Oakland Tribune Article on Construction Woes
Today, the Oakland Tribune reported on local construction here in the Jack London District.

I sent a letter to the Tribune in response, because Ms. Burt is a bit late and a bit incomplete in her reporting on the subject. Below is the text of my letter to the Tribune.

Regarding Cecily Burt’s article, “Waterfront Development Booms”, there are currently only four active construction sites in the Jack London District, not five. Don Smith (City Planning Dept) had been at some of the monthly construction issue meetings in the neighborhood going back to April 2005, but I felt that the City’s response was inadequate – they had (nor have) levied no fines despite repeated flagrant disregard for the conditions of approval (known as COA’s), so I contacted Nancy Nadel. Often construction would start hours prior to the 7am start time, and continue long after the 7pm stop time. There were also issues with weekend work (specifically not allowed until the building is enclosed), and issues of construction workers parking on-street within in the area, when they were supposed to park in designated lots. Ms. Nadel suggested that I take my concerns to the City Planning Commission, which I did in October 2005. Since then the City has vastly improved their responses to problems.

Congestion is a major concern upon completion of these projects, as is parking, but that’s because when developers go through the approval process, parking and traffic projections (if even required by an EIR) are based on conditions at the time of the study and not based on projected conditions at the time of completion which should include other buildings approved, but not built at the time of the study. The buildings currently under construction will only provide between .99 and 1.4 parking spaces per unit, and that will cause overflow parking to end up on the streets. No mitigations have been made for the four current projects in regards to traffic impacts and I believe none are currently planned for other projects, either approved or seeking approval.

This is a problem with the current EIR for the Oak to 9th Project as well as the number one problem with the Jack London Square Redevelopment Plan. With JLS, the developer will use data from 2000 to calculate future parking and traffic mitigations – and that project in under agreement through 2020.
Posted 1/09/2006