Dublin Townhall » Residential Density

Reduced East Dublin Development Fees

John M. Zukoski — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 02:37:00 +0000

The Dublin City Council met this past Tuesday and voted unanimously to decrease the fees that developers pay to acquire land, construct roads, and make other improvements to minimize traffic impacts in east Dublin. The previous impact fee schedule was established in 2004 and needed to be updated to reflect the drastically lower cost of land, changes in land use (i.e., higher density than expected), and higher construction costs. With this approval, the traffic impact fees for residential projects will decrease by a combined 11% and non-residential fees will decrease by 3% effective June 7th. This should help to encourage development in Dublin.

The calculation of impact fees is based on the estimated number of “trips” generated by building new projects (e.g., trips to the grocery store, trips to/from home). The most significant reason for the decrease in fees is that Dublin has built at a higher density than what was initially forecast. Higher density means more people will be generating more car trips. With fixed traffic costs and more people than expected, the cost per “trip” has been less than expected.

In addition to a 24% decrease in traffic impact fees for residential development near the east Dublin BART station, the developers for Avalon and Metropolitan lobbied hard for additional fee reductions based on their argument that there is less traffic on a per-person basis in transit centers because more people walk and take BART. No data was provided to support this assertion.

When it became apparent that the Council would not support an additional fee reduction for Avalon and Metropolitan without having hard data to look at, the Council chambers began to sound like the floor of the British House of Commons as the developers’ representatives began to chuckle and make sounds of disgust off-camera to show their disapproval to the Council.

At the end of their deliberation, the Council directed City Staff to conduct a study to evaluate whether or not further fee reductions are warranted for Avalon and Metropolitan. If further reductions are approved at the transit center, then the remaining developers in east Dublin will need to pay higher traffic impact fees for their projects to make up the difference.

John M. Zukoski is the publisher of the Around Dublin Blog and a regular contributor on Dublin Townhall. He can be reached at john.zukoski@gmail.com.

Striking the Right Balance in Residential Density

Responsible City Planning

Jimmy Huang — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 08:00:00 +0000

On December 9, 2008, the Planning Commission unanimously approved the Conditional Use Permit (CUP) application by Charter Properties to adopt the Shared Parking model for calculating the required number of parking spaces at Phase I of the Promenade. Charter Properties was not responsible for the poor planning of the ill-conceived parking arrangement at Dublin Ranch Villages, so it is definitely not obligated to resolve a problem that cannot be fixed by a garage alone. All that the nearby residents are requesting is for adequate parking as defined by Dublin’s Zoning Ordinance to be provided, so Phase I at the Promenade does not exacerbate the parking crisis that neither the City nor the HOAs have the political will or sufficient jurisdiction to confront directly. Dublin has good standards; we just need to be better about enforcing them. Given the parking realities at Dublin Ranch Villages, allocating at least 541 parking spaces as mandated by code is not only the responsible way to start the Promenade but also in the best interest of the Promenade tenants, nearby residents, and, most importantly, all of Dublin. If the City allows one developer to disregard Dublin’s Zoning Ordinance in an area with known parking shortage, it will send the wrong message to other developers with similar mixed-use projects elsewhere in Dublin. Once this bad precedent is set, those other developers can reasonably demand the City to relax its parking requirement for their projects and challenge the City in court should the City refuse. The City of Dublin cannot afford to spread this parking nightmare beyond Dublin Ranch Villages.

Responsible planning should not rest on theoretical use by idealized people alone. Up to now, residents and their guests have enjoyed what essentially amounts to exclusive use of the street parking within Dublin Ranch Villages. Charter Properties has no basis for believing that patrons beyond walking distance from the Promenade will always use the garage. Just like the Planning Commission’s postulation that the Promenade will never come close to needing 500 parking spaces, the developer’s optimistic assumption fails to take into account that diners, shoppers, office workers, and gym members will park wherever they feel is most convenient. The 14 allotted parking spaces on the streets around the Promenade will not be able to absorb parking overflow from the Promenade into the neighborhood streets nearby. The parking overflow will adversely affect residents in the vicinity, but the City has an opportunity now to mitigate the negative impact by insisting that at least 541 parking spaces be planned. Second chances do not come by that often, so the City should not let this one slip by its fingers.

Golden Opportunity Missed With Wallis Ranch

Tim Hall — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 08:00:00 +0000

Aw, gee, I hate going negative again, but I really think the Dublin City Council let a golden opportunity slip through their wide open fingers at the 1/6/2009 council meeting when they extended the Wallis Ranch development agreement for an additional 10 years in exchange for a $1M Benefit Payment. The development as planned is a terrible idea for the Wallis Ranch property and for all of Dublin.

Wallis Ranch may be the most egregious example so far of Dublin’s haphazard and illogical density concentrations away from the city core and transit centers. The project violates almost every principle of smart urban design. The medium and medium-high density housing planned for Wallis Ranch exemplifies the worst aspects of sprawl, being located far from jobs, transit, shopping, the civic center and public schools. That may be fine for low-density estate homes and ranchettes, but not for medium-high density multi-family housing. With apologies to Gilbert & Sullivan, it is the very model of the modern major general plan mistake. In fact, every time the future Wallis Ranch residents want to do just about anything, they will have to get in their cars and drive. The concomitant traffic, pollution, energy consumption, expense, safety risk and wasted time will be multiplied by the density factor.

Future observers will shake their heads in utter disbelief when they ponder the abysmal effect on the environment, and on the quality of life for everyone, as a result of ill-conceived developments like Wallis Ranch, while at the same time they agonize over the astronomical cost of undoing the damage wrought by the planning commissions and city councils of the past. This is something our great grandchildren are going to have to live with. When are we going to learn!

Because of decisions about Wallis Ranch made by previous planning commissions and city councils, this was very likely the current council’s single chance to minimize the damage before it was too late. They should have denied the agreement and instructed the developer to come back to the table with a low-density housing plan that makes sense for a project so far away from everything that’s anything. I’m very disappointed that Mayor Sbranti has so quickly forgotten the strategy he suggested at the 11/6/2008 council meeting, namely to move towards density reductions when re-negotiating development agreements. (See video clip below.) Now, because the council chose to accept $1M of hush money instead of reducing the density of the Wallis Ranch project, a golden opportunity to remedy a grievous wrong was lost.

I’ve been told that Dublin is locked into similar development agreements on almost all of the remaining developable residential tracts in the city. If true, this means that the only way to curtail unsuitable projects like Wallis Ranch in the future is to hope that developers are forced to come back to the city to re-negotiate their agreements because of slowdowns in the housing industry. (Eureka — I’ve finally discovered a benefit of the current recession!) This will enable the city to put a stop to the practice of allowing higher density developments where they most definitely don’t belong, and perhaps Dublin can gain some desperately-needed housing options for families with children, especially on the east side of town. I’m talking about detached single family homes with yards that kids can actually play in, on safe streets, preferably with cul-de-sacs. Families need more homes that they can grow into, instead of having to move to neighboring communities as their kids get older. Unfortunately, if the council continues to swoon over Benefit Payments instead of correcting poor planning decisions, this will never happen in Dublin. What a lasting shame!

If I had known about the Wallis Ranch re-negotiation ahead of time, and if I hadn’t left the council meeting before this item came up for discussion, I would have spoken on these very points. Still, I doubt that I would have changed any minds on the council, since all they seemed to care about was the size of the Benefit Payment. But this is a moot point anyhow, since I was still too disgusted by Kevin Hart’s Shameful Public Belittling to hang around after the speech I had just given during the Public Commentary portion of the meeting.

Tim Hall is a regular contributor on Dublin Townhall. He can be reached at tiger650@comcast.net.

Dublin Ranch Villages Parking Challenge

Jimmy Huang — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 08:00:00 +0000

On December 9, 2008, the Planning Commission unanimously approved the Conditional Use Permit (CUP) application by Charter Properties to adopt the Shared Parking model for calculating the required number of parking spaces at Phase I of the Promenade. At the time, the majority of the Planning Commission felt that the extreme parking shortage at Dublin Ranch Villages is brought on by the residents alone, but that assessment is incomplete at best. While residents who do not park their cars in the garages are partly to blame, the fact that the developers built up to the maximum of a given density range without regard for basic human behavior also contributes to the challenge. Many of the floorplans in Dublin Ranch Villages feature tandem garages. In a two-car household with a tandem garage, the first person to leave home is usually the first person to come home. Unless both drivers depart at the same time, the first person to take off will invariably park on the street. As the developers came up with innovative designs like tandem garages to cram more units into their high-density projects, they also converted land that should have been reserved for surface-level parking to subdivisions with the City’s blessing. According to former Councilman George Zika, allowing developers to count street parking towards the number of visitor parking as required by Dublin’s Zoning Ordinance is one of the reasons for the “absolutely ludicrous” parking crisis in Dublin Ranch Villages.

Everyone has the right to park on city streets, and current parking regulations do not restrict select groups of the public from parking on the streets at Dublin Ranch Villages. The Home Owner Associations (HOAs) can control those few private parking spaces within their jurisdiction. They can also enforce the rules of the covenants, conditions and restrictions (CC&R) through periodic inspections to make sure residents do not use their garages for storage. The HOAs, unfortunately, simply do not have the legal authority to stop their residents from parking on city streets. To date, no study has been conducted to establish the percentage of residents who refuse to use their own garages. Whether that percentage is more or less than what is observed in neighborhoods with primarily traditional single family homes is also unknown. In addition, the degree to which that percentage contributes to the parking crisis in Dublin Ranch Villages remains undetermined. All planning done in the absence of hard data should, therefore, be considered speculative and not evidence-based. As former Councilman George Zika advised, “the solution is don’t let the problem begin.”

Striking the Right Balance in Residential Density

John M. Zukoski — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 18:30:00 +0000

Although higher density residential projects may seem like a cost-effective way for Dublin to become an Entitlement Community at first, the accounting method used to justify this growth strategy often overlooks the impact higher density housing has on surrounding neighborhoods and underestimates the true cost of higher density to current residents. The increase in revenue generated by the initial burst of one-time impact fees from more units sold may be offset over time by the depreciation in property values from nearby homes and the slower appreciation rate of the high-density products themselves. The cost to provide the same level of service to a greater number of residents brought in by the higher density will continue to rise at a rate consistent with inflation, yet the City will have to contend with meeting the higher demand on a lower overall property tax base.

Dublin has done an outstanding job of bringing in first-time home buyers from all walks of life as it started to implement the Eastern Dublin Specific Plan. Many of these first-time home owners have outgrown their higher density units and are looking for opportunities to move into traditional single-family residences near their current neighborhoods. If we do not build homes of lower density to meet market demands, we will be forfeiting the greater sales and property tax base associated with the home owners Dublin had worked so hard to cultivate since the beginning of this decade to neighboring cities that do provide the housing types they desire.

Dublin can reach the population size required to qualify for the Federal Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program in a way that respects longtime residents and fortifies our projected property tax revenue stream. By following the tried-and true development pattern of balancing the lower density housing in areas away from major transit centers with higher density housing near the major transit centers, we will have a city we can all be proud of at build-out.

John M. Zukoski is the publisher of the Around Dublin Blog and a regular contributor on Dublin Townhall. He can be reached at john.zukoski@gmail.com.