open negotiations on the funding of the TDM program if it is not succeeding and has expended its total funding. Project finance issues were also raised by the council, showing a clear understanding that saddling a failing project with additional burdens would be in nobody’s interest.

Staff suggested looking at a two-tier mechanism that could increase funding if after five years, two factors are met:

1. The traffic mitigations are not meeting their goals

2. Project success had been achieved

These are great thoughts, but the council will be wise to not let the project success goal remove the need for additional mitigations. A balanced approach would allow the project success goal to delay increasing any funding increases until the goals had been met. This allows the developer to meet their identified goals without letting an underperforming project in the evaluation year, deny the city funding that will likely be needed.

At the end of the day, we’re talking about a cap on funds that can be expended. Any heavy push back from re-opening the agreement on this issue if it’s not working speaks volumes about how effective the developer thinks this amount of money is going to mitigate traffic. If they are confident it will be enough, then raising the cap will have very little effect on what they actually spend. It’s in the city’s interest to aggressively pursue the biggest amount they can get and tie it into the program.

The council took yet another great step forward by not rushing headlong into approving this project because it has many deadlines looming to retain future tenants like Clif Bar. While the council should be responsive to the time needs of the development, they are doing a good job of remembering that this project will be here for 100 years and more and that it needs to be done right.

Catellus has a timeline it needs to meet and city staff has obviously busted their humps to help them maintain it. In the end, they’re lucky, Catellus holds control of whether their internal timelines are met or not. By working quickly with staff to put together a deal for the TDM funding (and then with the city’s commissions and boards on an acceptable TDM program) they can assure swift passage of all of the remaining hurdles.

Glossary

DA: Development Agreement – an agreement between the city and a developer outlining various conditions, requirements and responsibilities for a given development.

TDM: Transportation Demand Management – a set of measures used to create a more efficient use of transportation resources (decreasing traffic through increases in modes other than Single Occupancy Vehicle trips and reducing overall trips).