Has Alameda’s new deal hacked the opposition to Bay Area housing construction?

Although a few hundred units are a drop in the bucket of the Bay Area's seemingly insurmountable housing shortage, the Encinal Terminals deal is evidence of a unique housing development strategy.

On the city of Alameda’s north shore, an abandoned former shipping terminal sits behind a long chain link fence. Home to a dilapidated dock, a few deteriorating buildings and a large pile of dirt, the 32-acre lot has sat empty for a decade–a small piece of forgotten local history.

Known as Encinal Terminals, the empty industrial site is an anomaly in an otherwise dense and bustling community. There’s a neighborhood park just blocks away. Grocery stores and shops are found within a few miles. A protected bike lane leads right up to the fence.

In a Bay Area desperate for housing and open space, it might seem odd that such prime waterfront real estate could sit empty for so long. Now, as a result of a deal brokered between the state of California and Alameda, which was just last week signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom, the property will finally be developed. The plan includes 589 housing units, about 15% of which will be affordable.

Alameda’s housing goals require it to build 5,300 units over the next decade, but new housing proposals are almost always controversial. Residents have concerns about increasing traffic congestion, and the fact that there are only so many lanes on and off the islandcreating anxiety about evacuations in the event of an earthquake. And yet, there was no major local opposition to the Encinal Terminals project.

Alameda’s success with Encinal Terminals is not a result of a shifting mindset in regards to building new housing, said Michael Lane, the State Policy Director of the San Francisco Bay Area Planning and Urban Research Association, a non-profit public policy organization. Lane, who has worked in this field for decades, said housing opposition is as strong as it’s ever been.

“When you have infrastructure that’s already there, you often have neighbors who oppose it,” Lane said. “Anything that changes the existing neighborhood is oftentimes met with opposition.”

But the Encinal Terminals deal is evidence of a housing development strategy that Alameda is employing to counter local opposition to new housing: build on abandoned land.

“People are worried about their neighborhoods, but we have these big vacant sites, so let’s start there,” said Andrew Thomas, Alameda’s Planning Director and Interim Base Reuse Economic Development Director. “We’re doing this in the context of our housing element. People understand we have to find space.”

That reality is apparent across the broader Bay Area. In Berkeley, residents have objected to planned development in a BART parking lot station. On the Peninsula, housing mandates have led to political turmoil in San Mateo City Hall. Wealthy residents of Atherton, including Steph and Ayesha Curry, have objected to zoning that could increase housing density in parts of the town. A recent poll showed that fully one-third of Bay Area residents object to building “significant quantities of new housing”.

That’s why tapping sites that operate outside of the orbit of what residents consider their traditional neighborhoods may head off local opposition. Building on existing sites also help maintain open space and allow developers to create denser, walk and bike-friendly communities — what Lane referred to as an “urban villages.”

“You get a second chance because some of our other earlier developments have been far less pedestrian-friendly,” Lane said.

Still, some housing advocates say that, although Alameda strategy to target low-hanging fruit for development might be the easiest thing to do politically, it’s not necessarily a long-term solution.

Abandoned sites and industrial spaces often require ‘brownfield remediation’ to make them safe to build on, a concern that, in part, torpedoed the planned development of housing on the former Concord Naval Weapons Station. In Alameda, Encinal Terminals will need to be demolished, and for six months gigantic piles of dirt will be left on the site to help compact the soil beneath. Additionally, such sites are also often further from services and parks, presenting an equity challenge for developers.

But most significantly, abandoned spaces are finite–and there aren’t enough to fulfill the state’s housing goals.

“Even if we did develop all our industrial sites, we would eventually run out of them and be back at this crossroads of how do we allow more housing in existing residential neighborhoods,” said Rafa Sonnenfeld, the Policy Director for YIMBY Action, a pro-housing development organization.

Still, many invested in building affordable housing will take the wins where they can find them.

The delay in developing Encinal Terminals was the result of arcane property lines that made comprehensive development plans an impossibility. The terminal was originally carved out of marshland in the 1920s and was one of the first places to use shipping containers.

Although a private developer, Tim Lewis Communities, owned much of the land, because the terminal was originally marsh there was a 6-acre triangle in the middle of the terminal that was designated as ‘tidelands’, which are required to be used only for maritime uses or public open space. The City of Alameda owned these lands in trust from the State of California.

To get around this challenge, the state agreed to rework the property lines to grant the 6 acres to the developer. In exchange, Alameda will receive ownership of the waterfront. The developer is also required to build waterfront parks, which they will also pass along to the city.

The development has been presented as a win-win-win: the public will get waterfront parks and an extension of the Bay Trail, the city makes progress toward their housing goals, and the developers get to develop.

But as the strategy of building on industrial land continues, Sonnenfeld warned that concerns remain. The pockets of resistance to construction that are most fierce are often wealthy residents in high income, high opportunity areas — areas that also tend to have access to parks, trees, clean air, and grocery stores.

Last year, the town of Woodside in San Mateo County tried to declare itself a mountain lion sanctuary as part of an effort to avoid building affordable housing.  If new housing developments are forced to avoid these areas, future residents miss out on those benefits.

“Our whole grassroots movement is trying to combat this exclusionary housing policy that is sort of the status quo,” Sonnenfeld said. “Even if it’s the hardest thing to do politically.”