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Greenbelt Alliance In the News

July 19, 2006

Public split on racetrack ruling

Some praise plan for Bay Meadows; others say issue should go on ballot

Adams, who worked Monday — a "dark day" at Bay Meadows because there are no races — considered it darker than most. A San Mateo County judge ruled Monday against Friends of Bay Meadows — a group trying to save the racetrack from development — and brought the racetrack closer than it's ever been to demolition.

"I can't see a big plus for what's going to be here," he said. "It's gonna eat us up eventually. It's gonna be a shame all right."

As nearly the final nail in the track's coffin, the judge's verdict against the Friends has shocked some, while others consider it a sound verdict for a smart project.

San Mateo County Superior Court Judge Mark Forcum ruled against the Friends of Bay Meadows' claim that signatures gathered for a petition for a referendum aimed at saving the track had been wrongly invalidated by county elections officials and San Mateo's city clerk.

The group, which has been battling the city of San Mateo's plans to redevelop the track since November 2005, complains that the redevelopment plans by Bay Meadows Land Co. will eliminate an historic piece of the city's past. They also believe redevelopment will bring too much congestion to the area.

Mike Germano, a former president of the Beresford Hillsdale Neighborhood Association, said it is difficult to accept that the effort to save the track came up 100 signatures short.

"The judge has to do what's right as far as what signaturesare valid and what signatures aren't," Germano said. But, he added, the "bigger picture" is the message sent by those who signed the petition that "the people in the city want to be able to have a voice in the land use, [and— they want to have a vote on the issue of zoning."

Part of Bay Meadows has already been developed as Phase I of the project, which was built over the raceway's practice track and was completed in stages over the past several years. Southeast of the racetrack, Phase I has 734 housing units (including condominiums, townhomes and single-family homes) and 98,000 square feet of retail space, anchored by a Whole Foods supermarket. The plan for the 83.5-acre Phase II calls for creating as many as

1,250 residential units, 1.25 million square feet of office space and 150,000 square feet of retail space.

On Monday afternoon, hours after Forcum ruled against Friends of Bay Meadows, the parking lot at Phase I was three-quarters full, and Whole Foods was bustling. Many shoppers were either not from San Mateo or unaware of plans to extend redevelopment to Bay Meadows Race Track, but those who knew about the controversy were upset about Monday's decision.

"I think that people should always allow a vote on something like that," said Bill Brady, referring to the bid to place a referendum on the November ballot.

Brady said he was concerned about the traffic the redevelopment will bring, and doesn't believe that there will be enough affordable housing if Bay Meadows is redeveloped.

Meanwhile, Jessie McCormick is concerned that San Mateo is changing. McCormick grew up in Hong Kong and says that she barely recognizes the redeveloped city today. Now that she considers San Mateo home, she's worried that development in the Bay Area, which she calls "sadly inevitable," will change San Mateo.

"I can see why they thought about (developing Bay Meadows)," she said. "But by the same token, they're taking away such a landmark. And, honestly, the congestion thing is a problem to me."

But a bigger concern to environmentalists is the sprawl cities create by developing out, instead of up and along transit corridors.

That's why the Sierra Club has been one of the project's biggest boosters, lauding Bay Meadows as one of the 12 best new development projects in the country. The Sierra Club, which charges that sprawling, low-density, "big box" development produces traffic that harms the land, air and water, praises the Bay Meadows development for its dense mixed-land use and its proximity to public transportation.

"We love the project," said Tim Frank, a senior policy advisor on land use for the Sierra Club. "The sooner it gets under way, the better."

Meanwhile, other environmentalists say that growth is inevitable; so it had better be smart. There will be an additional 1.7 million people in the Bay Area by 2030, according to Michele Beasley, a spokeswoman for the Greenbelt Alliance, a Bay Area conservation and urban planning group, and she says, "instead of always paving over our farmland and our hillsides, we need to look at sites like Bay Meadows and develop those instead."

San Mateo County Supervisor Jerry Hill supports the project because horseracing has ceased to be the best use of the land the track occupies, right next to the Hillsdale Caltrain station, he said.

"The location of Bay Meadows along the transit corridor will provide necessary housing for our children [and— our grandchildren," Hill said. "We are at this point losing the middle class in San Mateo County, and this project will provide an opportunity for housing for that middle class in the future."

Hill called Forcum's ruling "a tremendous testimony to the fact that the system works, and that Warren Slocum and the elections office did a tremendous job of evaluating every signature that was submitted."

The Bay Meadows Land Co. has yet to respond publicly to the Monday court decision. Adam Alberti, a spokesman for the company, is on vacation and wrote in an e-mail, "[W—e were not parties to the lawsuit and have no comment."

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