This is what the future of the bulk of the Bay Area’s housing development looks like: higher-density multi-family projects near transit. In this case, Developer, BHV CenterStreet Properties LLC, is working on a 178-unit project called the Landing on 1.78 acres adjacent to the Walnut Creek BART Station.

Blanca Torres
Reporter- San Francisco Business Times

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With much-debated, frequently derided Plan Bay Area now approved, our region is officially on notice that it needs close to 200,000 new housing units over the next few decades. Next question: Who’s going to build it all?

Planning for new housing is great and all, but only time will tell if developers bite and actually build the housing the way the plan advises — high-density and near transit.

Plan Bay Area sets out growth and development guidelines to accommodate a 30 percent population increase, 2.1 million new residents, and 33 percent more or 1.1 million job increase in the Bay Area through 2040. The plan’s goals involve steering away from sprawl, building housing for all income levels and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

“Theoretically, (Plan Bay Area) is a good idea,” said Paul Menzies, founder of Laconia Development, a multi-family developer. “The issue with the plan is that bureaucrats are imposing rules on the rest of us who are trying to be creative and trying to make money.”

Development is a business, he said, but one that involves input from the developer, the community and city officials, so the better the cooperation, the better the project and the better cities and regions become.

Plan Bay Area could be a boon for development, Menzies said, if the policies make it easier and less expensive to develop projects either by streamlining the entitlement process or providing some financing tools.

The plan’s main backers, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission and Association of Bay Area Governments, along with congestion management agencies have about $28 million to fund local planning efforts such as creating specific plans that guide development for a neighborhood or environmental impact reports. In some cases, cities establish plans and zoning to comply up front with California Environmental Quality Act regulations.

Blanca Torres covers East Bay real estate for the San Francisco Business Times.

Article source: http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/real-estate/2013/07/plan-bay-area-a-boon-for-housing.html

Under the plan entitled Plan Bay Area, San Francisco is expected to grow its population by over 35%, to over 1,080,000 by 2040 (by comparison, Marin is asked to accommodate a 13% increase). Eleventh hour amendments spearheaded by progressives may eventually mitigate or at least soften some of the negative impacts but these broadly stated amendments to the plan leave their outcomes uncertain. And even as amended, the adopted plan fails to incorporate the primary recommendations of an alternative plan proposed by environmental and social equity advocates that would have distributed regional growth more evenly and yielded environmental and social equity outcomes ranked as superior even by the standards set by MTC/ABAGs own researchers.

Although it is too early to assess the full implications of Plan Bay Area it is already clear that if state regulators allow MTC/ABAG to proceed, this plan will have consequences unlike the regions vision statements of the past. Plan Bay Area is literally a road map for public and private investment.

But as critics have noted, many PDAs include existing mostly working class neighborhoods with high concentrations of renters. As a result of refocusing growth in these older urban communities, by MTC/ABAGs own very conservative estimates, the PDA strategy will put tens of thousands of families and seniors of modest means at greater risk of displacement, including most of the eastern third of San Francisco where a majority of lower income minority residents live and where many also work.

Some of the locations considered to be the best targets for smart growth today are those urban neighborhoods with transit reliant communities that persevered through decades of disinvestment from middle class suburban flight.

How do the regional agencies rationalize how their plan will put tens of thousands of existing Bay Area residents at risk of displacement? First, in their environmental impact analysis the agencies assert that although there will be local displacement at the community/neighborhood level, their plans for overall regional housing production will offset that loss by providing another place in the Bay Area for that displaced family to land. They also reference to San Franciscos rent control as a policy that will control for local displacement. And finally, they assert that the benefits of improving neighborhoods will outweigh the impacts of displacement.

The inadequacies of the latter two claims are obvious to San Franciscans who have witnessed the gentrification of formerly economically diverse neighborhoods throughout the City. But the slight-of-hand logic of the first claim deserves additional attention.

Although the Plan Bay Area claims that it will house 100% of the regions projected growth, the plan fails to explain how that housing will be affordable to anyone but the upper middle class and very wealthy. For decades, ABAG has been setting goals for housing production for cities and counties in the region, including goals for housing affordable to lower and moderate income households.

But the only goals that have ever been met entirely have been for market rate housing affordable only for upper income households. MTC and ABAG could have set more rigorous standards to achieve these affordability goals in Plan Bay Area. They could have also followed their staff recommendations to dedicate anticipated future revenue from the states cap and trade program to affordable housing. But MTC and ABAG commissioners rejected those options. Instead, Plan Bay Areas claim to address the risk of local displacement by promising affordable housing regionally remains based upon its mythical affordable housing goals.

But those goals have been called into question by the states Department of Housing and Community Development . The state agency has challenged the core policy of Plan Bay Area which allows cities and counties in the region to in effect reduce how much housing they will produce by failing to designate PDAs (shortly before the approval of the plan, Marin withdrew its PDA designations apparently for this purpose).

State law requires that all localities accommodate their fair share of a regions need for housing production. In June, HCD found the PDA policy violates that law and instructed ABAG to revise the policy and adjust its goals. But ABAG disregarded HCDs instructions and approved the unrevised housing goals on July 18 along with the adoption of Plan Bay Area. HCDs response has not yet been announced. Whatever the states next move, the survival of the regions economically and ethnically diverse communities is likely to require a concerted effort to divert Plan Bay Area from its present path towards unequal development and increased displacement.

Gen Fujioka is the public policy manager at Chinatown Community Development Center. For further supporting documentation see this link.

Article source: http://www.beyondchron.org/articles/A_Bay_Area_Plan_for_Development_and_Displacement_11633.html

Under the plan entitled Plan Bay Area, San Francisco is expected to grow its population by over 35%, to over 1,080,000 by 2040 (by comparison, Marin is asked to accommodate a 13% increase). Eleventh hour amendments spearheaded by progressives may eventually mitigate or at least soften some of the negative impacts but these broadly stated amendments to the plan leave their outcomes uncertain. And even as amended, the adopted plan fails to incorporate the primary recommendations of an alternative plan proposed by environmental and social equity advocates that would have distributed regional growth more evenly and yielded environmental and social equity outcomes ranked as superior even by the standards set by MTC/ABAGs own researchers.

Although it is too early to assess the full implications of Plan Bay Area it is already clear that if state regulators allow MTC/ABAG to proceed, this plan will have consequences unlike the regions vision statements of the past. Plan Bay Area is literally a road map for public and private investment.

But as critics have noted, many PDAs include existing mostly working class neighborhoods with high concentrations of renters. As a result of refocusing growth in these older urban communities, by MTC/ABAGs own very conservative estimates, the PDA strategy will put tens of thousands of families and seniors of modest means at greater risk of displacement, including most of the eastern third of San Francisco where a majority of lower income minority residents live and where many also work.

Some of the locations considered to be the best targets for smart growth today are those urban neighborhoods with transit reliant communities that persevered through decades of disinvestment from middle class suburban flight.

How do the regional agencies rationalize how their plan will put tens of thousands of existing Bay Area residents at risk of displacement? First, in their environmental impact analysis the agencies assert that although there will be local displacement at the community/neighborhood level, their plans for overall regional housing production will offset that loss by providing another place in the Bay Area for that displaced family to land. They also reference to San Franciscos rent control as a policy that will control for local displacement. And finally, they assert that the benefits of improving neighborhoods will outweigh the impacts of displacement.

The inadequacies of the latter two claims are obvious to San Franciscans who have witnessed the gentrification of formerly economically diverse neighborhoods throughout the City. But the slight-of-hand logic of the first claim deserves additional attention.

Although the Plan Bay Area claims that it will house 100% of the regions projected growth, the plan fails to explain how that housing will be affordable to anyone but the upper middle class and very wealthy. For decades, ABAG has been setting goals for housing production for cities and counties in the region, including goals for housing affordable to lower and moderate income households.

But the only goals that have ever been met entirely have been for market rate housing affordable only for upper income households. MTC and ABAG could have set more rigorous standards to achieve these affordability goals in Plan Bay Area. They could have also followed their staff recommendations to dedicate anticipated future revenue from the states cap and trade program to affordable housing. But MTC and ABAG commissioners rejected those options. Instead, Plan Bay Areas claim to address the risk of local displacement by promising affordable housing regionally remains based upon its mythical affordable housing goals.

But those goals have been called into question by the states Department of Housing and Community Development . The state agency has challenged the core policy of Plan Bay Area which allows cities and counties in the region to in effect reduce how much housing they will produce by failing to designate PDAs (shortly before the approval of the plan, Marin withdrew its PDA designations apparently for this purpose).

State law requires that all localities accommodate their fair share of a regions need for housing production. In June, HCD found the PDA policy violates that law and instructed ABAG to revise the policy and adjust its goals. But ABAG disregarded HCDs instructions and approved the unrevised housing goals on July 18 along with the adoption of Plan Bay Area. HCDs response has not yet been announced. Whatever the states next move, the survival of the regions economically and ethnically diverse communities is likely to require a concerted effort to divert Plan Bay Area from its present path towards unequal development and increased displacement.

Gen Fujioka is the public policy manager at Chinatown Community Development Center. For further supporting documentation see this link.

Article source: http://www.beyondchron.org/news/index.php?itemid=11633

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By Jason Henderson

Last week’s adoption of Plan Bay Area by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission was a watershed moment in regional planning. The plan links regional planning to state policies mandating reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, and aims to limit future sprawl by accommodating 2.1 million people, 1 million jobs, and 660,000 housing units largely within the existing built-up areas of the nine-county region.

Newly designated priority development areas (PDAs) will enable modest-density, walkable development in city and suburb alike, while preserving both existing single-family neighborhoods and open space. In a time of urgent need to address global warming, the Bay Area has once again proved a leader by enabling compact housing around transit, and its supporting studies expect the per capita greenhouse gas emissions from driving to decline by 15 percent in 2040.

This will not save the world and it’s not without some challenging byproducts — such as preventing displacement of low-income residents from San Francisco and other urban centers — but it is a start. And in a nation hell-bent on denying the urgency of global warming, it is refreshing and inspiring that someone, somewhere, is trying to do something.   

Yet the transportation component – the lynchpin and impetus of Plan Bay Area, according to many local leaders –is mediocre, uninspiring, and inadequate.  Despite land use policies enabling compact development, 80 percent of all travel in the Bay Area will still be in cars in 2040, not much different from today, and far short of the real change that is needed in this time of urgency. With 2 million more people, this is a recipe for gridlock, inequity, and ecological disaster – not sound public policy. 

 It should be no surprise that a big part of the problem is funding. The MTC, charged with assessing future regional transit potential, identifies just $289 billion between now and 2040 for roads, bridges, and transit — far short of what’s needed.  At $10.3 billion a year that may seem like a lot, but upwards of 87 percent of this is already committed to maintenance of existing roads and transit– not transit capacity expansion.  New homes and jobs might be focused around BART and Caltrain stations, but because there’s no real capacity expansion, the current iteration of Plan Bay Area can’t even reach its own modest goal of 74 percent of trips by car in 2040. 

With 2 million more people, cumulative emissions from driving will actually increase by 18 percent because so few new residents will be able to squeeze onto our already crowded transit systems.  Today BART is breaking ridership records but it is crowded. Extensions to far flung suburbs might be worthwhile but they don’t expand capacity in the system’s core. What we need is a second BART line and/or Amtrak service between San Francisco and Oakland, but this is absent from the plan. Meanwhile, most mainline Muni buses and railcars are currently jam-packed, yet San Francisco is somehow expected to absorb 92,000 housing units in Plan Bay Area.

Supervisors David Campos and Scott Weiner, representing San Francisco in the Plan Bay Area process, are to be commended for drawing attention to the transit problem and for asking MTC staff to show how to meet future funding gaps. By broaching the subject, they show that San Francisco might be poised to lead on this critical issue. But Campos and Weiner, working within the “fiscally constrained envelope” as framed by MTC planners, were only seeking to cover deficits for existing service – not visionary expanded service.  In the end, there was no real vision for adequate transit capacity expansion.

This foretells a troubling transit future – and one that will likely be more and more private. While many San Franciscans decry the proliferation of Google buses and other private corporate shuttles hogging Muni stops, these buses do lay bare the transit conundrum in the Bay Area. Without well-funded, visionary capacity expansion of public transit, those with the means (and high wage jobs) will shift to private buses while everyone else is left to duke it out on crowded highways, buses, and trains.

This conundrum demands that progressives in the Bay Area ramp up their transit politics to lead locally and nationally. The debate about transit finance needs to be redirected – away from regressive local sales tax measures (which often include more roads) back towards more progressive measures, such as transit assessment districts – which could require developers who profit from Plan Bay Area’s growth incentives to adequately finance transit expansion.

The debate needs to move away from demonizing public transit employees to a discussion of the role and responsibility of corporate health care, banks, and the real estate industry in causing economic instability (which has harmed public transit finance more in the last decade than a bus driver expecting a living wage and healthcare). The debate needs to move away from creating new roadway capacity, such as exclusive toll lanes, and focus on how to convert existing highway lanes into transit-only lanes with fast, frequent, reliable regional bus service open to all.

Plan Bay Area is a living document, a work in progress. Within the next four-five years it will need to be revised and can be improved.  The current version of the plan, weak on transit funding, has been dominated by a loud, irrational mob of Tea Party cranks bent on sabotaging anything that hints of progressive ideas. They were successful in diluting Plan Bay Area. While a smattering of progressive transit activists showed up and attempted to shape the plan, next time the plan needs a broader progressive movement — including housing, social justice, and environmental activists — to demand a truly visionary transportation plan.

Jason Henderson is a geography professor at San Francisco State University and the author of Street Fight: The Politics of Mobility in San Francisco. We’ll be sharing his perspective regularly in the Bay Guardian.

Article source: http://www.sfbg.com/politics/2013/07/22/street-fight-plan-bay-area-falls-short-worthy-goal

The plan – still more of an idea backed by a handful of studies – would continue the transformation of a once-gritty area by creating a new neighborhood full of residences, offices, shops and restaurants, hotels, and entertainment establishments. But opening the area to development would mean major changes to the city’s transportation system and could affect plans for high-speed rail and for extending and electrifying Caltrain.

In addition to demolishing I-280 from 16th Street north and replacing it with an Embarcadero-style boulevard much like the Octavia Boulevard replacement of the Central Freeway, the plan envisions:

– Shrinking – and perhaps eventually eliminating – the Caltrain yard at Fourth and King streets.

– Eliminating the need for deep underpasses beneath a future high-speed rail line, one at 16th Street and one at what will one day be the Mission Bay Boulevard crossing.

— Possibly rerouting the long-planned, but still unfunded, Caltrain extension to the Transbay Transit Center, which would also carry high-speed trains when they arrive in the next decade.

Together, the 20-acre Caltrain rail yard and the massive concrete I-280 structure and right-of-way create a wall that isolates the growing Mission Bay neighborhood from downtown, and is an outmoded and inefficient use of what has become prime real estate, San Francisco officials argue.

‘Something really smart’

“We can do something really smart here,” said Gillian Gillett, Mayor Ed Lee’s transportation policy director and author of a six-page letter that lays out the city’s vision to the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, the Bay Area’s transportation planning and financing agency.

But not everyone is on board. Caltrain officials are concerned that the city’s plans could stall or even stop plans to electrify the commuter railroad, a decades-long effort that moved close to reality only last summer when the state Legislature and the California High-Speed Rail Authority made it part of the new “blended” high-speed train project that will share the tracks, and gave it $700 million.

“We understand it’s a good thing to do, but we are concerned about the implications if we change” the rail yard, said Marian Lee, director of Caltrain’s modernization project.

High-speed trains are not likely to reach the Peninsula until 2026 at the earliest, but Caltrain wants its rails electrified by 2019. With electric power and lighter trains that can start and stop faster, Caltrain could add service, cut fuel costs and reduce emissions produced by its diesel locomotives. Electrification is a key part of the business plan for the financially struggling rail line.

The trouble is that Caltrain is in the midst of revising an environmental impact report for the electrification project. San Francisco officials want that update to include the possible downsizing or elimination of the Fourth and King rail yards. Caltrain officials fear that expanding the study, especially if it requires development of new train storage areas, would mire the project in red tape and possibly endanger the state funding.

“There is an urgency for Caltrain to get electrification in place with expediency,” said Jayme Ackemann, a Caltrain spokeswoman. “With electrification we significantly reduce our operating costs.”

Shrinking the rail yard could increase Caltrain’s operating costs if it needs to store trains farther from the Fourth and King station and bring them downtown to start service every morning, Ackemann said.

Working together

Caltrain and San Francisco have been squabbling over the environmental report and rail yard plans for months, but agreed recently to work together on a study to determine if there’s a simple way to include the city’s rail yard visions without slowing electrification. The study is expected to take about eight months.

“I think we’ve landed on a way of dealing with this that won’t slow the process,” Caltrain’s Lee said. “At the end of the study, we should have a good idea of all the trade-offs.”

Those trade-offs could include money from the development of the Caltrain yard, which might be used to help pay for the connection to the Transbay Transit Center. And if I-280 and the rail yard were to disappear, it could clear the way for a more direct, quicker and possibly cheaper route to the Transbay center.

“This is a golden opportunity,” said Supervisor Scott Wiener, who represents San Francisco on the regional transportation commission. “The rail yard served its purpose for many years, but it’s no longer the best use for that land.”

Michael Cabanatuan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: mcabanatuan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @ctuan

Article source: http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Razing-I-280-stub-only-part-of-vision-4227940.php

That’s how much will be needed to help pay for a tunnel to connect the Transbay Terminal to the Caltrain station at Fourth and King streets.

As it turns out, none of the $2.5 billion in tunnel costs were included as part of the narrowly approved high-speed-rail deal.

It’s up to the locals to make the tunnel happen. If they don’t, the $68 billion high-speed-rail line from Los Angeles will dead-end several blocks from downtown proper.

Building the tunnel will put San Francisco in competition with those hoping to finish BART to San Jose – both projects will be tussling for $1.8 billion that the federal government will direct to the Bay Area in the coming years.

Just for work to start on the 1.2-mile dig through the heart of the city, however, the Bay Area has to come up with its own $650 million. The current plan is to raise $300 million from higher bridge tolls and $350 million in San Francisco sales-tax dollars.

“That’s a reasonable estimation,” said spokesman Randy Rentschler of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission.

José Luis Moscovich, executive director of the San Francisco County Transportation Authority, said city voters could be asked for the $350 million as part of an overall transportation-tax extension within the next two years.

The date for when the Legislature and voters would be asked to approve another $1 toll hike to raise the $300 million in tunnel money is a bit more elusive. Although acknowledging that toll money would be needed for a San Francisco tunnel, Rentschler says there are no plans on the boards to seek an increase.

Even if all the money does come through and the tunnel gets dug, High-Speed Rail Authority boss Dan Richard says, the bullet train won’t arrive in San Francisco until 2028 or so. Until then, the tunnel would be used only by Caltrain.

Oil and water: Even before they qualified their initiative for San Francisco’s November ballot last week, backers of the effort to restore Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park were turning up the campaign rhetoric.

According to a recent fundraising appeal, the century-old dam in the Sierra that supplies water for San Francisco, the Peninsula and elsewhere is an environmental disaster worse than the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.

“Imagine the BP oil spill multiplied by 326: That’s how much water was deliberately flooded into Yosemite National Park,” Restore Hetch Hetchy executive Mike Marshall wrote in his appeal.

He added, “Your donation today sends a loud and clear message to San Francisco bureaucrats: When you’ve made a mess, you clean it up!”

“Pretty shameless,” shot back P.J. Johnston, spokesman for the pro-reservoir forces.

“A better comparison would be the catastrophic effects of demolishing Hetch Hetchy and draining a century-old lake,” he said, “which really would be a disaster for the economy and the environment.”

Filleted: With the help of friends, a gay South Bay couple has at least temporarily blocked the very Christian-minded Chick-fil-A chicken chain from opening an outlet in Mountain View.

City bureaucrats had recently issued a routine zoning variance to allow a Chick-fil-A franchise to be built on busy El Camino Real.

But David Speakman and his husband, Richard, of Mountain View – who in 2008 became the first gay couple in Santa Clara County to marry – had a bone to pick.

They didn’t like the company’s reputation for being antigay. The Georgia-based chain’s president did nothing to dispel that reputation recently when he defended “biblical principles,” including traditional marriage.

So David Speakman made an Internet appeal for the $1,000 needed to bring a zoning challenge before the Mountain View City Council – and within 14 hours, more than enough money had rolled in from donors.

That put Chick-fil-A on ice at least until September. In a statement, the company reaffirmed its “biblically based principles” but said it treats everyone – gay or straight – equally and with respect.

“It could be Mother Teresa that owns it, and it would be a bad place,” Speakman said, citing traffic and other concerns. “But because it was a bunch of bigots, it gave us an extra nudge.”

San Francisco Chronicle columnists Phillip Matier and Andrew Ross appear Sundays, Mondays and Wednesdays. Matier can be seen on the KPIX-TV morning and evening news. He can also be heard on KCBS radio Monday through Friday at 7:50 a.m. and 5:50 p.m. Got a tip? Call (415) 777-8815, or e-mail matierandross@sfchronicle.com.

Article source: http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/matier-ross/article/Bay-Area-faces-new-high-speed-rail-costs-3726796.php

Members of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission and the Association of Bay Area Governments approved going forward with further study of a possible Vehicle Miles Traveled tax on Thursday night, as part of a broader environmental review of several transportation options.

Under a proposal still in its early stages, drivers could be required to install GPS-like odometers or other devices in their vehicles and pay from less than a penny to as much as a dime for every mile driven. The idea could take a decade or more to be launched.

Commission spokesman Randy Rentschler acknowledged such a concept ultimately could prove a hard sell with Bay Area residents, who would likely resist both the travel tax and the government-mandated tracking devices.

“The last thing we’re interested in is where you go and what you do,” Rentschler said Thursday, after the vote. “What we’re trying to do is get people to figure out a way to raise revenue that they could support.”

Mileage taxes already have been subjected to pilot studies in Atlanta and several communities in Oregon and Washington state. Drivers who were given a sum of money and then had amounts deducted based on how much they drove logged fewer miles, according to the San Jose Mercury News ( http://bit.ly/Q4NbSP).

Based on current Bay Area driving patterns, a mileage tax could raise up to $15 million a day, the Mercury News said.

The two regional agencies are considering the tax as part of a broader, 25-year transportation and land-use plan to accommodate the 2.1 million new residents who are expected to reside in the Bay Area and to curb greenhouse gases.

Other ideas floated so far include raising bridge tolls during rush hour, creating more carpool lanes and funding public transportation options in counties north and east of San Francisco.

The draft environmental review is scheduled to be completed in January and the tax, as well as many other alternatives, will be presented for a vote in April, Rentschler said.

Article source: http://www.sacbee.com/2012/07/19/4642827/officials-float-san-francisco.html

The independent and non-partisan counsel’s office reviewed  legislation governing how the commission, which also operates as the Bay Area Toll Authority, can spend that money, and said: ”We think that the purchase and operation of a regional governance co-location facility is not among the purposes that BATA or MTC is authorized to engage in or promote.”

The opinion says the Main Street building “substantially exceeds the administration office needs related to toll bridge project and program administration.” It says the Legislature could pass a law requiring the commission to rescind the purchase.

“I think they should sell the building because what they did was illegal,” said state Sen. Mark DeSaulnier, D-Concord, a former member of the commission who requested the review and has opposed the building purchase.

A state audit, requested by a legislative audit committee at DeSaulnier’s suggestion, is pending, and expected in June.

MTC officials declined to comment, saying only that they received the 10-page opinion late and were carefully reviewing its conclusions.

The commission voted in  October to buy the 1942 building for $93 million, and to spend up to $74 million in improvements. The Bay Area Air Quality Management  District and Bay Conservation and Development Commission have stated their intentions to move into the shared building.

Article source: http://blog.sfgate.com/cityinsider/2012/05/07/mtc-real-estate-deal-questioned/

Blanca Torres
Reporter – San Francisco Business Times

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The Metropolitan Transportation Commission and the Bay Area Toll Authority plan to meet Wednesday morning to re-affirm their decision to move their offices to San Francisco.

The commission and toll authority along with the Air Quality Management District agreed on July 17 to buy a 455,000-square foot building at 390 Main St. in San Francisco for a joint regional headquarters after a request for proposals yielding several five in San Francisco and Oakland.

The July decision was later rescinded on Aug. 17 after a huge outpouring of opposition from Oakland residents, business leaders and local officials.

The MTC board agreed to form a six-person subcommittee to review the 390 Main Street decision and report their findings within 60 days.

The opponents argued that 390 Main is not convenient or easy to reach for disabled people and would require significant and costly upgrades.

Oakland supporters also argued that the agencies would have a greater positive economic impact by staying in Oakland verses moving to San Francisco.

The allotted time has not lapsed, but the board is ready to move forward to make a deal for 390 Main. According to an agenda report for the meeting, the subcommittee determined that the selection process was “thorough, fair, and transparent,” and that a purchase price in the range of $100 million “appears reasonable” for the building, which was formerly used by the U.S. Postal Service 
 

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and is more than twice the size the regional agencies need for a joint headquarters.

The agencies plan to sublease space in the building with initial estimates that show the agencies could net $40 million during a 30-year period.

Meanwhile, the Association of Bay Area Governments has no plans to join the other agencies in their move and will remain at their Oakland headquarters in a building it co-owns with MTC and BART.

Blanca Torres covers East Bay real estate for the San Francisco Business Times.

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Article source: http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/2011/09/mtc-reaffirms-move-to-san-francisco.html