Blog » regional planning

On March 11th, the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) and Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) will release their “Initial Vision Scenario”  of the Sustainable Communities Strategy (SCS). The SCS becomes the land use portion of the region’s transportation plan and must achieve a target of reducing per-capita greenhouse gas emissions by 15% in 2035. The good news: we are well on our way to achieving the reduction target. The bad news: by assuming the sluggish economy will continue, it is possible to meet the targets without making significant changes to what we fund or much else. It would be a real shame if SB 375 results in a numbers game rather than any real changes in land use planning or infrastructure spending. As the region drafts its first Sustainable Communities Strategy, SPUR wants to make sure we don’t lose sight of the promise of SB 375: to actually shift our land use planning and transportation funding towards an urbanist vision of the region (click here for more information). To review the draft scenario when it is released click here. To follow the San Francisco government agencies’ local response click here. To get involved, contact Egon Terplan at: eterplan@spur.org

[Photo Credit: flickr user Ostrosky Photos]

We know that the climate is changing. We know that sea levels are going to rise at a faster rate in the coming decades—as much as 16 inches by mid-century—and we know that large parts of the Bay Area are going to become vulnerable to flooding in the process. (Read SPUR's papers on sea level rise here and here.) Policy failure outside our region (nationally and internationally) is making it even more important within our region to both try to stop climate change and prepare for its worst and inevitable effects. How do we do this in a way that is logical yet sustainable, that harnesses regional ingenuity and collaboration, focuses growth in the right places, and prevents as much misery as possible?

Over the last two years, the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission (BCDC) has been working on a proposal to amend its guidance document, the Bay Plan, to include new findings and policies related to climate change and sea level rise. This proposal is based on years of research by BCDC and others to try to understand and project the effects of future sea level rise on the shoreline—and what rising sea levels mean for people, property, infrastructure, and fragile Bay wetlands. (See the BCDC's report, "Living with a Rising Bay" and the Pacific Institute's "The Impacts of Sea Level Rise on the California Coast.")

The latest draft of the proposal, issued in September, provides guidance on how local governments and BCDC (within its narrow jurisdiction of 100 feet inland from the shoreline), should permit projects in the future inundation zone, and what kinds of projects should be allowed at all. It proposes to initiate a years-long public process to create a regional strategy for allocating limited flood protection resources and determining where development should not occur in the future, or even be removed. BCDC has been holding an official public hearing on this topic that has remained open for months. They have received hundreds of comments and there will be more workshops and hearings over the next few months. You can find out more at the BCDC Commission meetings and through their FAQs.

SPUR has published several papers on climate change over the last few years; one creates a prioritized climate action plan for the City of San Francisco; a second paper addresses the necessity of sea level rise planning, and provides a typology of shoreline management strategies we might need to use to adapt to the changes in our region. We have an ongoing task force working to vet climate adaptation strategies for the region, including how we should deal with new threats of extreme weather and sea level rise. We have also been trying to build awareness of the need for a regional conversation around this topic through exhibits and public forums at the SPUR Urban Center.

SPUR thinks BCDC’s efforts to study and to raise awareness on sea level rise are incredibly important, and that amending the Bay Plan is a timely and logical next step. We also understand why the specifics of their draft proposal have raised concerns—from Bay restoration advocates, to local governments, to developers with sights on shoreline properties. But we think a workable solution for everyone is possible, and we suggested changes to BCDC this week in a letter and a set of line-item edits to the proposed amendments.

To summarize some of the concerns that have been raised:

• Bay environmental advocates who know that 90 percent of the Bay’s original wetlands have been destroyed want further assurances from BCDC that there will be no more inappropriate shoreline development or fill, and that opportunity sites for restoration will be saved for that purpose (helping us solve climate change, because wetlands sequester carbon).
• Developers and property owners would like the Bay Plan to guarantee that new climate change policies will not affect existing permit holders and will not conflict with the region’s new SB 375 requirements to build transit-oriented infill (which also helps us solve climate change, because people will drive less).
• Local governments would like to have a better understanding of how to permit or protect development in areas that may be inundated in the future, but want more recognition that local building officials—and not BCDC—do all the zoning and most of the permitting of new projects.

In SPUR’s view, the proposed amendments provide some fairly strong assurances to restoration advocates (that should remain strong), but inadequate assurances to property owners and developers about their future liabilities, and a confusing slate of guidance to local governments on how they should reconcile all the climate change information being handed down by regional agencies (BCDC isn’t totally responsible for this, of course, but the Bay Plan could reference some of the other efforts, and in SPUR’s version, it does). While BCDC’s attempt to solve for sea level rise, MTC’s attempt to solve for reducing personal vehicle travel, ABAG’s attempt to solve for compact land use, and BAAQMD’s attempt to solve for air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions are all important, we need a fine-grained analysis to ensure that we achieve these goals in a coordinated way. We need to carefully lay out a plan for the region going forward that provides clarity, especially for local governments, and reconciles competing goals. And most importantly, we must not intentionally plan to optimize for a single issue, like sea level rise, because climate change is not the only issue facing our region in the future. We have many development and conservation goals. We don’t want to make them harder to achieve, or at worst, accidentally force more development into sprawl.

The changes SPUR suggested to BCDC this week for the Bay Plan can be summarized in five main points.  We want the Bay Plan amendments to:

1. Define “infill development” to include: underutilized land within urbanized areas that are served by existing infrastructure including transit, conversion of former military bases, adaptive reuse of existing structures, and ABAG Priority Development Areas;
2. Encourage local governments, and the Commission within its jurisdiction, to allow infill projects to proceed, and others if they have an adaptation and financial strategy, while a regional sea level rise strategy is being developed;
3. Provide formal assurances in new findings clarifying that the proposed amendments do not expand the Commission’s jurisdiction;
4. Provide assurances to give certainty to activities that may be undertaken in the future that are within the scope of an existing permit;
5. State that BCDC should work with other agencies and local governments to identify long-term regional flood protection strategies and create consistency with SB 375 sustainable communities strategies.

Overall, we at SPUR are very encouraged by our regional agencies’ efforts to solve for global warming in a world that cannot seem to enact the changes we need. We are grateful to BCDC for being a thought leader on this issue. We think it is totally possible and necessary to encourage appropriate infill development and meaningfully plan for sea level rise. We can do this at the regional scale, and we must also do it locally. And we believe that our proposed changes to the Bay Plan Amendments are an improvement on BCDC’s template, and will advance many of our region’s aspirations for the future.

Let us know what you think.

Across the Bay Area, only one in 10 commuters takes transit work each day. And half of those transit commuters go to one job center: downtown San Francisco. But since most work is outside of downtowns, SPUR is trying to understand a little more about emerging suburban and non-downtown job centers. This series will look at the Bay Area's evolving and emerging business districts. For each district, we will ask four main questions:

The Location: Where is this place located? How far or near to major transit? And how large from one end to the other?

The Plan: What was the planning vision for this place? Was it master-planned? Did it grow up organically?

The Market: What kinds of jobs and companies are located there?

The Commute: How are workers getting to their jobs each day and why?

In the second edition of this series, we will explore Hacienda Park in Pleasanton, which has become a successful job center in eastern Alameda County over the past three decades. Our first post in this series, "Mission Bay as urban tech park," is here.

The Location:

Hacienda Park is located in the City of Pleasanton in the Tri-Valley area of the East Bay. It is situated near the intersection of Interstate highways I-580 and I-680, and is also served by BART and several regional bus lines. Hacienda's location puts it at a midpoint between multiple regional centers — Silicon Valley and San Jose to the south, the population centers of the East Bay to the west and north, and the exurban towns and agricultural centers of the Central Valley to the east.

The Plan:

Initially, Hacienda's master plan focused on commercial uses — low and mid-rise office space, retail mixed-use, and hotels. The collapse of the real estate market at the end of 1980s led to the introduction of residential uses, with both owner-occupied and rental units.

At 875 acres, Hacienda Park is the largest development of its kind in Northern California, with over 16,000 employees and 3,400 residents. The master plan, which is currently about 60% built, lays out maximum development figures as below:

"¢ 1530 residential units

"¢ 5.5 million square feet of office space

"¢ 1.8 million square feet of flex/R&D space

"¢ 900,000 square feet of retail/commercial

"¢ 335,000 square feet of hotel

"¢ 138,000 square feet of Public/Institutional uses

"¢ 535,000 square feet of warehouse uses

"¢ 53.5 acres of undeveloped land

The average FAR in Hacienda Park is 38% with a height limit of 85.5 feet.

The Market:

Hacienda Park was envisioned by Joe Callahan of Callahan Property Company and his development partner, Prudential, as an alternative to San Francisco and Silicon Valley, where the cost of doing business was rapidly rising. The project's attractiveness to both developers and local government was driven by two developments in the late 1970s:

"¢ Transportation improvements. Pleasanton became much more accessible by improvements to the I-580 and I-680 corridors and plans to extend BART along I-580 to Dublin. These changes gave Pleasanton better access to both workers in the East Bay and San Joaquin Valley, and businesses in Silicon Valley to the south.

"¢ The passing of Proposition 13 in 1978. Prop 13 lowered property taxes by rolling back property values to 1975 levels and restricting annual increases to an inflation factor, not to exceed 2%. California cities began to rethink their land use patterns in order to restructure their tax base. The Hacienda Park proposal was timely for the City of Pleasanton, which up until then was dependent largely on a residential tax base.

Hacienda Park did not focus on a specific market sector when it was conceived. The businesses range from small offices to regional centers to large campuses for company headquarters.

In the early 1980s, most of the buildings were single-story, tilt-up construction "back-office" buildings, until the first Class A office buildings were built for Prudential in 1984. By the mid 1980s, a variety of corporate offices were built, with the first large tenant being AT&T. By the mid 1990s, the dot com boom drove large scale commercial development by tenants in the technology sector, such as Cisco Systems and PeopleSoft, as well as other companies like Shaklee and Roche.

Today, the Park continues to benefit from its location between economic clusters: technology in Silicon Valley, research in Livermore (which draws biotechnology business), and agriculture in the Central Valley (which brings in food brokers and tenants like SunMaid).

The Commute:

The Park's northern edge is adjacent to the Dublin/Pleasanton BART station, which provides a direct connection to the East Bay and San Francisco. ACE service is available in downtown Pleasanton, about 3.5 miles from the Park, which provides access to the Central Valley. Additionally, the Park is served by a number of regional bus lines (MAX, SMART) and private employer shuttles.

While the Park is relatively well served by transit for a suburban center, issues of streetscape and scale limit workers' ability to abandon their cars. In particular, the large amount of surface parking on the site, visible in the aerial below (the average Floor-Area Ratio on the site is 0.38), inflates walking distances and reduces the BART station's attractiveness.

These problems are tackled to some extent by buses and the WHEELS paratransit service, the latter of which is subsidized by Park tenants and connects riders from regional transit to office buildings. According to the 2009 Transportation Survey conducted by the City of Pleasanton, services like this have helped to push the percentage of workers driving alone down to 71%, compared to 77% in downtown Pleasanton. Between BART, ACE, and bus services, transit share is just under 15%.

[Source: City of Pleasanton, Hacienda Business Park — 2009 Employee Transportation Survey]

When commuters who drove alone were asked what changes would motivate a shift in commute mode, greater transit fare subsidies and compressed work schedules were the most popular options, followed by the Guaranteed Ride Home program. It should be noted, however, that only a minority of drivers considered switching to transit; when considering alternatives, a majority preferred either telecommuting (43% of respondents) or carpools and vanpools (30%).

Conclusion:

Over the past three decades, Hacienda Park has successfully combined a central and easily accessed location with cost advantages to attract business. The Park is also poised for growth, with available capacity for office space under planning guidelines. However, especially as land costs increase and the surrounding freeways become more congested, Hacienda Park will need to consider encouraging a higher percentage of its workers to arrive on transit. Services like WHEELS and Guaranteed Ride Home have started this process, but the Park should also seek to get more out of the BART access at its northern end. This will mean less surface parking, increasing density, and retrofitting sites to improve walkability, in addition to improving links to ACE and other regional agencies. Whether this will be supported by tenants, or by local officials is the key question.

[Photos: left: flickr user armstrks, right: via SF Chronicle]

"Nothing big happens in less than a decade," the late Brian O'Neill was quoted as saying. Those words from the ambitious superintendent of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area (and longtime SPUR board member) who worked to transform one of the largest urban park districts in the country, still serve as a reminder when tackling giant projects, putting into perspective all that was accomplished during his tenure.

During an evening symposium at SPUR on the future of the park, GGNRA Executive Director Greg Moore emphasized the importance of community partnerships and local stewardships to carry on O'Neill's legacy.

When placed at the head of the 75,500- acre GGNRA — which encompasses San Francisco's Presidio, the Marin Headlands and portions of San Mateo County — in 1986, O'Neill's vision was "audaciously vast," said Moore. This was exemplified with the transformation of military posts to national parks over a span of several decades.

As San Francisco finally sees headway on massive projects such as the seismic and structurally unsafe Doyle Drive replacement, the giant swaths of green along the Northwestern portion of the city are also seeing progress once unthinkable.The 1,492-acre Presidio has been a monumental demonstration of what collaboration between multiple agencies such as the California Coastal Conservancy and a dedicated community can achieve, albeit one fraught with difficulties including legislative holdups and funding shortfalls.

Building on the legacy already established by early park advocates such as Philip Burton and John F. Kennedy, O'Neill went on to spearhead many projects whose success is visible today. The replanting of over 150,000 native plant species, construction of several impressive overlook sites, rehabilitation of more than 100 historic structures and major improvements to the GGNRA's 196 miles of trails have all been made possible through multi-agency collaboration and local involvement.

The Trails Forever Initiative, launched in 2003, aims to link the massive greenbelt north and south of the Golden Gate through an extensive network of trails. Signature trail projects include Land's End, Marin Parklands and Mori Point in San Mateo, which focus on making the trails more accessible and sustainable while encouraging citizens' responsibility to the parks.

Crissy Field [Photo: flickr user Mel1st]

Among the most noticeable projects — and a popular favorite — was the overhaul of Crissy Field. Once used as a backyard dumpsite for the military, it had all the hallmarks of a toxic, forgotten port with piles of buckled concrete, discarded tires and mechanical parts. The $34 million campaign spearheaded by O'Neill resulted in a beautiful space now regarded as the front yard of San Francisco with a velvety lawn, walking and biking paths, public art installations and education centers for urban youth. More than 500,000 school kids participate in the Parks as Classrooms programs, fostering future generations of park enthusiasts and preservationists.

And the projects keep growing and evolving, thanks to the strong sense of stewardship fostered by trailblazers like O'Neill. On any given day of the year, volunteers including anyone from school children to corporate employees can be seen continuously working on the park. While the accomplishments have already been great, it is the ongoing stewardship from the people of the Bay Area that will keep the parks forever thriving.