Burckhalter Neighbors News
Quarry Issues Settled

by Maureen Dorsey, DVM

On March 11 the Leona Quarry lawsuit was settled in Superior Court. The settlement agreement was made between Maureen Dorsey, Burckhalter Neighbors, and Citizens for Oakland's Open Space, Inc. (the Petitioners) and the City of Oakland, Oakland City Council, and the DeSilva Group, LLC. This settlement was to conclude the court actions taken by the Petitioners. In exchange for the cessation of further litigation, the Petitioners requested and obtained the following conditions from the DeSilva Group:

1. Increased storm water retention in a requirement that the detention basin for the project have a capacity for 25 acre feet. The oversight of this system would be a third-party peer reviewer, Philip Williams and Associates, Ltd.

2. Elimination of the five-story apartment building. The amount that the developer would have spent in preparing the site for this building will be contributed as cash to the City of Oakland for support of alternate senior affordable housing. This cash amount is $500,000. The area in the original project that would have contained this large building will be landscaped for passive uses and improved for ridesharing activities but will not be used for housing or commercial use.

3. The emergency vehicle access will be designed to discourage pedestrian and bicycle access. These EVA's will not allow access to the private properties that border the quarry, and during construction the developers will not be allowed to use Altura Place or the private residence on the northwestern portion for truck travel.

4. The peer reviewer for the City of Oakland will address the recommendations of the Petitioners' expert, Dr. N. Sitar from UC Berkeley, and determine as the grading of the site progresses, whether these changes need to be implemented. (There were differences of professional opinion with regard to how the slopes should be stabilized in the grading process; the Petitioners wished to have the decision be left to the third-party peer reviewer and not just to the city.)

5. Traffic improvements will include requesting improved signage from Caltrans, directing airport and Coliseum traffic to the designated traffic corridors of 98th Ave. and Seminary Blvd.

In addition, if a Traffic Improvement Program is ever implemented (a method of charging developers for costs of improving streets and traffic signals, etc.), then the DeSilva Group would not access any credits that might be due to them. The city also agrees that these credits would be applied to traffic mitigations at Keller/Fontaine, Keller/Mountain and Mountain/I580 westbound. Most important, the developer will also pay for traffic studies at these intersections to determine if improvements are required at the time the 200th unit is occupied and at the final 423rd unit. (In the EIR, the developer only wanted to do a traffic study at the final unit which may not occur for several years after the start of the development.)

The developer will also provide the quarry housing development's Homeowners Association with a vanpool vehicle in new condition and seating capacity of at least 12 when the 150th unit is occupied.

6. Should any of these conditions be waived by the city, and if any waiver results in a savings for the developer in construction/development costs, the developer will have to pay the difference for use in Council District 6 to offset any impacts caused by the project. The developer also agrees to waive the "defense of impossibility" in regards to the elimination of the apartment building and the EVA configuration. The developer also agrees not to lobby forwaivers.

7. DeSilva Group will ensure that neither it nor any of its affiliate companies will participate in the construction of, or lobbying for contracts related to, any future widening of Edwards Avenue.

8. There will be no further development at the quarry. The dedicated open space and conservation easement shall be perpetual in nature. The Homeowners Association will be a co-grantee on the open-space and conservation easement.

9. Costs incurred with court and settlement are to be borne by the developer.

10. The developer will indemnify the Petitioners from any claims from Gallagher Properties, Inc.

Those of us who were engaged in this long process of making sure that the housing development at the Leona Quarry was safe, recognized that a settlement was the only way to make an impact on how this project proceeded. While we were successful in forcing the city and the developer to meet CEQA standards with respect to the drainage of the development, we also knew that, politically, this housing development had the majority of the City Council in favor of the size of the project. To that end, we negotiated as best as we could to reduce some of the impacts of this development on our neighborhoods.