Transit-village housing in Oakland’s Fruitvale gets going, after years of delays

With BART trains rattling past in the background, several hundred people gathered last week under a white tent to celebrate the groundbreaking of Casa Arabella, a 94-unit affordable-housing complex going up on a surface parking lot just south of the Fruitvale BART Station.

It was a happy milestone for the dozen or so elected officials in attendance. The project, developed by the Unity Council and the East Bay Asian Local Development Corp., will be affordable to households with incomes in the extremely low and very-low categories. Twenty units will be reserved for formerly homeless veterans. It will be followed by another 181 units, which Unity Council CEO Chris Iglesias hopes to start building in 2019.

But the ceremony also underscored the exasperating length of time that it takes to develop transit-oriented housing on BART-owned land. As several speakers pointed out, it had been 24 years since the community plan for the Fruitvale Transit Village was conceived, and nearly 14 years since the 47-unit first phase opened.

Casa Arabella, phase two, was supposed to be completed in 2008 but was hampered by a mix of bureaucratic delays, resistance from BART commuters and from community groups, and economic downturns that resulted in two development partners’ walking away from the deal.

“Literally, working on this transit village was one of my very first assignments when I came as a wide-eyed City Council aide 19 years ago,” Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf said.

But as the housing crisis has worsened in the Bay Area, there has been increased pressure on transit agencies — especially BART and Caltrain — to make parking lots like the ones at Fruitvale Station available for residential development.

The BART Board of Directors recently adopted a policy committing it to building out agency-owned land around its stations by 2040, which would generate more than 20,000 new units of housing. BART owns more than 200 acres surrounding its 46 stations — often flat surface lots that are ideal for housing development.

But many BART projects have sputtered or stalled — often falling victim to opposition from commuters who don’t want their parking lots to disappear and residents who don’t want the shadows, parking woes or traffic they believe density will bring.

A transit village in Walnut Creek, for example, is just getting going after 20 years of planning and debate. Plans to add density in Millbrae and North Berkeley are facing neighborhood opposition, while a proposal to build on a BART-owned lot in San Francisco’s Glen Park expired a decade ago after residents resisted.

The delays are significant — and avoidable — according to Democratic Assemblyman David Chiu of San Francisco. On Monday Chiu introduced legislation to help force communities served by BART to accept their fair share of housing. The bill, co-sponsored by Assemblyman Timothy Grayson, D-Concord, calls for BART to set new zoning standards for transit-oriented development on its land. It then would require local governments to update their own zoning to meet the standards BART approves.

Projects that meet those standards would go through a streamlined environmental review, avoiding an approval process that can take three years or more.

“The project at Fruitvale is exactly what we need, but it has taken far too long,” said Chiu. “We need these projects to take years, not decades.”

The longer a project drags out, the more expensive it is to build, and the better chance an economic downturn will delay it further, Chiu said. Lawsuits filed by neighbors have effectively slowed projects long enough to cause financial partners to walk away.

The development of Fruitvale Village lagged despite the overwhelming success of phase one, which, in addition to the housing units, contains 24 retail spaces, a branch library, a senior center, a school, a health clinic and an early-education center. It has been hailed as a model of transit-oriented development, winning awards from the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Department of Transportation and the National Association of Home Builders.

While 37 of the 47 units are market rate, they are still affordable compared with much of the new housing springing up.

Rosa Amaya, who lives at Fruitvale Village and works for the Unity Council, a community service organization that oversaw the development, said it’s a perfect place to raise kids.

“My daughter loves how she can go out and not have to hold my hand,” she said. “She can walk over for ice cream or churros. You name it, it’s there.”

BART Board President Robert Raburn said the Fruitvale Transit Village has helped ridership there grow by 2,500 passengers a day. The number of commuters walking to Fruitvale has doubled.

“People are comfortable walking in Fruitvale,” Raburn said. “Clearly (transit-oriented development) enhances the community and benefits the environment.”

City Councilman Noel Gallo, who represents East Oakland, said the many years of delays had some benefits. The project went from being mostly market rate to mostly affordable, which he said is a good outcome.

“This land belongs to the public, so the housing we put there should be affordable to the community who lives here,” Gallo said.

The deadly Ghost Ship fire of December 2016, a block from the station, shed a light on how the affordable-housing crisis was forcing people into dangerous living conditions, such as garages and warehouses.

“I think it talked about the need for housing and safe housing,” said Iglesias. “The artists (at the Ghost Ship) weren’t the only people here living in those conditions. A lot of the families we serve are as well.”

94

Number of units in affordable housing project Casa Arabella at Fruitvale Transit Village

181

Number of units in third phase of the Oakland village, which has a planned 2019 start date

24

Years since the community plan for Fruitvale Transit Village was conceived

14

Years since the village’s first phase opened with housing, retail, a library, a school and more

2,500

Increase in passengers per day at BART’s Fruitvale Station since the village opened