Transit-oriented development rights have vested across western Alameda

"This is a map of the areas where Senate Bill 79 (SB 79) applies in the San Francisco Bay Region" from MTC

To celebrate another July 1 milestone, we stopped by Donut Petite this morning. Our son got a fancy donut topped by a macaron. Our daughter got a fancy kouign-amann topped by berries. They both sipped — and yucked at — my cappuccino in a fancy mug. The occasion to celebrate: the vesting of transit-oriented development rights, under Scott Wiener's Senate Bill 79, to the owner of the parcel on which Donut Petite sits.

O.K., well, the occasion for my kids and spouse was getting out of the house early and stopping for a treat on the way to summer camps. But for the purposes of this pastry-titled blog, it's a hook to display the above map that has now been finalized by the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) and Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) — and to zoom in on the exquisite (and kinda pricey) donut shop.

It's also a hook to share this amusing Public Records Act request submitted earlier in June to the City of Alameda regarding hypothetical litigation against SB 79 — amusing, at least to me, because "specifically demand[ing]" is quite the way of trying to will non-existent records into existence:

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An aside about when PRA requests turn from fair good-governance mechanisms into an almost abusive misuse of a public service: The City Clerk's and City Attorney's office are overwhelmed by Public Records Act requests. While this is a genuinely beneficial service to the public and journalists and academics and businesses, it's a service that's also abused too easily, either inadvertently by inexperience or intentionally to launch fishing expeditions. Someone can submit a single form and then tie up city staff with months of legwork to collect and review records. Digital records like email mean that many more responsive records are available to the public at no cost to duplicate, but many of those records still need review before being publicly released. Both offices have had to bring on additional legal staff to focus just on these reviews — and taxpayers are paying for all of this increased work.

In my mind, the worst outcome is when requesters submit overly broad requests and leave them open even after the relevant issue has been fully resolved.

For example, someone submitted a request in February for "all communications between the planning staff and anything related to the Park Station brewery." While it's reasonable for a neighbor to want to understand more of what was going on there, the requestor left that extremely broad request open even after the issue was 100% resolved by City Council on May 5. The City Attorney's office continued to review and redact emails, and only finished those state-mandated obligations on June 8. Congratulations to that requester for getting like 12x copies of a single email that I wrote to the Planning Board, which was already part of the public record; and my apologies to the lawyer or paralegal who probably had to skim all of those 12x copies to make sure none of my comments about missing red paint on a Park Street curb included personal details requiring redaction.

Another example, a request from January for "All communications, whether on paper or electronic, between January 1, 2023, and January 13, 2026, pertaining to street improvements, lane changes and street painting on Mecartney Road on Bay Farm Island" has now advanced to batch #4 of emails, with legal staff still working on reviewing additional batches — even though City Council also took definitive action on the relevant project in January.

Men, let's remember to put down the toilet seat after we pee, and PRA requesters, if your request is no longer relevant, please do staff the courtesy of logging into https://cityofalamedaca.nextrequest.com and pressing the button to close your outdated request. There are real humans on the other side of this web form, and all of us taxpayers are having to pay more to cover all of these requests.

Were any members of City Council hoping to litigate against SB 79? Who knows — and who cares. After multiple rounds of significant negotiation across the state, the bill was passed and it's now gone into effect.

Anyway, If that PRA requester wants to see an email sent to a member of the public who corresponded in a personal capacity about SB 79, here's a note I received earlier in the month (after I submitted a formalized summary of my previous blog post on this topic):

Dear [author of a blog titled after a pastry]:

Thank you for your comment on MTC’s Preliminary Draft Map of Transit Oriented Development Stops.

[...]

Based on this review, staff have determined that the updates recommended in your comment are consistent with the HCD Advisory and MTC’s responsibilities under SB 79. On this basis, the bus stops on Webster [Street] in Alameda identified in your comment have been added as Tier [II] TOD stops in an update to the Preliminary Draft Map, available here: https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/934f95609d6b45c5be0f8f0030c01436?draft=true.

Pending any further revisions to correct factual errors, the map will become formally available as a final deliverable on or before the law goes into effect on July 1, 2026.

All this said, odds are extremely low that Donut Petite will be replaced by a taller mixed-use building. These newly vested zoning rights come with constraints that will only be relevant, in practice, to parcels of certain sizes and shapes and to owners with certain goals. And like all real-estate development, nationwide interest rates and local construction costs constrain what's possible.

And yet, these new legal rights to change Alameda's built environment also open new possibilities. I've already mused about how this may lead to multi-family housing alongside Jean Sweeney Open Space Park.

Eight years after State Senator Scott Wiener first proposed upzoning around transit stations, it's now a legal reality, and we'll all see what new forms of denser and more mixed-use housing are built near the Bay Area's high-frequency transit, including right here in Alameda.