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	Photo: Art Zendarski/ROMA Design Group

    In 10 years, the entire tarmac could be gone. A third of the Island and the biggest blank slate that touches San Francisco Bay could be filled in by thousands of new Alamedans, and with them would come sushi restaurants, waterfront walkways and parks—the kind of neighborhood building that is rare in already established urban areas, and the kind of opportunity that makes urban planners foam. But in the real estate-development game, the rewards are commensurate with the risks—and the recent withdrawal of Alameda Point’s anointed developer, Alameda Point Community Partners, shows that complicated projects can sometimes buckle under their own complexity.
    Eight years ago, when incoming Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown declared that he wanted to build housing for 10,000 new residents downtown, it sounded to many people more like electioneering than a viable strategy to reanimate the urban core. After all, when there are more pressing issues—stemming the exodus of businesses, reducing the crime rate, improving the schools—why add more people before you’ve solved your most basic problems?
    But politicians are learning what urban planners have known for decades—that having more people around brings the businesses that support them, from restaurants to movie theaters to nail salons, and these businesses in turn provide the kind of active street scenes people like to be a part of. Density maximizes opportunities for human interaction and minimizes routine trips. Not to mention, denser areas have lower crime rates, higher property values and (counterintuitively to some) are much easier on the environment. Until the early 1960s planners thought they could manufacture these population centers by building civic centers, concrete public squares and wide streets. What everyone learned painfully, and only after the wholesale knocking down of long-established neighborhoods to make way for so-called urban renewal, is that people aren’t attracted to buildings and civic plazas—people are attracted to people. And the best way to attract people is to entice them with the things they want.
    Enter Alameda Point. The former Naval Air Station and its next-door neighbor, the Fleet and Industrial Supply Center, or FISC, employed more than 18,000 people—equivalent to nearly a quarter of the Island’s population—and comprised a third of the land when it was closed in April 1997 as part of President Clinton’s massive 1993 base closure plan, known in typically efficient Navy shorthand as Base Realignment and Closure, or BRAC. Alameda Point was one of many bases closed that year.
    If you were living in Alameda then, you may remember that the city of Alameda reacted strongly against the base closure, fearing that the loss of jobs and population would be catastrophic to the local economy. Not to mention that Alamedans had gotten to know (and often like) their neighbors.
    The year before the base closed, the city adopted a plan that explained in some detail the city’s vision for the future of the property, though it was necessarily light on how those goals would be implemented. This Naval Air Station Alameda Community Reuse Plan was the first to call for the development of a golf course and wildlife refuge on the northwestern point, as well as nearly 2,800 new housing units and the replacement of nearly all the jobs lost when the base closed. To do this, the plan outlined the building of 7 million square feet of commercial space, the equivalent of 78 Bladiums. The plan was distributed with a short, hopeful statement, a heart-gladdening credo intended to guide future development by envisioning the future. Imagine, if you will: “Revenues will have increased, and a healthy local economy will have resulted from the implementation of a coordinated, environmentally sound plan of conversion and mixed-use development. While building upon the qualities which make Alameda a desirable place to live, efforts for improving recreational, cultural, educational, housing and employment opportunities for the entire region will have been successful.”
    It’s a statement filled with optimism, but it’s hard not to see the potential of the site. During a recent tour of Alameda Point, I got out of the car at the air control tower and wandered around on the asphalt. The sky was gray and met the edge of the windswept concrete plain at the water. Grass poked out from the tarmac where the speed limit is still spelled out in cracked white letters for the pilots taxiing out. In a place where houses go for $475 a square foot, it is easy to see how much hope is imbued in the site—2,500 acres of some of the most valuable—though polluted—waterfront property in the country.
    It is sometimes easy to forget that the Bay Area has always had a strong military presence, and it is littered with closed bases and shipyards—Treasure Island, Mare Island, West Oakland, Hunter’s Point and the Presidio. But there is something different about this one. Alameda has always enjoyed the bit of anonymity and exclusivity that comes from wealthy island enclaves located within easy booze-cruise distance of a major city. But now it is trying to step forth, belying its sleepy heritage and fierce no-growth constituents by building tourist attractions—and a water taxi—right across from Jack London Square. By appropriating some of Coronado Island’s more successful tourist-luring tactics, this other former-Naval waterfront neighborhood can become another destination on the Bay Area tourist (or restaurant) circuit. By building it, so they will come.

    Under California law, every city has to have a General Plan, a written document that lays out how the city will accommodate future growth—including transportation, how open land will be protected, how historic buildings will be preserved, and where people are going live. In 2003, Alameda took a bold step when it amended its General Plan with a section to address the new Alameda Point—a 20-page chapter arranged like an urban planning wish list: creating mixed-use environments (housing located above commercial space); striping bike lanes and making extra-wide sidewalks to encourage biking and walking; creating different kinds of neighborhoods so that each has a unique feel; adding generous parks and promenades; and, perhaps most importantly, opening up the water to public access for the first time.
    But the General Plan amendment elegantly sidestepped one of the biggest controversies that raged in the planning in 2006: Measure A. In 1973, the city had a minor rebellion by voting in a charter amendment that was an anti-density measure cloaked as a response to the post-World War II clear-cutting of Victorian and Arts-and-Crafts-style homes to make room for drab apartment buildings that eased the housing crunch on the Island but added nothing to its charm. The measure put a moratorium on multiunit housing, stating simply, “There shall be no multiple dwelling units built in the City of Alameda.” As a charter amendment that was voted in by the people (an “initiative”), it cannot be changed in council chambers but only through another public vote.
    It is a very tender subject for many. There are active citizens’ groups on both sides of the issue, and everyone I interviewed for this article spoke carefully when I asked about it. The measure has bound the reuse plan so far in many ways. For example, historic buildings, of which there are many, cannot be turned into multifamily housing—even former barracks that would be perfect for condos or lofts. The measure restricts townhouses (to no more than two units), mixed-use buildings (to no more than two units above retail) and, of course, residential buildings (no more than two units).
    It is anticipated that the state-mandated study of the environmental repercussions of the project (the Environmental Impact Report, which will be commissioned when a developer takes on the project) will include an additional alternate version that is not bound by Measure A, should the contested measure be overturned in a future election. This version would most certainly include allowing more than two units per building, greater density per acre, multifamily housing over commercial space and refitting historic buildings for residential use.
    Six months after the General Plan amendment was added, the Alameda Reuse and Redevelopment Authority, or ARRA, the city agency charged with managing the redevelopment of the area, hired the San Francisco urban-design firm ROMA Design Group to develop a more in-depth plan for Alameda Point, one that would more specifically guide development. The study, which took a year and a half to complete, is a non-binding “development concept” that was released in February 2006.
    The plan, called the Preliminary Design Concept, or PDC, is a fascinating look at community building (and is available from the ARRA’s Web site, www.alameda-point.com). It outlines three phases of development, with the first ending in 2013 and the last in 2023. There are three main neighborhoods planned, each with its own architectural style, parks, walking paths and community center. The housing is meant to be the largest source of income for the project, which is mandated by the city to be “fiscally neutral”— meaning that it must be able to attract private dollars, which will, in turn, pay for neighborhood services. It does this in part by creating a special Municipal Services District and charging those within it. These fees, which show up in the property tax bill of homeowners and businesses in the district, help pay for upkeep costs, as well as police and fire, says Debbie Potter, the city’s base reuse and community development manager and acting project manager for Alameda Point. “Especially with residential there is typically a gap.” Homeowners at nearby Bayport pay $100 a month with an increase every year.

    Reading the PDC, it is apparent how much aesthetics and lifestyle play into urban design. Planners work on integrating into new developments the subtle elements of neighborhood character that make people prefer one street or park to another. It’s in our DNA, this preference for foliage, wide sidewalks and narrow streets. Throughout the plan, there is an obvious emphasis on getting people out of their homes and into the community, especially on foot or by bike. The new neighborhoods are to be close to a grocery store, so residents can walk to get wine or pick up their laundry. The streets are designed to be narrow, to discourage speeding, and they are lined with street trees that will arch over the road, forming a delicate canopy. Bike lanes are planned everywhere, as well as quiet electric busses that will crisscross the Island.
    The new Town Center on Seaplane Lagoon is a planned transit center for buses and ferries, as well as a retail one, offering 336,000 square feet of space for stores. As one might imagine, it’s planned to be easy to get to, with most of the new developments a 10-minute walk away.
    As shiny new as the development might be, the plan reflects the community’s desire to make the line between the new and the old as blurred as possible. “The term that you hear around here a lot is ‘seamlessly integrate,’ ” says Potter. The final developer will be responsible for developing a master plan that will incorporate these ideas into a plan for building them.

    Much of the planning so far has been influenced by the Navy’s cleanup efforts. Almost 40 sites on the property have been declared Superfund-level toxic sites, with a soup of toxic elements under the tarmac. Pollutants include everything from herbicides and pesticides, to heavy metals and carcinogens like benzene and methylene chloride. It has only been in the last 10 years that the Navy has been cleaning the soil preemptively in bases it still occupies. As a result, for bases recently closed under the BRAC program, “a lot of them are already mostly cleaned up,” says Jill Votaw, a public affairs officer at the BRAC Program Management Office in San Diego. The Navy is responsible for the cleanup at Alameda, as well as its other bases.
    According to Votaw, “The Navy and the Department of Defense really didn’t start cleaning up their bases until the ’90s; we didn’t realize what was required and what was needed. We aren’t making those mistakes again.”
    George Humphreys, community co-chair of the Restoration Advisory Board, a group that acts as a public forum for discussion about cleanup activities between the community and the Navy, concedes that the community doesn’t have much input into cleanup activities and relies on others to monitor it. “Our comments are largely ignored or explained away. We depend on the state and federal agencies to look out for the public interest,” he says. One of the greatest areas of concern for the RAB is the prevalence of polyaromatic hydrocarbons in soil samples at Site 25, beneath the Coast Guard North housing area north of Tinker Avenue and east of Main Street. According to Humphreys, the Navy only removed the top 2 feet of soil, then re-sodded, leaving polluted soil just under the surface. “Unfortunately, the concentration increases as you go down, and so they will restrict residents from digging deeper than 2 feet. I’d feel more comfortable with something like 4 feet.”
    On Sept. 29, 2006, the selected master developer Alameda Point Community Partners withdrew from the project. APCP was responsible for securing entitlements, developing the land and administering a portion of the cleanup. Citing the downturn of the residential real estate market since the beginning of 2006, as well as the $108.5 million price tag the Navy recently put on the property (up from zero), APCP said in its terse letter to the city that “the project is no longer economically feasible, in our estimation, under the terms demanded by the Navy.” The letter also cited volatility in the market for environmental insurance and the demands made by the historic preservation community. According to APCP spokesman Aidan Barry, the additional complexities of both the base transfer and APCP’s part in the cleanup made the risk picture too great to take the next, expensive step: a $7.5 million to $10 million investment in the next two years to secure entitlements on the property.
    This investment “to move forward on a project that [didn’t] make economic sense really put a tremendous strain on the development team,” says Barry. “I think [the developer partners] are fully aware the real estate is cyclical, and this market will come back. They firmly believe the base will be developed, because it’s such a great piece of real estate. The decision ultimately came with ‘the next risk dollars.’ It was just too big of a risk decision based on the current market condition.”
    The same economics that caused APCP to bail out make Alameda Mayor Beverly Johnson pessimistic that another developer will be found willing to take it on. “I’m not overly optimistic,” she says, citing the Navy’s non-negotiable price tag for the polluted land and the downturn in the housing market. But neither does she believe the community is very disappointed. “We need to keep working on this project to get it done, but I really think the attitude of our community is, when it happens, it’ll happen. It’s not on people’s radar screens, getting the base redeveloped. The plans look great, like it would be nice being out there, but I think people are not anxiously waiting and watching for it. I would like to see the base done right, but the biggest obstacle in getting the base moving forward is the environmental cleanup.”
    With APCP out of the picture, the next move is the city’s. The city council voted to go ahead with efforts to woo qualified developers, including issuing a Request for Qualifications—a process that is expected to take until February 2007. If a qualified developer can’t be found, the Navy could consider opening the land to public auction.

COMING SOON

ALAMEDA LANDING TAKES OFF

    Next to Alameda Point and across the Estuary from Jack London Square is the Alameda Landing project. Alameda Point and Alameda Landing are often confused, but they are distinct projects, with different developers, plans and architects.
    Alameda Landing is the loose designation for the 218-acre parcel of land north of the College of Alameda and the Bayport development that straddles Fifth Street on its way to the water. Like Alameda Point, it contains a plan for housing and retail centers, but the biggest draw seems to be the landing itself, 30 acres of waterfront opened up for the first time, with a plaza, retail areas and—to some—an unusual amount of parking.
    Alameda, like Oakland and San Francisco, has recently been taking back its waterfront from over a century of heavy industrial and military use. San Francisco has been redeveloping its piers into restaurants and offices and is beginning the first phase of construction on more than 1,200 homes at the 500-acre Hunters Point Naval Shipyard; Oakland redeveloped a former Naval supply depot into Middle Harbor Shoreline Park and has turned Jack London Square into an economic powerhouse and tourist destination, with condos nearby selling for nearly $900,000; and when Treasure Island is turned over to San Francisco, the city is planning to build it as a model of sustainable development, using solar panels, green materials, a wind farm and design that prioritizes alternative transportation and open space.
    Taken together, these chunks scattered around the bay represent an astonishing opportunity, with the size of the parcels allowing planners to consider “placemaking,” instead of just building buildings. And the sheer value of the land means that while each city has a slightly different take than its neighbors on what form development will take, they all know that develop they must.
    Alameda’s waterfront at the landing is not intended to compete with Jack London Square, its across-the-Estuary neighbor, but to complement it—a water taxi will ferry passengers back and forth. It will be at the head of a waterfront plaza that is meant to attract the kind of restaurants—and clientele—that Alameda already has farther inland. Debbie Potter, Alameda’s base reuse and community development manager, believes this is an idea long in coming. “For an island community, we could use more opportunities to access the water. Back in the day when the military was here, there was a big old fence, and it was off-limits, and people not in the Navy weren’t able to come out here much. Most people really relish the idea; it kind of completes the city.”
    For San Francisco-based Catellus Development Corp., Alameda Landing’s developer, one early success is already in the bag: a tenant. In July 2006, Clif Bar announced tentative plans to move into one of the existing warehouses along the Estuary’s waterfront. While the deal has yet to be signed, the city feels confident that it has its anchor tenant. The building it is slated to occupy is beautiful (if the term can apply to a 10,000-square-foot warehouse), and sits along the water a short walk from the proposed water taxi and plaza. Its ceiling is crisscrossed with stained redwood beams, the happy result of a World War II shortage of steel.
    But Clif Bar might be one of a few companies in the area. When the Project Master Plan for Alameda Landing, put together by Catellus (recently acquired by ProLogis, a Denver-based real estate company), was first approved in 2000, the dot-com boom was nearing its zenith and commercial space was in short supply. The original idea (for both Alameda Point and Alameda Landing) was to have a huge amount of office space. But fast-forward six years, and the demand for office space is down at the same time many residents are asking for more retail space on the island. So the most recent amendment to the plan, written in July 2006, pares down the office space by a third and carves the rest of the space into retail space, a large health club, and up to 300 residential units. Most agree this is a better alternative, one that aligns closer with the modern urban-planning doctrine of “mixing” uses to ensure people are always around, which can eliminate areas empty of people (like typical office parks after quitting time) that could lead to crime or blight.
    “It creates a vibrant development that provides round-the-clock activity,” says Bruce Knopf, vice president of development for Catellus, Alameda Landing’s developer. “Residential and retail and office—only when you mix them do you have an area that is alive 24/7. Otherwise you have something that is like the financial district.”
    Development plans have a kind of inertia to them. Endlessly unfurling for developers, city officials and the concerned public, they are constantly being tinkered with. If they had margins, those white areas around the edge would be scribbled with so many notes and arrows they would resemble a college blue book. Throw in changing economic climates, shifting priorities and heavy metals, and you can begin to understand why it has taken a decade to turn a shovelful of dirt here—and perhaps why Alameda Point was within a hairsbreadth of doing the same.
    But this coming March, development will begin on Alameda Landing’s waterfront promenade, retail areas and the Clif Bar building, with construction beginning later in the year. The first store may open its door in the fall of 2008.
    How will we know if the projects have been successful? Is success measured by whether timelines are met or budgets are still intact? It seems more likely that if the western third of the Island feels like Alameda—if the new is integrated into the old—then everyone wins. It can be a difficult business, imagining what a place will look like when it is, hopefully, filled with people who live and work close by. Other cities try it all the time and fall short, but they aren’t Alameda. Knopf, a planner and resident of the Island for nearly a decade, sees the challenge from both sides. “[Other] suburban communities are trying to recreate—or create—downtowns. They are struggling to create an experience that Alameda already has.”