MacArthur-High Project
Arouses Community Opposition

A proposed six-story, 141-unit senior housing apartment complex at the corner of MacArthur Blvd. and High Street spotlights City policies that ignore public safety needs, misspend government money, and violate overall area planning to suit the interests of a private developer.

At a June 29, 2006 presentation, an official from AMG & Associates of Encino, owned by developer Alexis Gevorgian, laid out details contradicting the warm, fuzzy picture painted three months earlier by councilmember Jean Quan and her chief of staff Richard Cowan:

• What was first presented as a building of "three levels over a parking garage" would actually be a six-story tower. Worse, the uneven ground would make the effective height seven stories in some places.
  
• What was presented as a project "targeting semiaffluent seniors" will almost surely include low-income senior housing and a request for government subsidies to the developer. On June 29, AMG projected a rent of $540 for a studio. (The earlier March 30 details were reported by the MacArthur Metro, May issue)

Click to see effect of Quan-AMG proposal.

Laurel district merchants and area residents noted many more problems with the proposal:

• Public safety: The project would bring in about 200 new residents, but the City has no plans to guarantee increased police presence. Would these seniors be prisoners in their small apartments, or would they risk their safety venturing up MacArthur Boulevard?
  
• The residents would live right by Interstate 580. Would you open your apartment window over a noisy, polluted freeway? On the inner walls, residents would look down on the roof of the parking garage, perhaps landscaped to resemble a courtyard.
  
• The project has only 71 parking spaces, of which 20 would be set aside for visitors and for customers of the two retail units. Thus, only 51 of the 141 households could have a car.
  
• There is no greenbelt around the building, only a few planters on the sidewalk.
  
• The layout of streets and freeway make a left turn out of the exit on MacArthur Boulevard impossible.
  
• For years the community has agreed that the MacArthur-High intersection should be one end of a thriving retail area. Putting in a huge housing project that is destined to be largely self-contained violates the planning consensus.
  
• The developer, while dropping a six-story monolith into an area of one- and two-story structures, offers the community essentially no amenities. At the June 29 meeting, residents suggested safety lighting for the 580 underpass and a pocket park adjacent to the project on the Mills College side of the lot.
  

Like the Oak-to-Ninth project (5,000 new residents), the Quan-AMG proposal for High and MacArthur (200 new residents) makes things worse in terms of public safety. The project would repeat the pattern in the Dimond district, which lost its walking officer (and then "regained" an officer who has to rush among several commercial strips). Councilmember Quan showed disdain for the public safety problem, and recently the Dimond Safeway could not get police response for 45 minutes. Meanwhile, developer Meea Kang, with strong support from councilmember Quan, garnered a sweetheart low-interest loan and other financial goodies for an 80-unit senior housing complex on the site of the old Hillside Motel.

The City hands developers public subsidies to bring in more residents – more potential victims – but the area, and the city as a whole, have no more police. From 1994 to 2005, the council added 357 positions to the total City budget, but the number of police wound up where it started, just around 700. That's a choice of priorities, a choice that led to today's policing crisis.

Councilmembers love housing developments, although Oakland actually needs job-creating businesses. One reason for the officials' misplaced enthusiasm is that new units pay more property taxes. Instead of balancing additional revenue against the expanded need for police, councilmembers leave Oakland with half a police department while they gleefully hand out tax proceeds to a long list of small, uncoordinated social programs run by private agencies.

Apparently, AMG & Associates practices bait and switch as a matter of course. At a tense meeting of the Alhambra city council in southern California, "City manager Julio Fuentes expressed frustration over repeated changes made to AMG's proposal." (Pasadena Star-News, Oct. 11, 2005) The newspaper report added, "The projected city subsidy [to AMG] required for an affordable-housing component ranged from $4.1 million to $9.7 million. It also was unclear who would be involved in the AMG proposal."

AMG played hardball in Ridgecrest, too. Upon failing to get the planning commission's approval for an apartment complex, AMG appealed to the city council. Residents raised many problems about traffic as well as questions about soil contaminated by 55-gallon drums when the site was a landing strip for private planes. AMG arrogantly said that it had done 20 projects of the same density and never had to do an extensive environmental study or face questions about traffic. In other words, we got away with it before, why should we be good neighbors in Ridgecrest? (Minutes of Ridgecrest city council meeting, Jan. 18, 2006)

The AMG representative revealed that initial discussions of the project began in September 2005. Residents of councilmember Quan's district may remember the City-promoted "Envisioning MacArthur" community meeting. It was held on Nov. 5, 2005 – and City officials said not a word about this project.

Developer AMG is used to painting a rosy picture in community presentations while negotiating sweetheart arrangements behind closed doors. Now AMG has a problem. Soon it will file an application that discloses the real nature and financing of the project. AMG and councilmember Quan have touched off a controversy that illuminates crucial choices facing Oakland.

Laurel district residents will be watching, as will the Laurel merchants along MacArthur Blvd. who were fed sweet stories of a growing retail district. They are joined by residents of the Maxwell Park and Allendale districts.

All of Oakland should be concerned as one housing project after another adds to the need for police. All of Oakland should be concerned as the council keeps handing out subsidies to developers.

It's time for a turnaround in the city council's failed policies!

Developer Seeks Public Subsidies
to Violate Master Plan

Documents filed by AMG & Associates reveal that the developer wants to violate the Master Plan for the Laurel district while financing his project using public subsidies.

The lot at the corner of MacArthur Blvd. and High Street is supposed to be a gateway to the Laurel retail district along MacArthur Blvd. Instead, AMG proposes a six-story, 141-unit housing project.

Supposedly, the building would include ground floor retail. Documents filed with the City planning department, however, admit that most of the so-called retail space (1,534 square feet) would be "commercial." (Application summary, page A. 1) Commercial does not mean retail. Commercial could be medical offices or other businesses oriented to the building's occupants. The application for the project does mention a tiny 324 square feet for "retail/kiosk." Addition of the two numbers to claim 1,858 square feet of retail is 82 percent untrue, and an insult in the context of a total floor space area of 78,000 square feet.

AMG takes advantage of bureaucratic tunnel vision by applying for a series of variances and conditional use permits at the City design review commission on Sept. 27, 2006. "Let us chisel away at the plan for the area without telling you about the other problems with this project until later." The application therefore reveals nothing about financing, at least not intentionally.

However, the project is described as "141 affordable senior apartments" that would be "comparable to market rate developments." In other words, the project is not a market rate venture. AMG apparently plans to seek public subsidies, whether in the form of an outright grant, a low-interest loan with payment deferred for 14 years (like the one that councilmember Quan pushed through for the Lincoln Court senior project), tax reduction credits for investors, or a combination of these giveaways.

It is understandable why the developer finds subsidized senior housing attractive. The apartments, piling up six stories high, would be small units averaging about 500 square feet. The building would sit right next to busy freeway 580. Who wants to open a window and let in noise and pollution? AMG's "solution": rent to low-income seniors who have difficulty finding a place they can afford.

Such a project is not good use of limited funds for senior housing. The building is too tall for the area, out of character for the neighborhood, and so much in violation of the City's master plan that it needs variances and conditional use permits for height, for a reduced rear setback placing it even closer to the freeway, for increased density of units, and for parking exceptions. These should be denied outright.

I was driving home last night under the 580 overpass on High Street (from MacArthur) ... I heard today from one of the merchants in the Laurel that there was a carjacking near Walgreen's.