What is the value of a General Plan, and what is the purpose of zoning laws?
Not until the late 1990’s when new homeowners began to buy and fix up houses in the East area of the City did enforcement of zoning become as important there as it is in the future of Estuary Park. Home ownership really increased during the last decade. Because new owners are interested in improving their neighborhoods, and because new construction has created housing drawing more owners, City planners must consider contradictions between planning and zoning. Contradictions exist because Alameda is a Charter City which means that its Master Plan and its zoning don’t have to coincide. The Master Plan is a policy document that City officials can choose to obey if they feel that’s expedient. When developers and citizens make conflicting demands, the Planning Board and the City Council turn to the General Plan as a policy for sorting out means of satisfying everyone. That makes the General Plan a political animal. If citizens say nothing, the General Plan can be easily amended by the City Council or ignored by planners as a way of satisfying demands of developers who build for profit, not for the general good. However, if citizens make their wishes known, officials take their demands into account. Recent changes in the plan for developing the military base as a result of citizen action demonstrate that ordinary members of the community can have an effect on planning. Another example of people power is the Planning Board refusal to rezone Estuary Park land from industrial to residential after listening to citizen complaints about developer plans for that area.
Zoning restricts the use of land. Land owners can’t do whatever they want on private property, but may only use it for purposes allowed by the land’s zoning. Zoning can’t be changed at the whim of an owner or merely because they might like to use their land for some more profitable purpose not allowed under zoning in effect when they acquired the land. Such a change requires approval by the Planning Board. While zoning tends to reflect the Master Plan, it need not. Planners can change zoning. But they only insist zoning correspond with planning policy if citizens make such action important.
Zoning tends to reflect the intended use for land as planned. A new Master Plan is in the process of creation. It will be adopted soon, and may alter the plan currently in force, the 1991 Master Plan. Estuary Park could be eliminated. If so, developers will have an easier time asking for rezoning of their land along the Estuary from industrial to mixed-use or residential. The change will allow them to build high density housing there before money can be raised to buy the land for a park. Rezoning will instantly change the value of the land, making it much more expensive, because there is more demand for residential land than industrial. That change can happen if Alamedans don’t tell the City what they want. Otherwise the City will respond primarily to developers. That response won’t be guided by the urgent need for more housing. The island has room for additional dwellings and for Estuary Park. Houses can be built in many places and will benefit their new owners and their developers. Estuary Park can be located in only one place and will benefit everyone.