RES 01063 - Laserfiche WebLink

Mr. Brian Swift May 16, 2001 Pa~e 4.of 11 will be a problem for everyone involved. As described above, most residential projects located on a busy street have sound w~i~ with §ack yards of the houses facing the street. In the cases where there isn't a sound wall, the homes are physically separated from the bu~ street by a separate parallel frontage street for residential use. The homes that front Hopyatd Road south of the Gene's grocery'store ate a good example of this later situation. Neither sound walls nor a separate street could be provided on our property, and without either of them, residential on the comer of. a busy street is unsafe for the occupants and their children. Meanwhile, dealing with the noise coming from Hopyard Road and Gibraltar will make the cost of construction more expensive, and pollution from vehicular exhaust cannot even be dealt with in a practical way. Economic Feasibility We have researched the feasibility of housing on our property by consulting with two firms in the business of developing multi-family housing. As a result of this research, we have concluded that, in addition to being a poor location for housing, housing on the site is not economicully feasible or sensible. Archstone Communities is a for-profit developer. Bridge Housing is an established non- profit affordable housing sponsor. Both firn~ have developed projects in Pleasanton and are well respected in the Bay Area community. Each firm looked at different housing scenarios based on their expertise, and both used $4,500,000 as the cost of the property, which is what we paid to purchase it. This amount does not include our costs to hold the property for the year that we've owned it, and it does not include the amounts we expended designing our project and processing approvals. This amount also does not include any profit or return to us as owners of the property. Arohstone Communities evaluated the feasibility of doing market rate apartments on the site with 15% of the units being affordable units per Pleasanton's inelusinnary zoning ordinance. After developing a full project cost budget and cash flow analysis, they concluded that they could not achieve the yields necessary to make the project feasible. The primary reasons for its unfeasibility are the high cost of the land and the high cost of constructing the type of structure (podium building) that would be required on this site. They were not able to make it "pencil" despite using market rents which are still extremely high compared to just a few years ago. We also have concerns about whether market rents would be possible given the undesirable location. After looking at the specific characteristics of the site, Archstone Communities decided on a highly dense project with 130 total units in a four story podium building over parking (in essence a five story building with parking being the first floor). This density is equivalent to 48 dwelling units to the acre, which is nearly twice as dense as any other project in Pleasanton. Of the 130 units, 15%, or 19 units, were assumed to be affordable units, with 13 units affordable to low income occupants and 6 units affordable to very iow income occupants.