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What does the community demand from housing developers?

Witness after witness at Planning Board hearings on development of the Estuary land complain about the threat to transportation and the loss of the last place where they could enjoy open space along the Estuary. Almost 300 neighbors signed a petition asking the City to acquire and develop Estuary Park, as promised in the 1991 Master Plan. They want an active park with enough room and facilities for organized sports of all types. They want to enjoy their public lands.

Often people don’t speak against high density development because the Board has told them it doesn’t want to hear comments repeated. The risk of obeying such a caution is that the Board then thinks no one objects. But speaking out means going to meetings. Attending planning meetings time after time is difficult for most people.

However, speaking out takes a lot of precious time that most people can’t afford. At the June 24, 2002 Planning Board meeting, an ordinary citizen named Ray Bolton explained how difficult that is:

President Gilmore, members of the Board, I’m here again. I sat through the long meeting last Saturday at Kofman Auditorium [where Planning Board members solicited community comment on city planning], and it seems like we hear the same thing, and it’s just a matter of time like the people said when they wanted to put the lights at Thompson Field, We’ll just keep coming back and coming back. We’ll wear you down and we’re going to win. That’s exactly what I feel about these developers. You got Dutra. You got Fox. You got this property [Collins]. And they keep coming back and coming back and coming back and eventually we in the audience get tired of giving up our time to come down and argue against this.

Ray Bolton
Citizen
Planning Board meeting, 24 June 2002

At the same Board meeting, an exasperated man felt he had to tell the Board that he agreed with other people who’d already spoken about problems of high density developments in Alameda:

My name is Albert Gasser and I’ve lived here for 66 years in the same house. I was born here, 1532 Morton Street.

I wasn’t going to speak because my two friends spoke and they said everything I wanted to say. However, the last gentleman [a representative of Collins], and I guess he’s the one that owns the property, I want to answer him.

He’s talking about what you are going to allow him, OK, and you’re not telling him. I don’t know if this is correct or not, but I think that he ought to listen, as well as you, to what the citizens are saying. Every citizen that got up here tonight was concerned with density within the City and density within their location, such as living on Oak and Elm, etc. This project that I saw tonight, they have two parking spaces per unit. But there’s no parking if I go over to visit somebody that lives there. Where the hell am I going to park? You know. Am I going to have to park two blocks away or further than that? Because there’s no parking space within this unit. We have another place out on Bay Farm Island that has the same kind of thing. The density is ridiculous. You can’t park in there. OK? If the people have their cars there and it’s a party or something, you can’t park. That’s what the citizens are actually concerned with. We’re sick and tired of too many cars in Alameda.

I live two houses from Lincoln Avenue. I cannot sit in my backyard in peace. All’s I hear is Kaboom, Vaboom. I don’t want any more density in Alameda.

Albert Gasser
Citizen
Planning Board meeting, 24 June 2002

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