Alameda Point

News

Sports Fields Byproducts of SunCal Plan

By Dennis Evanosky
THURSDAY, MAY 28, 2009 – ALAMEDA SUN

If SunCal's initiative appears on the Nov. 3 ballot and voters give the developer the go-ahead, the company has plans in place to build much more than the 4,800 homes that have caused so much controversy. According to SunCal's Pat Keliher, Alameda Point will include recreational areas that will be accessible not just to Point dwellers, but to all Alamedans as well. The developer's plans include more than 6.5 miles of public trails for walking or jogging and 15 miles of trails for bicycling.

And if all goes according to plan, the Point will boast a 58-acre sports complex along the Oakland Estuary with softball, baseball, football and soccer fields, as well as basketball courts and swimming pools. Plans for the complex also call for a gymnasium, a mountain bike skills park, a sand volleyball pit and tennis courts.

"This is a long time coming," said Ron Matthews, president of Alameda Little League and Babe Ruth said. Matthews said that he is looking forward to the day when Alameda's young adults have more places to play ball. "We have plenty for Little League, but we're deficient in the 90-foot baseball diamonds that the older kids need."

"We are not just committed (to making these improvements), Keliher said. "We are legally bound." He said money for these improvements would come from redevelopment funds, and profits from operations. He also said that the complex could offer sponsorships to allow individuals and professional sports teams to lend their names to portions of the complex.

Jean Sweeney, neighborhood activist and former city council candidate, disagrees. "The initiative has lots of problems. It contains so many things. There are 20 pages of parks and trails in the new master plan. But the development agreement is the rub. It takes all the power away for the city to determine everything. If it passes, it invests the developer with all the entitlements. All the amenities are attached in a few pages after the development agreement, not in the agreement (itself)."

However, the 2009 Alameda Point Draft Redevelopment Master Plan (available at www.alamedapointcommunity.com, a SunCal-sponsored Web site) is just that, a draft. Debbie Potter, Base Reuse and Redevelopment Division Manger, was unavailable before press time. But according to Alameda Redevelopment Services, the city cannot sign off on any agreement until the SunCal initiative either passes or fails in the Nov. 3 election. The draft master plan is binding to neither SunCal nor the city of Alameda.

Alameda Recreation and Park Director Dale Lillard said that if the complex is built the city could step in and run it as a city park. "It's all conceptual right now," Lillard said. "We're negotiating back and forth, but if these negotiations go well and the sports complex becomes a reality, it will become a city park."

Sweeny believes that it will not come to that. "This is a real moving target. Every time a new document comes out, it's different than the last one." She went on to say that she suspects the 2009 Master Plan for the point and the SunCal initiative are "the biggest land-grab since Horace Carpentier." (Carpentier was the man who helped himself to Oakland's waterfront in 1853.)

Keliher pointed out that SunCal has two sets of plans for setting up the Point's open space in place: one with and one without the geo-tech issues. More geological and technological exploration will need to be done when the property is turned over to SunCal, he said.

SunCal's plans for the Point also include pocket parks within each neighborhood and a waterfront park along Seaplane Lagoon. The lagoon park would include separate paths for pedestrians and bicyclists, a wave-terrace plaza, an open meadow and a rain garden.

Lillard pointed out that the city would have no hand in administering the pocket parks or the lagoon park.

Keliher realizes that there is much work to be done before SunCal's plans are realized. The Navy is still cleaning up the lagoon, currently focusing its efforts on a pair of drains at the site of the lagoon's proposed ferryboat landing.

The Navy has yet to settle just how it intends to accomplish this cleanup work, which could cost up to $3 million of federal money. These drains once spilled hazardous materials including cadmium at the spot where the ferryboats could disturb the sediment as they pick up and discharge passengers.

Problems go beyond these pair of drains, however. In a November 2006 report, the Navy said it found contaminants in the sediments at the bottom of the lagoon that included not just cadmium, but polychlorinated biphenyls and pesticides as well.

"These chemicals accumulated in parts of the lagoon sediments near the storm sewer outfalls during decades of Navy operations at the former air station," according to Navy documents. Sweeney believes the clean-up cannot be fast-tracked. "We'll see nothing happening out here for a long time. We will be cleaning up for a long time. The Navy only goes as fast as it can."

But Keliher expressed confidence in the final results of the Navy's cleanup efforts. He points out that before the property is signed over, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Bay Area Air Quality Management District will have signed off on the cleanup. "Parks play an important role at the Point," Keliher said. "Without them, we'd have no residents."