The story below is one of Katie Lauer’s best.

This site, known as ”Terminal 1,” owned by the City of Richmond and originally a marine terminal, is right next to Miller Knox Regional Shoreline, shown below. It is a world class waterfront site with astounding views of San Francisco Bay and the City of San Francisco that most developers would kill for. It also has a fully entitled permit for a previously approved project that could technically start construction tomorrow. But Laconia wants to redesign it into a densely packed, unimaginative single family home subdivision where most home have only a view of the house across the street or the house next door. It might work well in Lodi or Turlock.

When I asked at last week’s City Council meeting if any city staff member thought this was a good project, the silence was deafening. I think staff is intimidated by the city attorney and reluctant to express any thoughts that may not please RPA City Council members.

Usually, planning and community development staff, whose expertise trends towards design, planning and land development, take the lead in evaluating and negotiating for projects like this.

Instead, too big for his britches City Attorney Dave Aleshire pushed them aside and anointed himself as not only city attorney but also city planner, city architect and chief negotiator. He pushed Laconia’s ugly-award winning project though a gullible City Council, even though the Design Review Board panned it, and the Planning Commission unanimously rejected it. He said he did it for the money, but he also reduced the purchase price from $10 million cash and carry to only a $500,000 down payment.

What upset me so much that I left the meeting in disgust is that the resolution adopted by the City Council was not provided to the public until after the vote was taken, a clear violation of the Brown Act.

In my opinion, the city attorney is incompetent and corrupt, and he and his law firm are taking over management duties far beyond what a city attorney normally handles. He has gotten the City of Richmond into burgeoning litigation and then assigns his law firm staff to provide the necessary legal services for fees of hundreds of dollars an hour. Never was there a sweeter deal!

Figure 1 - Miller Knox Regional Shoreline

Controversial proposed Point Richmond waterfront development faces deadline
The mayor, planning commission, design review board and several neighbors oppose the planned 154 single-family homes

A rendering of the amended Terminal One development in Point Richmond. Courtesy of the city of Richmond
By Katie Lauer | klauer@bayareanewsgroup.com | Bay Area News Group
PUBLISHED: December 1, 2022 at 2:00 p.m. | UPDATED: December 2, 2022 at 11:40 a.m.

RICHMOND — Terminal One, yet another upscale single-family development in the waterfront Point Richmond neighborhood, could be approved as early as this month.

But as the developer and Richmond City Council race to get the latest proposal approved by state housing officials before end-of-the-year deadlines, the city’s Planning Commission, Design Review Board, outgoing mayor and dozens of neighbors are not impressed with the project, which has been in the works since 2014.

Designed by Laconia Development, Terminal One is the latest addition to a long list of projects in Richmond plagued by the city’s history of signing agreements that give a single developer exclusive rights to negotiate a project, and then dragging its feet to finish ticking off approvals.

Proponents of the project say it provides a much-needed opportunity for economic development in Richmond, while opponents argue the city is opting into an unattractive project that does not contribute to the region’s affordable housing goals.

Located at 1500 Dornan Drive, the current design proposes building 154 single-family homes over 13.8 acres, near the Richmond Yacht Club and the Rosie the Riveter National Historical Park. Those plans include 92 single-family detached residences and 62 duplexes ranging from 1,800 to 2,700 square feet, as well as 30 junior accessory dwelling units, which would be around 400 square feet each.

The original project approved in 2014 included 316 total units, split between 295 condos and 21 townhouses.

Paul Menzies, Laconia’s CEO, told the council back in April that aside from the unique challenges of building on the Bay Area’s shoreline, larger industry trends — namely skyrocketing costs of labor and construction materials, paired with a downtrodden real estate market — created unsurmountable roadblocks to the original plan.

The Richmond City Council will vote to approve or deny the current project on Tuesday, after voting 6-0-1 during its Nov. 22 meeting to approve the latest development timelines, rules and costs, as well as alert state housing officials that the deal is on pace to close by the end of the year.

Mayor Tom Butt abruptly left the Zoom meeting before the vote, after calling city staff “crooks” for failing to publicly post the proposed resolution and a city-funded economic analysis showing the new project’s feasibility before the night’s discussion.

Additionally, he has been especially vocal that two of the city’s advisory bodies — the Planning Commission and the Design Review Board — both recommended rejecting the amended project.

Butt posted a letter from Jonathan Livingston, chair of the Design Review Board, on his e-Forum, which said the current single-family development is not the right approach if Richmond wants to “make the best of its only great waterfront parcel.”

He specifically criticized how most of the homes in the core of the development face each other and are packed together too tightly, creating what he called a “homogenized mass-produced overall look,” rather than capturing a quaint coastal community or a rich village seaside town.

“When you go out onto your deck to BBQ, you look at the other gal 20 feet away, or if you are in bed and open the curtains you see your neighbor in bed as well,” Livingston wrote. “The homes in the center could be anywhere like Modesto or Dublin, but they are in fact on one of the greatest sites in the world!!”

If the council rejects the Terminal One project on Dec. 6 or the deal otherwise falls apart before Dec. 31, the city-owned property will be returned to Richmond.

Any new plans drawn up by a different developer for the site would be subject to the Surplus Land Act, which means the site would first have to be offered to other government agencies and nonprofits to build affordable housing, and the entire approval process would have to restart.

That’s an outcome City Attorney Dave Aleshire wants to avoid, if possible, because of how complicated the plans for cleanup and construction have become in recent years.

Aleshire said construction costs soared while the development slogged for years through the city’s approval process, and inspections of the former industrial property uncovered serious concerns about what could feasibly be built there — regarding both safety and finances.

On top of the land’s $10 million price tag, he said, Laconia’s developers estimated they would also have to shell out tens of millions more on unexpected costs — including $5 million for seismic improvements, $3 million to decontaminate the soil onsite, $1.5 million to demolish an existing 90,000-square-foot building, $3.5 million to retrofit the historic wharf, $1 million to protect the project from sea-level rise and $5 million to construct a waterfront park.

Members of the Design Review Board cautioned against the extensive plan, which would require dump trucks and other construction equipment to make thousands of trips along neighborhood roads — many of which may not be in the best shape to handle that kind of wear and tear.

“The developers concluded that the (original) 300-unit project was not going to fly,” Aleshire said during the Nov. 22 City Council meeting. “I understand the concerns of homeowners (living near the proposed Terminal One site). All of their concerns are in good faith[ they’re appropriate. It’s just that there’s a timing difficulty.”

Those added costs do not include estimates for onsite security or potential ligation expenses if the project faces lawsuits, which happened in 2016, after five residents from the nearby Brickyard Cove neighborhood complained that the project, in part, did not comply with the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and would worsen traffic congestion and hazardous chemical exposure.

In total, Aleshire said developers are facing at least a $21 million hit and he worried another developer would not accept that bill and the list of physical challenges to construction.

“The current developer is more familiar with the conditions on that site than any other developer you can find,” Aleshire added.

“The city does not have extra money to do things at this point in time, unfortunately, and so we need to take advantage of these development opportunities to help pay for these issues.”

Laconia’s leadership laid some of the blame on the city, saying it took more than seven years and 32 public hearings to get the project’s paperwork in order. Additionally, the developer alleges the city did not protect the wharf from substantial deterioration and failed to complete an environmental cleanup of the site — efforts that have been ongoing on several former industrial sites in Richmond since the early 2000s.

In May, the combination of delays and soaring material and labor costs similarly pushed other developers to scrap a plan to build 200 condominiums atop a former Point Richmond quarry in favor of one calling for 76 houses instead.

That same month, the contentious development proposed at Point Molate was derailed, in part, by concerns that the project’s plan to build 1,450 homes and 400,000 square feet of commercial space on the 270-acre site would not pencil out.

However, Councilmember Claudia Jimenez said during the Nov. 22 council meeting that unlike Point Molate, the Terminal One project does not include the risk that all Richmond residents would be taxed to help pay for the project.

Mayor Butt wasn’t so sure, comparing any justification of the project to “putting lipstick on a pig.”

“It’s pretty clear that you all are an unequivocal advocate for this project, but I haven’t heard you opine on whether this is actually a good project,” Butt said during the Nov. 22 council meeting. “Is it well designed? Is it something that will be a credit to the city?”