East Palo Alto council approves new area plan, making way for millions of square feet of development

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After four years of council discussion, environmental review and community outreach, the East Palo Alto City Council gave its final stamp approval to an updated version of the city’s Ravenswood Business District/Four Corners Specific Plan at its Dec. 17 meeting. The updated plan allows for 3.35 million square feet of office and research space, 300,000 square feet of industrial space, 112,400 square feet of retail, 154,700 square feet of community and civic uses and 1,600 units of housing in the RBD/Four Corners area.

Though council members and commenters alike expressed excitement that the long specific update process was coming to a close, incoming council members Mark Dinan and Webster Lincoln, who were sworn in immediately after the plan was approved as a consent item, took issue with the fact that the outgoing council voted on the item as their last act. The two, along with at least one of the developers that owns a large parcel in the plan area, said that the council was rushing to finish the plan in order to get it done before the outgoing council members’ terms ended. 

This plan is an update to the Ravenswood Business District-Four Corners specific plan meant to guide growth in the RBD/Four Corners area that was originally approved in 2013. The original plan allowed for up to 1.44 million square feet of office and research space, 175,910 square feet of industrial space, 112,400 square feet of retail, 61,000 square feet of community and civic uses and 835 units of housing in this area of the city. 

Based on community feedback, the updated plan envisions the Bay Road corridor as the “heart” of East Palo Alto, and lays out the city’s roadmap to “achieving an active, walkable corridor that becomes a destination for residents and visitors alike,” with shops, restaurants, entertainment and more. The updated plan also aims to enhance public views of the bay, build bike and pedestrian access between nearby neighborhoods and the bay and develop community centers and open spaces.

The plan also envisions a new “downtown” at the Four Corners area and a “main street” along Bay Road and Pulgas Avenue. City staff and the council also see this as an opportunity to generate more employment opportunities and additional revenue for the city with an expanded tax base. 

“The RBD Specific Plan update is more than an updated policy document that guides the development of a future downtown for East Palo Alto,” said Amy Chen, East Palo Alto’s director of community and economic development, who helped lead the specific plan update process. “It lays out the vision for a portion of the city that endured environmental degradation in the past and establishes a community benefits framework that responds to the present and future needs of its residents.” 

The 207-acre area in the northeast corner of the city is currently occupied by many vacant properties and underdeveloped areas, some of which are former industrial sites. Additionally, the area’s aging public utilities, including water, stormwater and sewer infrastructure, must be improved from their current state to allow for the millions of square feet of development that the updated specific plan provides for, city officials say.

The plan was also created with input from several environmental and community organizations, and includes provisions to protect the nearby Baylands, and to deal with the contamination in the soil underneath the vacant industrial sites. 

The plan, which could pave the way for a massive transformation of East Palo Alto’s built environment, was devised out of necessity.

In 2020, the city received proposals for four large development projects to replace underdeveloped and vacant lots in the RBD/Four Corners area: 2020 Bay Road, a 1.3-million-square-foot office and research park; Four Corners, a 540,000-square-foot development at 1675 Bay Road, that involves housing, retail, research space and community space; The Landing, a 1-million-square-foot mixed-use development with retail, community space, office and research facilities at 1990 Bay Road and EPA Waterfront, a 1.36-million-square-foot mixed-use development at 2555 Pulgas Ave.

Together, these four large proposals far outstripped the amount of development allowed in the area by the 2013 Specific Plan, prompting the city to take a second look at the plan area, as those projects would have been infeasible given the original area Specific Plan. 

Now that the plan has been given the council’s approval, these projects can move through the city’s review process. Review of the project proposals has been stalled during the Specific Plan update process, as review depended on the outcome of the update process, and the design and environmental prescriptions in the final Specific Plan. 

“Although it is hard to know exactly which projects will develop first, the Specific Plan allows the city to be ready and prepared either way,” said Chen.

However, some developers are dissatisfied with the plan that the council landed on. At a Dec. 3 first reading of the plan, Michael Kramer, managing director of Sand Hill Property Company, which owns the “Four Corners” site at 1675 Bay Road, admonished the council for the four-year-long process delaying his company’s development proposal, and at the same time said that the final draft of the plan was being rushed through without considering the “feasibility of future projects.”

“Our application was held back and required to remain behind the Specific Plan, eventually delaying us several years,” he said. “But after all this time, the final draft review and adoption is being rushed through.”

Kramer said that due to the delay, Sand Hill Property Company had opted to put a pause on the application that it submitted to the city in 2020 while he reevaluates his proposal in light of newly added requirements imposed on prospective developers – like community benefit requirements – hurdles he says are onerous and may ultimately make his development financially infeasible. 

But to Matt Raimi, one of the consultants who worked on the plan update, there was no alternative but to update the plan to reflect today’s market and the values of the East Palo Alto community, which is itching for change. Plus, he told the council, without the adoption of the new plan, any of the four large development proposals — including Sand Hill’s — would be completely infeasible because of the 1.4 million-square-foot development cap specified in the 2013 plan. 

“That was the impetus for this plan — to go beyond the original amount because of the (developer) interest at the time in the 2019-20 cycle,” said Raimi. 

Current council members who supported the plan, like Carlos Romero, are adamant it was not rushed, but rather represents a compromise and adds flexibility for developers amid unfavorable market conditions.

“It’s almost a tripling of the development envelope, and I still hear people complain,” Romero said at the Dec. 3 meeting. “It’s true – some of you wanted 5 million square feet, which I do not believe was sustainable. … The 3.35 million is actually a compromise.”

He also said that by taking as long as they did, the council may have actually saved developers from contracting economic conditions.

“Do you want us to subsidize your projects? Do you want us to give you city money so you can build them? Well, that’s preposterous,” Romero said. “For those who say that it is our specific plan that has impeded their development, what I say to them, — and some of the developers have been honest enough to admit this — that perhaps the time we spent on deliberating on this specific plan actually saved developers’ bacon, because had they actually gone bricks to ground, they probably have projects that would, right now, be in default.”

Opposition to plan from incoming council members

The plan is also facing backlash from a pair of incoming council members, Mark Dinan and Webster Lincoln. They echo developers’ concerns about feasibility, and say that for such a consequential, “billion dollar” move, it was under-scrutinized by the outgoing council. They also take issue with the fact that the outgoing council passed the specific plan as its last significant act. Both incoming council members said that they felt the process had been rushed to get it across the finish line before the new council was seated.

“This (vote) appears to be less about making a thoughtful, timely decision, and more about rushing a process that ties the hands of the incoming council members before we’ve had an opportunity to really weigh in on this process,” Lincoln said in a public comment on Dec. 3.

In a letter to the city attorney, Dinan questioned whether the vote to approve the second reading of the RBD/Four Corners specific plan update, taken on the consent calendar by the council on Dec. 17, directly before the new council members were sworn in, was legal. He argued that because the previous council was sworn in on Dec. 8 four years ago, their terms should have already expired, and questioned whether there is precedent for substantive action being taken at a reorganization meeting.

“There are legitimate questions about whether the council that voted on the RBD was legally authorized to do so,” wrote Dinan in an email to this news organization. “If it was really a priority to have this meeting and conduct city business, city staff could easily have brought these matters in front of the new council if it was that important that a vote took place on Dec 17.”

But City Manager Melvin Gaines says that per state law, the outgoing council still had the power to act on substantive issues at the Dec. 17 meeting, as the process for the transfer of power outlined in the city’s code and state law states that a council member’s term lasts “four years from Tuesday succeeding their election and until their successors are elected and qualified,” emphasizing that election results had to be certified and new members sworn in before they could act on any items. Plus, he said, there is precedent – prior councils have considered substantive issues in their final meetings as a group.

“At (the Dec. 17) meeting, the prior council, including the outgoing council members, had to certify the (election) results, and the incoming council members were required to be ‘qualified,’ which under state law includes that they take an oath,” explained Gaines. “The proceeding during which they took an oath was conducted by the prior council, which included the outgoing members. Until those two things happened, the council was still within their rights under state law to meet and conduct business.”

However, the RBD plan may return for discussion, as newly seated council members, Dinan  and Lincoln among them, appear interested in bringing the item back to the council in the new year. 

“Once City Council convenes in the new year, I believe there is the desire to bring it back for reconsideration,” Dinan said. “What parliamentary form that will take is to be determined. I am obviously only one vote, and we will need three council members to want to do this.”

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