ALAMEDA — A special April election has been called that will decide whether land near Crab Cove Visitor Center will be used to provide medical, housing and other services for seniors and the homeless, or be declared open space.
The City Council voted to hold the election, which will cost an estimated $580,000 to $730,000, after a community group, the Friends of Crab Cove, gathered approximately 6,000 petition signatures supporting open space.
There will be two questions on the ballot. One will ask whether land on McKay Avenue should be declared open space. Former federal offices, which have been closed, are currently on the site.
On the same ballot voters also will be asked whether they wish to confirm actions the City Council took in December to help convert the property into a center that will provide medical and other services to seniors and the homeless.
The measure that gets the most votes will determine what happens with the property, which the federal government already has turned over to the Alameda Point Collaborative to build the $40 million center.
If the open space initiative prevails, the city could be on the hook to pay at least $11.7 million to acquire the land and build a park, according to Interim City Manager David Rudat.
Totaling about 3.85 acres, the site currently consists of 11 buildings and is across from the East Bay Regional Park District’s Crab Cove Visitor Center.
Doug Biggs, executive director of the Alameda Point Collaborative, told the council that the proposed center would help some of society’s most vulnerable. The project will include 90 apartments for homeless seniors age 55 or older.
“I want the same safe community my neighbors want,” Biggs said. “I also want a place where the elderly and the medically fragile homeless can stay with dignity, get medical health services that improve their quality of life, and saves million in health care costs.”
Vice Mayor John Knox White said he believes the motivation behind circulating the open space petition was to prevent the center from opening because of the people it will serve.
Along with Crab Cove, apartment buildings and houses are near the site.
“I do not believe for two seconds that this is about open space,” White said. “Because it’s not about open space. (These are) commercial buildings. This about stopping a wellness center that is more or less funded and is well needed.”
Mayor Marilyn Ezzy Ashcraft said the center will help alleviate the region’s housing crisis, which has led to increased numbers of people living on the street.
“We can’t look the other way at this housing crisis right here in our backyard,” Ashcraft said. “And we can’t say, ‘Not in my backyard.’ If we do, the crisis only gets worse.”
The site initially totaled about 7.5 acres before the federal government split the parcel, which led the Alameda Point Collaborative to acquire one portion and the park district to get the second to expand and upgrade Crab Cove.
The Friends of Crab Cove maintain the entire parcel fell under Measure WW, a bond measure Alameda County voters passed in November 2008 to support the park district.
Assistant City Attorney Celena Chen told the council on Jan. 2 — when it decided to call for a special election on April 9 — that the park district was aware the property would be split as early as 2005.
And in a June 2018 letter to the city, the park district’s general manager said it was not interested in acquiring the portion scheduled for redevelopment as a center.
“East Bay Regional Parks may claim they don’t want the property,” Angela Fawcett of Friends of Crab Cove told the council. “That is not what they sold to the voters of the city through their own words, campaigns and fliers to get Alamedans to support their efforts to give us more usable open space, park lands and educational opportunities.”
Councilman Tony Daysog cast the lone vote against holding a special election, saying the estimated cost of between $580,000 and $730,000 was too expensive.
He called for waiting until November 2020, when the price of placing it on a regular ballot would be $25,000.
Other council members said delaying could cost the collaborative money through possible loss of revenue sources and through rising construction costs, and that the city should know quickly what it may be facing regarding the property.
