Introduction of Ordinance Approving a Lease and Authorizing the City Manager to Execute Documents Necessary to Implement the Terms of a 60 Year Lease Agreement and Approve a Temporary Right of Entry Permit with Water Emergency Transportation Authority (WETA) for 0.73 acres of Undeveloped Upland Real Property and 3.4 acres of Submerged Lands located along West Hornet and Ferry Point Streets at Alameda Point. (Base Reuse 858)
Good evening, mayor and city council members. I'm Ninette Mercado in the Community Development Based Fees Department. Tonight, we're asking you to approve a six year lease with the Water Emergency Transportation Authority for its maintenance and operation center. If approved, this project will mark the first new construction to occur on Alameda Point. The proposed project would provide maintenance services such as fueling engine oil changes, concession supply and light repair work for the LEDA ferryboats operating in the central San Francisco Bay. In addition to the proposal. In addition, the proposed project would be the location for operation activities of Weta, including day to day management and oversight of services, crew and facilities in the event of a regional disaster. The facility would also function as an emergency operations center, serving passengers and sustaining water transit services for emergency response and recovery. The site selected as an area transferred referred to as Term one, which is property always owned by the city but was formerly leased to the Navy. The Navy had tight control of the area until around 2001, when they extinguished the lease and removed improvements at the city's request. The area is also part of the state title and so it's restricted for maritime and water related uses. We two staff will walk you through the improvements they're proposing for the property on the land and water side. I will describe the details of the transaction. We will be paying a base rent of approximately of $5,125. The city's development impact fee for all Me two point is 9790 $956 per acre, and potential developers can opt to install their fair share of infrastructure improvements as outlined in the master infrastructure plan. In lieu of paying that fee, in other words, and acres worth of improvements for every acre of land, we will be installing infrastructure instead of paying that impact fee. Using the fee structure, we just landside obligation would be $714,640 because their landside improvements comprise 0.73 acres. Recognizing that there is some water side impact. Staff negotiated $2.5 million in infrastructure included in the master infrastructure plan because we too also will be leasing 3.4 acres of submerged parcels. The most significant improvement will be the installation of the $1 million water line running from the base to the water main on Pacific Avenue. This will be the first line on Alameda Point Water line on Alameda Point that will be in compliance with East Bay mud standards. Other master infrastructure plan improvements include a portion of the waterfront park contributing to the reconfiguration of Main Street and flood protection improvement. Approving the list tonight will only give way to the real estate right to develop the property. We also will need to go through the planning board for use, permit and project conditions. They currently are scheduled to go to the Planning Board on March 23rd. At that meeting, the planning board will determine use conditions. I think that's an important point to make, to remind the community that the planning board will be making decisions about this project and more specifically because of a phone call I receive later today regarding concern over the height of the proposed building. After conferring with the city planner, I was informed that the proposed building is 65 feet tall, and the height restriction in that district of the of the base is 100 feet. For further frame of reference, the USS Hornet is 190 feet to the top of its mass. So the scale of the building is not out of line with its surroundings. Also keep in mind that the long term lease with the Department of Transportation Maritime Administration anticipates that there'll be a new warehouse adjacent to the piers. If the existing warehouse is torn down for development. So there potentially would be another structure of similar size in the vicinity. The issue that is most discussed in the public arena is the removal of the seal haul out at the project in the project area. Over the years of negotiating this project. Harbor SEALs have established a hall out area on the old dilapidated pier, which is approximately 80 feet long. After all of your environmental consultations and conferring with the city's biologists, there doesn't seem to be an impact in removing the hall out entirely, especially given the ample hull out available on the nearby breakwater. However, there are community concerns for which we too has agreed to use commercially reasonable efforts to locate, design and construct an alternate hull out via a negotiated MRU with the city. The reason we're not bringing the menu to you tonight or an additional approval is because we need to determine the appropriate location for the facility and be mindful that we don't create another unwanted environmental impact on the waterfront affecting other species, creating obstacles to additional waterfront improvements such as a small marina or an additional ferry terminal. We just don't know yet. We don't want to put the hull out in a place that will tie our hands later. Finally, staff is able to recommend the approval of this project for several reasons. First, consistency with the general plan and zoning designations for the property. This is in the Alameda Point Enterprise Zoning District, which is to support maritime uses consistent with the Public Trust Exchange Agreement, provide land for employment and business uses and residential use of this land is not permitted. Because of disaster preparedness as an island community with limited access to the to the region, Alameda must do everything it can to prepare for a major disaster. It will be a major benefit to the residents of Alameda to be home of Guido's EOC and the region's ferry boats in December of last year. I attended a half day meeting with the fire chief, public works director and representatives from DC and regional FEMA offices to tour Alameda Point. The Wheeler facility played a significant role in the response and access planning for the city of Alameda. Alternate transportation services. This facility is an important step towards ensuring a strong partnership between the community and the regional ferry provider. Investment in Alameda Point. This project will take a small parcel of land and invest 45 to $50 million in construction of the facility and infrastructure. Public Park and Bay Trail Improvement Plan will align the Bay Trail to its long term placement, and the project will improve the adjacent adjacent public park area. I hope that you can support this recommendation tonight, and I'm going to turn the discussion over to Kevin Connolly, the manager of Planning and Development. Thank you, Nanette. It's been a pleasure working with Annette on this project. My name is Kevin Connolly. I'm the manager of planning and development for the Water Emergency Transportation Authority. With me tonight is Michael Garrity, who is the project manager for this project. And we're happy to answer any questions you may have, which is going to run through a quick overview of the project. As Ninette said, really, I'm not going to add more than what she's already discussed. This is a rendering of our building. And as you said, it's just below 70 feet tall. It's about three stories. If you include or do not include a mezzanine, the third story is the emergency operations center, which is a key part of this and function of this building today. Our emergency operations center that we use in the event of any natural disaster would be our San Francisco facility on Pier nine, which is woefully inadequate in terms of its size and scale and functionality. This would be our center centerpiece for emergency operations in the whole Bay Area when it is complete. Look at the next one. I got. It. Here's an overview of the facility. There would be berthing space for 12 vessels here. All the auto vessels are used in Alameda service. So these are Alameda Main Street Harbor Bay and South San Francisco service. South San Francisco is sometimes forgotten among alameda commuters, but we have a healthy proportion of of our commuters to south San Francisco are coming from Alameda origins. So those are the 1212 for the 12 berths for our vessels on the water side that's a little bit over three acres of of overwater lands. Their power supported floating docks. They do not represent actual actual construction on the water they're floating. And they can be and will be removed on an occasional basis for cleaning and and and maintenance. There's also a maintenance facility, the major facility proper, which is mainly a light industrial light maintenance facility. Oil changes fueling light maintenance are heavy mean. This really takes place that bay ship on the estuary as well as in seaport as in shipyards up and down the West Coast. Seattle and San Diego have typically done our major maintenance work. One area where our service is really at vulnerable is we only have one day's worth of fuel at any given time. This facility will allow us to have up to five days storage of fuel in the event of a natural disaster and the ferries will be relied upon to serve the Bay Area. We will need those five days of fuel. We cannot really survive with only one day's of fuel. As the net said, the key infrastructure improvements here. One is the Bay Trail that runs along east west along Hornet Avenue. The second is the park area, which is just immediately to the east of our site that we are improving. Third is the main is the water main that's coming from Pacific. And fourth, we didn't mention is we're actually providing $250,000 towards improvements for parking at the Main Street terminal. And if you're aware of the situation there, Main Street is incredibly impacted today. A close up view of the site. And you can see we have fuel storage tanks across the street. That was a way of of reducing the project costs, making it simpler and making it easier to build. And it's also been incredibly productive in terms of the safety of the facility. In addition, you see there the West Hornet Avenue Bikeway that's going to be put in by us. We're improving the street as well, as well as the park. All of our facility here is being raised to seven feet above sea level for sea level rise at the 50 year level. And then finally, the SEALs issue that Nanette mentioned, and this is just a little project history on it, we first became aware of it roughly about a year ago, and we consulted with biologist at NOA and it NIPS the National Marine Fisheries Association. There was public comment, there was onsite meeting with the city staff and local residents in December. NOA issued its findings last month. And, you know, our intent is to build something for the SEALs. And as Nanette said, from our perspective, we submitted a memorandum memorandum of understanding, a draft about a month ago to the city. But we understand the concern that we do not know enough about where this location is yet. But when we do, we are committed to funding and constructing that hall. So with that I can answer any questions or I can turn over next. Vice mayor of two questions. You were here before. Who's responsible for spills and containment as you're being changing oil and fueling? We are. And is that in the contract part of the lease? Or how does how does that how does that get assigned? That's part of our regulatory responsibility with the Coast Guard. Coast Guard provides us licensing. And. We're protective as a city. As far as liability from. Yes. Yes. We have provisions in the lease that that make any spills the responsibility of the tenant. And the second is, you're still, according to the staff report, and what you said is you're still committed to building the hall out prior to dismantling the current one. Right. We are going to work with the city staff to identify the best location and timing for doing that. Prior to removing the existing one. That's. That's still your position. That's that's that's our intent. Right. Thank you. Councilmember Ashcroft. And I just wanted to also clarify that in the lease, even before I knew that this the report of the the spill in the estuary was going to be on this agenda. I bookmark that there are pages in this in this lease agreement that we are approving tonight that have to do with. The installation use of fossil fuel storage facilities. They are required to be double walled Maersk and any fuel dock must contain adequate measures to prevent and detect any fuel spill spills or leaks. And it goes on, as I said, for pages. I thought it was very thorough. So I would just say that I want to be sure that no one who's listening gets confused with what's being presented here proposed tonight and the presentation we heard about the estuary spill, because after all, that's still a mystery. I mean, somebody we don't know where it came from, but it's clear that these sorts of procedures weren't in place. If you if you read this lease, as I said, riveting stuff. But it's it's very thorough. And see.