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Alameda City Council 12/17/2024
Transcript Are you ready? Okay. Good. Alright. Alright then. Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the city council of Alameda. Today is Tuesday, December 17, 2024. And, I'm about to call I am calling the meeting to order. And we're gonna start with a special city council meeting, which is a closed session. And I would like to ask the city clerk, Laura Weisinger, to please call the roll at this time. Vice Mayor Jasag. Here. Council member Hara Spencer. Present. Mayor Ezea. Here. 3 present. And, hopefully, the other 2 council members will get here shortly. Hopefully. Alright. So at this time, we take public comment on closed session items only. Madam Cook, do you wanna introduce what those items are before we take the public comment? Performance evaluation and 3 b is potential litigation. Alright. Thank you. And do we have public comment? We do. Alright. Estella Villagrana. Welcome. Hello, everyone. I'm here in person for the first time. I tried to speak, on the phone a long time ago. And, the reason why I'm here is in my last intent to save my business, which is building 43 Winery. I am building 43 winery, not Todd. Todd is not building 43 winery. And my business is suffering and is about to be shut down by the city, leaded by the mayor because of what Todd doing in his personal or personal label. He's doing whatever he's doing, challenging the sequel against the city again in his personal level. So I met with city staff last week and my last intent or 1 of my intents to save my business. But it did, you know, seems to me that they didn't have the power to offer any help, any support, and I'm here. I sent earlier a letter to all of you. So I just wanna make sure that you guys received the letter and you had the opportunity to read the letter or if you have a couple of minutes before you go into closed session to read that letter, do so, please. And I just hope that I get the same support from the city as Project Burger did at the time. And you all know the help that you guys give Project Burger because I was here when you guys made that decision. So I hope that I will get the same support, not less, from the city. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker, Todd Hickman. Welcome, speaker Hickman. So I'm just gonna talk today on what I've seen and how shameful I think it is the way that the city has treated Ms. Villagrana. Building 43, they've tried to get at me me and my personal hobbies of filing CEQA lawsuits. I mean I just love CEQA. I love the environment. It's my own personal crusade. I love historic districts. I just can't get enough of historic districts particularly military bases. It's a big part of my life and it's just, you know, how I'm gonna spend, the rest of my life is on being a historic, particularly with relation to, naval bases, a preservationist. And it's just something that I'm enthralled with and something that I'm gonna do, so I'm not gonna be stopped. You know, I have, you know, several other, things that I do as well but, you know, Miss Viagrana, this is all that she has is this business it's her business it's not my business. So the way you've treated her the harassment what the mayor said publicly I mean quoted by the, Alameda Post, we have evidence of what she's done through what I call her minions. These, public, participants in her crusade, to try and shut down building 43 and what she's told them to do. The 100 of 1 star Yelp reviews, telling people how to get at us or try to get at me. And again, none of it really worked because I'm just picking up steam and now as you notice I'm more encouraged than ever. I'm just not gonna stop. And Mr. Shen, I mean, you know, I thought we were gonna be tight, you know, having a beer after work and stuff and you've just let me down. You failed to reign in the mayor. You failed to perform to your lawyer's oath. You committed felonious fraud on 2 judges, a warrant representing the people of the state of California and inspection warrants as the municipal attorney, the landlord's attorney, and you're committing a felony telling a judge that you're gonna represent the people of the state of California? Are you ******* kidding me, mister Shen? Are you ******* kidding me? My, oh, my. This has got a ******* stop up in here. Enough of this ****. You people have ******* lost concept with reality and how this really works. This is not how government service works. I've been there. I've been there. I've been on all sides of government service, and this is not how it works. So what you have done is scandalous. What you've done is illegal. What you've done, you are going to pay for. So I hope you're smug. I hope you've had a good time sitting up there smirking. I hope you've had a real, real good time because the party's coming to an end. Kinda like that, like that Natel party you had all scheduled, last week, you know, at the hearing, you know, that party you had all set up, all those people watching. And your time is up. Thank you. Our next speaker? We don't have any more speakers. Okay. With that, we will close public comment on closed session items. And, we will adjourn to closed session to, consider the matters that do you wanna read them more fully? 3 a is public employee performance evaluation pursuant to government code section 54957. Positions evaluator city attorney Yves Shen. 3 b is conference with legal counsel potential litigation, potential initiation of litigation pursuant to government code section 5495.9 subsection D4. Number of cases 1 as plaintiff's city initiating legal action. Potential defendant, Steel Town Winery, LLC DBA, Building 43 Winery. Thank you. Alright, everyone. We will be back by 6:15. Thank you. Okay. Everyone involved We're good. And we're good. Yeah. Oh, what's that? I said a few things. You're the 1 who didn't hear that. All right. If everyone could, give us your attention. I am going to call the meeting back to order and good evening, everyone and welcome to the Alameda City Council meeting this evening is Tuesday, December 17, 2024, last City Council meeting of the year. And the City Council has just returned from closed session. And, I would like to start with the announcement of action taken in closed session. So on item 3A, which was public employee performance evaluation for the city attorney position, The council voted on the process that we will follow. It was a 4 to 1 vote with council member Herrera Spencer voting no. And then I will go on to the city clerk for the report out on item 3b. 3b which is regarding potential litigation. Staff provided information and council provided direction. Also by 4 ayes with council member Horace Spencer voting no. Alright. Thank you for that. And with that we will adjourn the, closed session. And I will call to order the special city council meeting. And I'd like to start with the pledge of allegiance. Council member Harris Spencer, may I call upon you to lead us in the pledge? To rise. Yes. You're able. Ready to begin. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, 1 nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you, council member Herrera Spencer. And, now we will go to roll call, madam clerk. Would you call the roll, please? Yes. Vice mayor Dason? Here. Council members Herrera Spencer? Present. Jensen? Here. Bella? Here. Mayor Izzy Ashford? Here. 5 present. Did you get a call? Yes. Okay. Yes. Alright. I'm sorry. Sorry. Miss Dimmel? Alright. So now we, move on to the consent calendar. And I'm going to call, first on, the city clerk, Laura Weissinger. And I just like to announce that tonight, staff is requesting 2Q, which is the resolution approving a final map, be withdrawn and it will return at a later date. So we're withdrawing 2Q. Okay. And then are there any, consent calendar items that the council would like to pull? Any pulls from council? Okay. I have a pull. I'm going to pull item 2 f, f as in Frank. Okay. So then, before we go to public speakers, does council have any questions on the remaining items, the balance of the consent calendar that isn't pulled? No questions. Okay. Then we will go on to public comment. Madam Clerk, public comment on We have none. Consent calendar. We will close public comment. And Right here, we have 1. Last meeting of the year will just be magnanimous. Madam Clerk, do we have public comment? Yes. Todd Hickman. Alright. And that would be mister Hickman? Okay. Welcome. So in relation to 2 o, there's 30 days to appeal that. I believe there's a large contingency that's growing, and I don't think that that should be accepted on that. So I think that is an issue. I think we had election interference and potentially federal election fraud as we had a crime committed against an elected official and elected council member. So, hopefully, we are still gonna get to the bottom of that. 2 f. Oh, I think that did get pulled....
Alameda City Public Art Commission 12/16/2024
Transcript You may also submit written comments to me by emailing me at jkeliiaa atalamedaca.gov. Comments submitted during the meeting before the conclusion of public comments section will be read into record. My email address is also on the meeting's agenda. If a remote participant is having difficulty, I suggest that you call using the number 669-444-9171, and meeting ID 896-4208 1044. This information is also at the top of the agenda. People participating via telephone have to please press star 9 to raise your hand, and star 6 to unmute. For For in person participation, a speaker slip must be submitted to speak on any item. There are speaker slips located over there on the chair with with pins. If the commissioner would like to speak, please physically raise your hand, and the chair will acknowledge your request. That chat function has been turned off. Alright. Thank you. Okay. The meeting is now called to order. The time is 6:0:5 pm. Roll call. Commissioner Liz Rush? Present. Commissioner Robert Ferguson? Present. Commissioner Peter Plotsgumer? Present. Commissioner Lisa Martin, absent. Commissioner James Martin, absent. Staff members, Jackie, present. And Duane Dahlman. Present. All right. Hey, comments from the audience may concern matters either on or not on the agenda, but must deal with matters subject to the jurisdiction of the Public Arts Commission. Comments will be limited to 3 minutes. Comments concerning matters on this evening's agenda will be heard when that item is called. Halia'a, do you have any items to read into the record? Public comments? Yes. I do have a public comment from Rachel Campos de Ivanoff. And rate oh, sorry. You can actually come over here and speak because we would like to for your comments to be recorded. This guy? What are you so you're in the as long as you're in the, the frame, you can you can speak here. Hi. Rachel Campos de Eignoff. I am a board member of the Westin Earth District, and I'm also staff for Radium. And Jeff wanted to share a quick update about a wonderful event that we hosted this past weekend, which was called Capture the King Tides. This was a collaborative effort with Westin Arts District, Radium, NASA, Greenbelt Alliance. We braved the wind, the rain, power outfits. Wow. 40 mile an hour away and miraculously 25 people showed up for a free iPhone photography workshop. And it was a wonderful collaboration of being able to highlight through an artistic lens the work that the city is doing, for climate adaptation. So this was a quick pop up event that we did as part of the rising tides project and as a warm up to, a bigger initiative that would be coming in May called In Plain Sight that will be happening at Radium, which is again, also part of the Rising Tides initiative. So that program will be scheduled starting May 9th for about 3 weeks. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Raise your hand if you'd like to provide public comments unrelated to an item on the agenda. Is there anyone else who wishes to speak? All right. That brings us to the regular agenda. Okay. Which is to review and approve the October 21st, draft pack minutes. Commissioners? No objection. Okay. That is approved as written. Do you have any other motion? Yeah. I think we do. Yes. I motion we approve the minutes as written. Okay. Okay. Approve. K. Review and approve the September 18th draft packed minutes. I have no changes. Because I think I'm barking too much in these briefings. I motion to, approve, the Minutes as written. Great. Both are done. All right. All right. Regular agenda items. First up, Alameda Recreational and Parks Department, Aquatic Park, Public Art Opportunity Presentation. Yes, please. And then I'm gonna go ahead and share our screen. Off the screen. And make sure you introduce yourself. I will. My name is Patrick Ressy. I am the recreation manager. I'm also joined by Stacy Thomas, a aquatic specialist, in our department. Well, I want to thank you guys all for coming out and listening to this presentation. I think it's gonna be really great opportunity for the Public Art Commission. Little known fact, the Public Art Commission did start in the recreation department when it first started. Many, many years ago. In fact, I was the staff person in charge of it back then. So, so as you may or may not know, hopefully, you do know that we are going to be creating a new first ever Alameda Aquatic Center, in on the footprint of what is the Gene Sweeney open space preserved park. It's, we've never had a facility in Alameda. We've always shared facility with the school district or with other nonprofits. So we're quite excited to finally have a facility that we can use, as much as possible. Because when for many years, we only had access to pools, for 8 weeks during the summer. And now we are going, year round. Especially COVID kinda changed things and opens the world up to alternative schedules. And so now we're we have an aquatic need to go year round. People wanna swim year round. They wanna use it as exercise. So, like, so we're really excited. And it's most exciting is this is gonna be an all electric 0 greenhouse gas emission demonstration project that, we're working with, many city departments, especially AMP, who's gonna be helping, do some demonstration, things out of the facility. So we'll provide it. So if you're familiar with Gene Sweeney, it's a 26 Acre Park. This is the far West side of Gene Sweeney Park, on the corner of Constitution and Atlantic is that's where you see the Atlantic up there. So the that is what it currently exists there now. I don't think it looks as nice as that, but, that's, what exists there now. We do have some public art there already. If you look down below, right above the Gene Sweeney, there is a, right there. Thank you. Is the, Mormon, California, the tides of California, Mesa California, totem poles that are there. Mhmm. Gene Sweeney actually does have several, public art pieces in it, which is super nice, and I think, adds to the element of the park. So, that's the footprint of what's going to become the aquatic center, but now let's see what the vision is for the aquatic center. So that's what the aquatic that space is going to occupy. We are quite excited about it, and we've had lots of we've had many, many, many public meetings and, many, debates back and forth about what what how it was gonna come out. And so this was very, very publicly vetted. And we feel that this is is the best, facility that we're gonna move forward with. And this is the 1 that we're we're getting designs out with, and eventually we'll have an RFP going out, hopefully next year at some point. Right? Tracy. So what I do think though, if you see that, it it lends itself for a great opportunity for some public art to be infused into the project. And if you click to the next slide, is we we kind of identified some areas that will be really great opportunities. We anticipate over a 175 to 200000 people coming to this facility, each year. So it's gonna be highly visible. And I think it'll be a great opportunity to showcase public art. And it also gives an opportunity, in my personal opinion to give, 1 of the major thoroughfares of Alameda, some sort of gateway art piece that I think has been missing. So that the 1 on the far left where it says gateway, that is, again, it's it's a little bit farther away from the facility. But right now, if you drive down there, all you see is a little bench out there that says Jean Sweeney on it. And, and I think there were lots of different plans over the years and it was eventually going to be built out, but this gives us an opportunity to put a signature piece, right there as as everyone goes by there. It's a major, venue place. And that and that could go lots of different ways. I mean, obviously, it's it could be an an access point. It could be, you know, something, that incorporates both aquatic and gene swinging in it. I think that gives it a good a good spot. I will move over to the out to the far right where the plaza is. That's gonna be as people are coming in from the parking lot. And I think that's that would be a nice signature, public art, a place for a good public art piece, welcoming people or however wanted to. I think there's good opportunities, to be out there. And remember this facility again is, being, used also by AMP as a demonstration facility for their 0 emissions, transmissions. The other 2 places, a little bit different and a little bit, not necessarily pieces, but, the wind wall is a wall that is gonna be partially a wall and then partially a fence that goes up in some places to 10 feet and then some at 15 depending on the elevation. And I think there was some opportunities to share a story of aquatics or to do something within the fencing. Do you wanna, the, I forget the tech terminal technology of it, but I've seen where they, they take the metal fences and they do artwork sketch on it. They Punch out. Punch out. Thank you. I the technical word. And I think we're gonna see some and then the last opportunity is, the green tree those green circles are trees, but they don't exist now. I mean, I I mean, they're not they're a little there's a few of them there, but not many. But they're the back wall of the, the building right there will also be facing, the street of the Atlantic. And so that also gives another opportunity for a mural style or some of the public art that could go along there. You know, so I think it it gives an opportunity, many opportunities for public art. And I think it, it also be a good showcase for public art because I think the amount of attention that they get here, because again, unless you are, I I know Liz, you're a really regular park person and you're going into the parks. Some of the public art pieces are in places where people just don't get to experience them as much. Like those columns. Yes. Well, so the beauty of the on that, of the columns, actually, I think the columns will get better exposure because the they're gonna be doing that pathway that goes below it. Yeah. We'll open up right now. It's not open. So that will be a pathway that goes across the the, the call the columns all the way to the street of Atlantic. That'd be wonderful. So and and that's the plan on on a couple of those. Even the 1 that I think the other public art was down closer. There's a mania and that have cut through, and I think goes out to the egg in in Marina Village, in that area. So I think I just think it's it's gonna be a showcase. It's it's gonna be very visible because it's, you know, you get a lot of traffic many ways down there. The potential partnerships with the college and bringing kids over from the college and doing some things over there with maybe our program or maybe with their swimming, making a lot of doing swimming with the college, probably because the college doesn't have a pool, we'll bring the students over. So I think it'll be a a a facility that's gonna be used by both youth, teens, college, adults. You know, the I mean, the biggest complaint that we've gotten over the years, the consistency. We don't have the ability to do consistent programming, and now that'll give us the ability to do consistent programming. So the exposure of this is just gonna be multiplied. So that's that's kind of a a a rendition of what the and you can kinda see the the the wall. It kinda goes up with the perforated thing and then, where the street was. There's, you know, where the entryway and then the there's a little blue marker down there, I think, where the plaza where I was talking about earlier and the wall. So that's 1 of the architectural designs of all the files that hopefully, it'll be very similar to this. I can't I never looked at the design and say that's the Oklahoma because it never ends up being that that way. But, we will build out the parking lot on the 1 side, because it will be a facility that will need parking on that....
Alameda City Planning Board 12/16/2024
Transcript And we're calling the meeting to order at exactly 7 o'clock. We'll go ahead and do the flag salute. Board member Luis, can you lead us, please? Yes, sir. I pledge allegiance to the flag of all, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Okay. And moving on to the agenda, item number 1, roll call. Good evening. Board member Hamm? Here. Board member Hsu? Here. Board member Ruiz? Here. Board member Bridal? Here. Board member Wang? Here. Board member Suhayba? Present. And president Cisneros? Here. We, have a quorum. All are present. Okay. Great. Thank you. Next agenda item is agenda changes. Anyone from the board or staff, any proposed, changes? Seeing none, we'll keep it as is. Item number 3, non agenda public items. If anyone from the public would like to speak on an item that's not on the agenda, you're welcome to come up now and speak for 3 minutes. Are there any speakers? I don't have any speaker slips, and I don't see any hands raised on Zoom. Okay. Thank you. Moving on to agenda item number 4, consent calendar. We have the draft meeting minutes. If, there's any items that need to be pulled, now is the opportunity to do so. No? I'm not seeing any. Okay. I will note I will note there were 3, members absent from the meeting, and so, the 4 of you that were there could vote to approve the minutes. Okay, great. I should open it up for public comment, right? Any public comments on the consent calendar item? Seeing none. Okay. Does, anyone want to make a motion? I can move to approve. Okay. And, I'll abstain. Well, I'll second the motion. Okay, great. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. I'll abstain to. Oppose abstentions? Yes, I abstention. Okay. All right. Motion carries. Okay. Great. Moving on to regular agenda items. 5 a, which is, the update is a workshop on the update for the Alameda Point EIR, design guidelines for new infill development. ESSF presentation. Good evening, President Cisneros and members of the planning board. Brian Maguire, planner 2 here to present, essentially a staff update, but we wanted to agendize this to give the board a chance to, provide any comments and the public a chance to comment since we did some work on this item earlier this year, on the EIR requirement to adopt guidelines for new infill development within the NAS Alameda Historic District. A little bit of background. Back in February 2014, the city council approved the Alameda Point project. This involved 4 key actions, to guide the reuse and redevelopment of the base. Certified the final environmental impact report, adopted a general plan amendment, adopted the Alameda Point zoning code as well as a master infrastructure plan for Alameda Point. The EIR lays out mitigation measures to reduce the severity of impacts, environmental impacts, when possible. 1 such EIR mitigation requires that the city adopt guidelines for new infill development prior to constructing new buildings within the historic district. There are many, many in-depth high quality reports and plans by both the Navy and the city, over the years that contain contain guidance for consideration when adding new buildings and other development in the historic district. Most relevant to tonight's discussion are the 1997 guide to preserving the character of the NAS Alameda Historic District, commonly referred to as the guide, and the 20 2012 cultural landscape reports. Earlier this year, staff began developing draft infill design guidelines in consultation primarily with the HAB but also the planning board. At the same time, we were reviewing the early plans for the performing arts center project, which we'll hear more about later. After that separate deep dive into the, existing reports and guidelines, it's become clear that already adopted guidelines are sufficient for complying with the EIR mitigation requirement. Thanks to previous Navy conveyance requirements when they gave us the land, in 1999, the city was required to formally adopt the guide as city policy and then in 2013, this is sort of, you know, I call it sort of the lost resolution. It, happened before the Alameda Point project was approved but, after the federal nomination, in the wake of that nomination, the city council was required to amend the 1997 guide to include 20 pages of design review guidelines for the historic design landscape excerpted from the cultural landscape report, which is Exhibit 1 attached to your staff report. That action is key because it upgraded the guide to include infill design guidelines for new buildings. Previously the guide mostly focused on the reuse and rehabilitation of the existing in the historic district. So that brings us back to 2014, and the approval of the Alameda Point project. At the same time the EIR was certified city council adopted the Alameda Point zoning district rules which included this provision called NES Alameda Historic District guidelines. It requires all new construction in the historic district to be consistent with the guide as amended. If you didn't know about that 2013 resolution, you might, that as amended part might go unnoticed like it did for me for a while. Since the guide to preserving the character was amended a full year before the certification of the EIR and adoption of the zoning ordinance, it was not immediately clear to current staff, hi, that the infill design guidelines from the cultural landscape report had already been formally adopted into the Alameda Point zoning code. By incorporating the amended guide directly into the zoning, city council ensured compliance with this mitigation measure from the start. So where does that leave us? For the Waterfront Town Center and Main Street neighborhoods shown in pink and purple here, we have adopted specific plans to augment the underlying design guidelines from the cultural landscape report and the guide. For the adaptive reuse district shown in green here, there's not currently a specific plan. Most of the contributing buildings from the historic district are here as well as character defining features of the historic landscape like the the the mall sort of in front of City Hall West, the large parade grounds, I believe they're mostly referred to as. So we're likely to see much less infill development in this area. Most of what we'll see would be the reuse of existing buildings like storehouse lofts you saw last week, things like the Almanac and Rake, Firebrand and Kairos type projects. As for the work that was started this year, trying to create a guide to the guides, so to speak. Staff will continue to work on creating a user friendly, visually attractive tool as part of our work program and bring that back to you at some point in the future. I'm happy to answer any questions, hear public comment, take any additional feedback you might have tonight. We're not asking for any action as part of this update. Great. Thank you much for the presentation. Before we open up for public comment, any clarifying questions from the board? Seeing none, thank you so much. I'll open up for public comment. Any speakers? I don't see any hands raised, and I don't have any speaker slips on this item. Okay. Great. Closing, public comment, and, go ahead and open up to the board for any, comments or, feedback regarding this update. Board member Holmes. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for the staff report. And I couldn't understand how complex this issue is. I don't give you a Give you a Yeah. A lot of pages. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of different documents. This is more a question if I try to ask it, I guess, under questions. But based on the staff report and what your presentation, covered, it sounds like the cultural landscape report, the guidelines that were adopted into the zoning code, those are the primary guideline that covers all of Alameda Point. And then there's specific guidelines related to each specific plan that might be like a supplemental or that they're kind of they pertain to a smaller geographical area, project specific guidelines. What about the state, historic, guidelines? Are those incorporated or reflected in the cultural guidelines at all? Or they another set of guidelines that that the city needs to be aware of that is in addition to the cultural landscape guidelines? Are you referring to, like, the secretary of interior standards? Yeah. Yeah. The yeah. Secretary of interior standards also SHPO standards. So are those incorporated by reference or otherwise into the cultural landscape guidelines? I I defer to Steve on the SHPO aspect of it. I think the secretary of interior standards, I I can confidently say, are, guidelines that we're required to follow when, taking on projects that within the historic district. In order to get a certificate of approval from the historical advisory board, they have to find that it's consistent with those guidelines, but anything you wanna add to that? No, that's right. I, it's it's, 1 of the mitigation measures, which again is a little confusing because then it's also just put in the zoning code. When the zoning was adopted, they just threw everything into the code as a as a development standard. So, yes, those are adopted and, guidance for the HAB. Okay. So when so when you develop the checklist or the so those will reflect the requirements, the National Historic Preservation requirement? Absolutely. The Secretary of Interior Standards are referenced in, 13 dash 21 in the historic preservation ordinance. So separate from the zoning but it's it's in the code and we would definitely wanna include that as part of the the universe of materials that future applicants, board members and staff would would need to be, referencing when bringing projects forward. Okay. So the way how I'm envisioning this, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, there'll be these general guidelines pertains to the Alameda Point, and then there'll be these sub area guidelines that will pertain to each, specific plan or precise plan area. Yeah. Is that what you're thinking? Yeah. You can imagine sort of a checklist. The specific plan areas overlap the historic district but they actually cover a lot of area outside the historic district guidelines. So, like, the waterfront town center covers the area, you know, like, east of Pan Am, basically, and along the Seaplane Lagoon, but mostly it covers everything from site A, like, that was previously developed along West Atlantic, those townhomes and apartment buildings there which are not in the historic district. So it's kind of, you know, it's like, okay, where am I? And then you got to sort of figure out which boxes apply to you. So you're gonna have a nice map that will show all these district boundaries. Okay. Thanks. Great. Any other, comments or questions? Board Member Wang? Yeah. Thanks for the thanks for the presentation. So so I'm understanding that the guide to the guides that you're currently working on is really just a crosswalk between the mitigation measure and the requirements that you already have codified in the zoning code. Right? Yeah. I think you could you could think of it as sort of like a a really big handout for that we would have in the permit center for people who want to build an ADU. Here's your 5 page handout on things you need to be thinking about for development and within the historic district we would we would have something obviously much more robust sort of, to present all of this different information and and help them pull the key pieces that you're likely to need but also sort of as a roadmap for where they need to go for further, investigation. Right. So at this point it seems more like a practical tool than really generating a new document of substance. I'm I'm curious whether you're gonna require an action from the planning board when you when you finalize this document. I think that's a good question. I defer to Steve. I don't think it necessarily depending on what form it takes, we'll definitely want to come to this, to the planning board and the historical advisory board, to provide input on it but since it's really just a sort of a tool and it's it's, you know, sort of supplementing the adopted guidelines, it doesn't necessarily, you know, we don't really feel the need like we would absolutely have to readopt it since it's really just referring to existing adopted plans. So it would feel a little redundant potentially. But we definitely wanna make sure everyone is comfortable with what that finished product looks like because it is really complicated set of, guidelines and and documents to sort through. Thanks. Thank you. And measure, requirements. So I thank you for doing that, research, and looks like it'll come back to us once it's ready to be all packaged up. So, thank you for the work and the update. Great. With that we will move on to item 5 B, which is, to look at the little opera house, project. This is a workshop. So, is there a staff presentation for this? Hello again. Lehi a lot of me tonight. No time no see. Hi again....
Alameda City Mayor’s Economic Development Advisory Panel/Economic Recovery Task Force 12/11/2024
Transcript Agenda item for oral communication public. If the public would like to comment on an item, please email Eric Fonstein at efonstein@alamedaca.gov. Comments submitted during the meeting before the conclusion of the public comment section will be read into the record. If the public would like to comment and has called in by phone, please dial 9 to raise your hand. Comments from the audience may concern matters either on or not on the agenda, but must deal with matters subject to the jurisdiction of the mayor's economic development advisory panel. Comments will be limited to 3 minutes. Comments concerning matters on this evening's agenda will be heard when that item is called. Eric, do we have any speakers or comments? So far, no. It's, even though it looks like we don't have any questions. It's not easy. Yeah. Which brings us to the consent calendar. We have nothing on the consent calendar, so we'll move to regular agenda items. Tonight's agenda item 6 a is an update on the Alameda Point Piers and the Alameda Maritime BlueTech strategy. Before I turn it over to Abby, just a reminder on how we proceed. First, Abby will give a staff presentation followed by clarifying questions from from the panel, followed by public comment. And then at the close of public comment, there'll be a time for a panel member discussion. Abby? Thank you. Good evening, everybody. I'm pleased to be here and I'm very pleased to have a special guest speaker tonight presenting on the Pierist and Maritime Strategy, Ron Golomb. Ron has been an economic and real estate consultant for and and well, in the economic and real estate world for many, many years. Most recently was the director of, real estate real estate at VTA down in the South Bay, and was a long for a long, long time, consulted at Bay Area Economics before then and is now hung out on some shingle very luckily for us. So we have a lot of really decent real estate and economics experience. And Ron has been doing a lot of background analysis that he'll present to you tonight, for our discussion. So you wanna take it away, Ron? I will. Thank you. I'm gonna say it here. Say it. Say it again. Okay. We could do it then. Second here. I need to my machine will be in sync here. Okay. Okay. So thank you for the time introduction. As I already mentioned, I've been working for about 3 decades in creating public private partnerships, really advanced economic development as well as sort of, brutalization. And I've worked on about a half dozen base closure projects. So it's a lot of, interesting experience along the way. Who put this in the presentation? I see it's not a PDF. Right? Sorry. No. That's Hi. Good. So what we'd like to do tonight is and what you saw in the packet is, you saw both the staff report and then you saw the detailed draft, strategy for maritime and blue tech uses that's prepared by Geis Hommerston. So what I'm gonna do is go ahead and kind of give a very high level overview and then really post some questions that hopefully will set the stage. And, obviously, what we're excited about is really getting your input and expertise to help us think about how to sharpen the thinking that we're doing and the work that we're doing. So what I'm gonna talk about tonight are gonna be the opportunities for the peers of waterfront at Avian Point. I'm gonna touch on the challenges that we have because of the conditions and flooding needs. I'm gonna talk about some of the potential strategies to advance maritime fleet type uses. And I do wanna note that while we're focused on the working waterfront, which you see on the graphic that we have here, as well as what we're calling sort of a maritime blue tech area behind it, where we have a number of tenants in the maritime center already, this area is adjacent to the enterprise district. And, obviously, there's also opportunities we think for synergies between what's envisioned for the enterprise district and really those types of businesses and what's happening here. And so, again, what this is really all about is getting your guidance, to help shape our thinking about what should be the priorities and actions that have to be taken. We have a good sign on. That's the challenge is now we have to figure that out. Is this development, can I ask a question? How do I do that? Is this, the development of a new specific plan or an additional specific plan for Illumina Point? Or I think at this point, it's not so much a land use exercise in terms of thinking about specific plan. It's really more on strategy in terms of economic development, which is what are the kinds of uses we wanna track? What's the sector that we wanna try to create and build upon here? And so it's really a little focus in that direction. That's not to say that there wouldn't be perhaps a specific line down the road, but I think we're a little bit early in the process than that. Can I augment a little bit, that that it's really more of an investment sort of at some point the city is going to have to make financial decisions about the pier? So it's an investment plan, but also I think policy decisions that Ron will go over that are not yet, as LeBron said, not land use, but more of just just more real estate policy. So that's more of the feedback we're looking for as we get. Great. So I think a good place to start is really to think about what is the competitive advantage that was Alameda? And, you know, it doesn't say it very simply, what we have at Alameda Point, which is Okay. Which is, you know, there's there's only a few number of place to be here that have this, but we have a working waterfront that's able to accommodate various maritime uses. We don't have a facility that's foreign in towards cargo like Port of Oakland, but we do have a facility that's a lot of really support a broad range of other maritime, cable tech activities. The fact that we're adjacent to the Port of Oakland is a huge advantage in terms of support activities that cannot be accounted important and have been here in the past. The fact that we're also on the other side of Alameda Point from base shipping yacht, from a functioning working shipyard that works with all kinds of garment and fire ships is also another big advantage. This is not something we're talking about creating from scratch. We already have a dozen maritime blue tech tenants at Alameda Point, so we have a cluster here already. This is really a discussion about how we grow and expand the cluster cluster to really help fulfill goals for for Alameda Point. And it's also worth noting that we have available buildings and sites that are both available for reuse as well as new development. And really and this is where it ties into the city's economic development strategic plan. This is about how can we support the city's goals for job and business creation and workforce development when we think there's real opportunities in maritime, in Bluetech sector. The graphic you see shows, well, simply, in peers 1, 2, and 3. Although, obviously, we have significant current uses such as the USS Hornet, you can see him in peer 3, power engineering at peer 1. Pier 2 is not in use at all. I'll sort of have that more embedded. But we have some pretty substantial unused per assets. And as you can see in line with that, we have a pretty fair amount of land in our buildings. And, of course, we have the the SF Ferry, formerly known as WIDA. We have their maintenance and operations facility. So just to talk briefly about what we have already happening at, Alameda Point. So maritime needs to include merit, not the shifts, but some warehouse and support activities they have. NASA navigation, we have Banner Sea Republic Services that supports, maritime, firms. We have power engineering, you know, we have the asset Bay Fair. We also have some significant recreational waterfront uses, the US Department Museum, the LME Utility Center, as well as Tech Adventure. And then BluTech, which I'll talk about in a minute, but really more research and development oriented uses that we have, including door marine, mangrove boats, Kite Concepts, and Pansail drone. And these are facilities that only use the piers at Alameda, but they're actually using the seaplane, specifically the seaplane, ramps as well as the small dock that's over there. So the images on the right are really trying to show 2 things. On the upper image is really giving you another view to show you the piers and the relationships, the land, and the the buildings that are cut up behind them. And in all, we have about half dozen buildings, and we have 20 acres of land that could potentially support a broad range of maritime, and and blue tech activities. How far east does the land area extend for this? For discussion, really, if you look at kind of Orion Street here, this is the dividing line where these are really maritime blue tech uses that are on this side of of Rhine Street, whereas on this area, on the other side of Rhine, it's really Enterprise District. And if you saw the city council presentation a couple months ago, that was when the boundary tour was talked about parcels and phasing. But I also wanna touch on another issue that's really significant for this, and that's the public lands, public trust restrictions. So as true in all of our products in California, what you see in this area, midshaded green, I realize it's a little bit weak, but you can see the areas that identify as part of the public trust where there's actually restrictions on what can go to those areas. And those restrictions are really oriented towards preserving, you know, maritime uses, public access, and so on. And so really about 6 acres of the area we're talking about is already in the public trust. In a lot of ways, and this is kind of 1 of the considerations, is that 1 of the challenges that we appoint is that per policy, you know, the city really has to get fair market value for when it's supposed to properties because the need raised funding for infrastructure or if it has to happen to to allow the plan to be implemented. When you look in this area, because of the use restriction on maritime because of public trust, that actually supports lower land value. Since a lot of ways, it kind of also makes this area a better fit for a lot of maritime and BlueTech uses because it really does support lower value than potentially lower rent than you would than the sea would have to realize in the parts of of that viewpoint per the current policies. So I've talked about the piers in waterfront, but as I mentioned, it's also worth noting what's happening with Seaplane View. And, you know, the key thing about the Seaplane View is that and this goes back to the current plan from your point. This is the area that's really seen as public access to public faces with a lot of uses They're focusing public activity here to really protect the piers and more working waterfront environment that is not necessarily as as open or as accessible by the public. So going back to the town center and waterfront precise plans that are adopted, the eastern side is envisioned as, this area here is envisioned as a mixed use urban waterfront development. So basically, think about mixed use residential with ground floor chimney voices. Pardon? No. You touched that. Can you dance? Oh, sorry about that. Oh, sorry about that. Hang on. Oh, boy. So what I see here is really, mixed use development where you have, you know, retail, restaurants, commercial activities, and places plugged into the waterfront with residential use of weather. On the north side, you have new new waterfront product. I'm sure you see the first piece there that was part of parcel layout. You have a new urban waterfront, that really is kind of a public area for people to enjoy the And, obviously, part of that is gonna be thinking about how to preserve the use of the seaplane ramp by the tenants who are in the hangars. What you also see in this graphic, and the rest is a little washed up here, is what the plant envisions is additional development between that waterfront pond and the existing hangars. And then finally, on the western side, what you see is kind of all goals for habitat restoration and passive recreation. So now I'm gonna get to the nitty gritty bouts, really the challenge that we face here. When we talk about sort of the piers in the waterfront area, we have some really substantial costs for both improvements and repairs and ongoing operations. The city simply doesn't have the funds to to cover. The graph that you see here is a picture of a damaged pile at Pier 2. You can see the pile shear. There's a lot of these at Pier 2, which is why it's been closed to large ships there. Lesser issues than the other piers, but, you know, I think as folks appreciate, the maritime environment is an incredibly corrosive environment. And anything that is in the water requires a lot of ongoing maintenance to really be, say, in an operating condition. So the most immediate issue that we're thinking about is dredging. And so you may be aware that Mara lehi a couple of years ago because their ships were large enough that they were getting a little concerned about was it an assurance for their ships to range to pier too. You know, when the navy was here for the aircraft carriers, they need about 35 to 40 feet of draft for those ships. We don't have that anymore. According to studies that we've done in the past, pure areas sold something about 6 inches per year and a train base in about a foot a year. And so if you do the math, you can realize maybe another 10 to 15 years, we could be in a situation where we have the ability to really accommodate pull off your shifts. And so I'm saying this because it really shows that there's a need for an ongoing dredging. It needs to happen every few years. Now in a minute, I'll talk about a study we're doing sharpness. But based on prior work that's been done, we think that if you sort of average that cost per year, it's about $4,000,000 per year to dredge the the the area from the peers to the train basin. And that $4,000,000 a year is simply money that doesn't exist in the city's budget to cover that cost on an ongoing basis. The next issue then is tier 2. And based on prior studies, and again, we're gonna update this. We think there's at least $15,000,000 of cost and probably more to fix tier 2 so that you could have large ships like, birth clearance passed. Now it is possible for a much more modest air repairs to get smaller ships, names, types of ships that are in there. But right now, there's a real constraint in how you can use peer 2 because repairs could happen. What you'll see when you look at the draft strategy and what's in the packet is there's a lot of scenarios in the back that talk about what are different ways of if we have birthing and the fees we collect from birthing and the revenue we generate, how does that compare to these costs both funding the dredging and funding the the, pure repairs. And what you're assuming with those scenarios is none of them can curve that cost. It just does not generate enough revenues relative to what those long term costs are gonna be. And so what it really leaves us is the realization that if we're gonna sustain kind of dredging activity, we've gotta find federal and state funding to be able to cover those costs. And so that's 1 of our key challenges here is that this is something that's gonna require a larger effort in funding from other partners to be able to sustain the pure use and the water quality. So I'd like to talk for a minute now about based on that background, what is the city doing right now? The staff has been processing. These are some of these actions will become the council in the near future. The first is to hire a marine engineering firm to really develop updated information on what the water depths are right now, an updated bath and hydrant study, as well as updated cost for both the dredging and what their peer repairs are gonna be. And those costs have sort of 2 components for dredging. 1 is sort of what is the periodic ongoing cost, but there's also a decision which we'll talk more about which depth do we need to get to. Because if we can let the depth be a little shallower, you know, you don't have much 1 time cost as compared to if we felt we had actual depth that was here when the navy was birthing aircraft carriers. And so that's 1 of the questions. The staff is also working to set up a port management contract to handle short term licenses for both the impures 13. You know, we have about half of the pure 3, all of pure 2, and pure 1 where we could have short term growth. We could be generating revenues, but that's not something that's been happening. So that's an opportunity that that we're working to really put that in place. As I mentioned, part of asking, making some minor repairs appear to to allow us for growth activity. And then, of course, the other thing to ask this discussion tonight is that you see the draft strategy document. But really as a strategy document, it lays out what the opportunity is and what we can do. But there's a lot of work beyond that as to how you actually go about implementing data. So that's the work we're starting out. That's where your input will be very helpful both in terms of the strategy as well as how you go about implementing it. So now let's take just a couple minutes to talk about Bluetech specifically. So, you know, these are not hard and fast definitions. I think most folks are familiar with maritime. It's really being activities focused around shipping, cargo, you know, waterborne transportation, as well as recreation. And Bluetech is part of that. But where the Bluetech term comes from is really a subset that's focused on more of r and d activities, research and development, technological innovation, and really create more sustainable use of ocean and freshwater resources. And so a lot of traditional shipping companies are already in the space because there's a lot of discussion about how can we make things cleaner. To talk about SF Ferry, They're thinking about how can they electrify the ferries. And so right there, you're at sort of leading edge of where, vessel engineering is as to how do you create and let the ferries sustain that kind of operation. And it's really a great topic because when you think about the ocean right now, 1, we don't understand a lot about the ocean. The state of science technology is very thin....
