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Greenbelt Alliance In the News

June 12, 2004

Antioch suffers growing pains

Voters reject plan for building, signaling a shift in sentiment.

Whatever the cause, the near-standstill congestion that clogs Highway 4 and Antioch's major streets every rush hour and the overcrowded schools are causing residents to closely examine just how much development is enough.

This week, voters here rejected a relatively small apartment and office project that the City Council had approved, an action that bodes ill for a much larger proposal for thousands of new homes on farm and grazing land to the south.

Thus, a major shift in sentiment appears under way in a town that developers have showcased as one of the most affordable locales in the Bay Area, which in turn has led to a population boom.

"I'll go ahead and say it. (Antioch) has been run by developers for a long, long time," said Clinton Fields, chairman of Citizens for a Better Antioch, which is pushing the city to slow, if not stop, housing development until the transportation infrastructure improves.

"Developers pretty much have gotten what they want here," he added. "That's why you see so many houses."

Civic leaders say they hear the frustration about the horrendous traffic. But they insist it is shortsighted to block proposals designed to locate jobs in Antioch, and they point the finger at exploding growth in Brentwood, Oakley and other neighboring towns.

Voters have "taken it out on us, when we've done the responsible thing," said Councilman Arne Simonsen, noting that the city has cut housing permits by 80 percent the last two years. "It's those folks (nearby cities) that have not done the responsible thing."

Fifty years ago, Antioch was a town of about 12,000 perched on the southern shore of the San Joaquin Delta, about 65 miles southwest of Sacramento. Highway 4 was then on the southern edge of town.

By 1980, the population had risen to almost 43,000 as builders constructed dwellings on vacant land beyond Highway 4 to serve commuters seeking inexpensive housing. Twenty years later, Antioch was home to more than 90,000. In the last four years, another 10,000 residents have moved in.

The transportation infrastructure has fallen way behind, however. The portion of Highway 4 that runs through Antioch is still two lanes each way. Major streets are jammed, even on some weekends. Bus service is spotty, and the Bay Area Rapid Transit District's closest subway station is 12 miles away in Pittsburg, where parking spaces fill up by 6:30 a.m.

"It significantly detracts from people's quality of life because they're sitting on the freeway a lot," said Dale Watson, vice chair of Citizens for a Better Antioch, who has lived in Antioch most of his 53 years.

Schools are another source of frustration. Though the school district has built new campuses, some were packed from Day One, parents say. School officials would not comment.

"People are angry about this," Watson added. "It's virtually a universal sentiment that people can't believe they're going to build more housing."

Some of the consternation stems from the sales pitches of developers and real estate agents who assured home buyers that a widening of Highway 4 and an extension of BART into Antioch were right around the corner.

However, neither project will commence unless Contra Costa County voters reauthorize a half-cent sales tax by 2009, and they won't be completed for several years after that.

Even so, BART is only contemplating a commuter rail line that would link Antioch to its Pittsburg station. And an eight-lane Highway 4 still will be congested, just less than now, said David Reid of the Greenbelt Alliance, a public policy group.

"You can't expand your way to alleviating traffic problems because expanding capacity leads to growth," Reid said.

Devi Lanphere, who heads the chamber of commerce, said voters also are angry that they've been paying the existing half-cent sales tax for transportation projects for the past 20 years but have yet to see the benefits.

But she said the city is following a strategy to locate more jobs in town. That was the goal, she added, of the Bluerock proposal for 240 apartments and 260,000 square feet of office space that was killed by the passage of the Measure C referendum last week.

"This is a 'U-turn town,' " Lanphere said. "A 'U-turn town' means there's no reason to come here ... You come out here and live and you go out to do everything else. It's a U-turn town. We want it to be more than that."

Furthermore, Simonsen noted that unlike previous political leaders, the City Council is lobbying state highway officials more. And Guy Bjerke, head of the Home Builders Association of Northern California, noted that slowing growth will impact revenues from the fees the city collects from builders for transportation improvements.

"Stopping real estate development is also stopping the spigot to get Highway 4 fixed, and that's not a smart thing to do," Bjerke said.

Yet the problem facing city leaders is that they may have waited too long to harness the explosive growth and to focus on the lack of jobs and stifling commutes before voter anger surfaced.

Now, a long-standing city plan called Future Urban Area 1 to designate 2,700 acres on the city's south side for some 3,900 new houses is in serious political jeopardy.

"I think you'll have far more people who don't like FUA 1 than who didn't like Bluerock," said Hans Ho, a nine-year resident who helped lead Measure C. " 'Enough is enough ... Developers don't own the city. We do.' That's the kind of sentiment we heard over and over again" in the campaign, he said.

Moreover, the force that led to Measure C's approval could metastasize into a political movement bent on electing growth-control advocates to the City Council, pushing for more development downtown and enacting a strict urban growth boundary.

"Hopefully," Fields said, "we can get people on the City Council who can really look at reality and see what this city needs to grow, and focus on smart growth."

But Terry Ramus, who chaired the effort against Measure C, insisted that the exasperation that fueled the referendum is better directed at county, state and federal officials who have ignored Highway 4's problems.

"If people are upset with Highway 4, you could bring in a whole new City Council and do it twice a year," he said, "and it's not going to bring in a dime."

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