Meeting Tonight on TOD Project
Dateline:
08/06/2008The project developers – Westlake Development Partners, Bridge Housing Corp., and Build LLC – will introduce themselves, explain the project, and listen to ideas.
The project includes two sites:
Site 1: The current BART parking lot at the corner of West Juana Avenue and San Leandro Boulevard where 200 market rate residential units are planned; and
Site 2: The west side of the BART station where 100 affordable residential units and a mix of one- and three-bedroom units will be built.
“We don’t have parking on our street now. Where are all of these people going to park?” asks Rodenburg.
A TOD area is designed so that people will use public transit. In theory, the residents won’t have cars.
When Rodenburg was told this she rolled her eyes in disbelief. “Okay, so everybody who’s going to move in there, they’re just not going to have a car!” she said, raising her hands to the heavens.
Rodenburg and her neighbor Jan Re have lived in San Leandro all of their lives, in houses built by their grandfathers.
“My grandfather built our house in 1937,” Rodenburg said. “There were orchards all around here. These are the older homes with more land and substance.”
Now the age of big yards, orchards and the freedom to do what you wish with your own property is colliding with the new wave of planned, regulated, officially sanctioned development.
The City of San Leandro held several meetings last year to inform people about the Transit- Oriented Development project. Rodenburg said she didn’t go to the meetings because she’s been to other meetings and knows how it works.
“They just talk about how beautiful it’s going to be,” Rodenburg said. “And if you don’t agree with them, they say, ‘Oh, that’s not what we’re talking about.’”
If Rodenburg and Re had seen the plans for the development, they might have a different point of view. But the two women say they know enough about it to form their opinion. And, unlike many of the TOD supporters, they live practically next door to the new development.
The idea for the TOD began after the powerful Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) gave the city $500,000 to study the idea. The MTC, which controls billions of dollars in Bay Area transportation funds, is pushing this type of development to encourage people to ride public transit, cut down on car emissions and reduce urban sprawl.
On the other hand, a few signs have appeared along the way that indicate the slick Power-Point presentations might not be as sweet as advertised. For example, at one meeting, a city official referred to the project as “work force housing.”
So will TOD be the center of bustling commerce and healthy living, or a housing development for second-class citizens who aren’t allowed to have cars, shuttle to their jobs on public transit, and live right next to the grating whine of BART trains? We’ll know the answer in a couple of years.
Rodenburg and Re say the city government is enamored with their big projects while overlooking what’s right in front of their noses.
“My street is all torn up and they can’t come out to fix it,” Rodenburg said. “I asked them to trim the trees on this street and they said they only do it every five years.
“Look at the Lucky’s (downtown on East 14th Street). It’s vacant and they won’t let another store go in there. This isn’t a ritzy neighborhood. We just want a grocery store.”
The City Council blocked a grocery from moving into the former Lucky’s building because it was a discount market, and they wanted something hipper.
On the other hand, the TOD project would bring more people downtown, more customers. It’s almost certain that there will be a lot more stores opening downtown.
But Rodenburg is still skeptical.
“We can’t get a grocery store here,” she says. “And all the city wants to do is put in all these damn Starbuck’s.”
Source:
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