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Home Resource Center In the News Home Greenbelt Alliance in the News |
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Greenbelt Alliance In the News
August 25, 2002 Promise of infill development attracts attention before and after Subheading By Lisa VorderbrueggenWe've all walked by an empty, weedy lot in the neighborhood or driven past a darkened strip mall and wondered why no one had built a house or new store there. The whys nearly equal the wheres. "Every parcel has its own story," says Patrick Roche, Contra Costa County planner. "It might have been inherited by siblings who can't agree on what to do with it. It might be substandard in size or have some other obstacle that kept it from being developed." The property could be polluted and require costly cleanup. Landowners may be uninterested, holding out for a better price or simply live out of the state or country. The neighborhood might be rundown or in a remote location, a turnoff to would-be investors or new residents. Or commonly, neighbors could vehemently oppose more intense development on the grounds that it will bring unwanted traffic or lower their property values. The result is that most developers prefer vast plots of cheaper land on the urban fringe that have few neighbors, no cleanup worries or occupants who require relocation. But as the fast-growing East Bay seeks to stem sprawl into its open spaces, infill development -- as planners call it -- has attracted renewed focus. "With infill, we could house a substantially greater population without using one additional acre of greenfields and build better communities at the same time," said UC Berkeley planning professor Stephen Wheeler and author of "Smart Infill: Creating More Livable Communities in the Bay Area." Infill is more than plopping down houses on scattered empty lots, which may not be a bad idea but won't make much of a dent in the housing supply. Unincorporated Contra Costa County, for example, has enough vacant parcels zoned for housing to accommodate 2,500 houses, according to a recent survey. That's half the number of houses built countywide last year. Infill's true promise lies in downtowns, old strip malls, unused commercial land and transit stations, says urban designer Michael Freedman of San Francisco. "The Bay Area is loaded with potential for infill," said Freedman, recently hired to help Livermore redesign its downtown. "There is a role for properly designed new neighborhoods but the first priority should be to make the cities we already have into rich, livable places. "The art of planning, designing and building cities is not hard, it's just been forgotten." Housing can offset undesirable impacts such as traffic if it improves the community, Freedman contends. Consider his advice: • Add housing downtown -- it's the heart of the city -- to help breathe life into shops, restaurants and offices. • Tear down an old strip mall and replace it with ground-floor shops under apartments or grand boulevard-style housing. It creates new neighborhood centers. • Build houses and stores around a train or bus station, and people won't have to get in the car to buy a quart of milk or go to work. • Erect townhomes, condos or apartments around business and industrial parks. It allows people to live near where they work. Well-designed infill can transform a shabby, run-down city block into an inviting streetscape where people live, shop and linger. Using digital photography and re-imaging computer software, Steve Price, owner of UrbanAdvantage in Berkeley, shows cities all over the country how it is done. He takes a picture of a sad-looking street, and electronically applies good urban design features such as trees, attractive buildings and pedestrian-friendly sidewalks. "We're on the cusp as a society of realizing that some of our best neighborhoods and communities are urban landscapes," Price says. "But we still have that baggage that says that anything urban must be bad. Pictures can help overcome that." Take a drive and find examples of infill housing under construction in almost any Bay Area city. Even during the recession, the pent-up demand for housing and high sales prices have kept hammers and saws flying. Foster City-based Legacy Partners, one of the largest infill developers in the West, has recently built luxury apartments near the Hayward BART station and Jack London Square in Oakland. The firm has a similar, upscale complex set to open next year across the street from the Concord BART station. The 260-unit Concord project is a classic redevelopment effort in that it involved complex purchase and relocation negotiations with numerous landowners to obtain adequate land for the apartments, said Legacy partner John McMorrow. The two-block area was home to a dozen landowners; some had lived there for 40 years. But some of the houses were 80 years old and a more urban downtown had grown up around them. "It took a lot of time to assemble the property" but it was an ideal site, McMorrow said. BART is across the street. The movie theater is a few blocks away. Downtown Concord can be reached in a short walk. "We find that in today's working environment, people like the convenience of living close to transportation and downtown," McMorrow said. "And downtowns need customers, and customers who can afford to eat or shop there. We provide both."
© 2001 bayarea and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
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