San Pablo Avenue housing, economic development update presented to El Cerrito City Council
While San Pablo Avenue runs through several communities, in no other city is it as important as it is to El Cerrito. The avenue accounts for 90% of El Cerrito‘s retail space and 60% of its office space. Consequently, it generates a significant share of the city’s sales and property tax revenue.
“San Pablo Avenue runs from Oakland to Hercules, connecting a lot of places, but we’re pretty unique on the corridor… for us it is our primary commercial street… it’s our front door,” noted Community Development Director Melanie Mintz July 7.
Mintz made her comments in her final City Council presentation before retiring. On July 20, Claudia Garcia will take over as community development director.
According to documents on the city website, discussions of developing a San Pablo Avenue Specific Plan to “articulate a vision for the future of San Pablo Avenue” date back to at least 2007.
“For us, a main goal was to create a place on San Pablo Avenue, not just to pass through as quickly as you could when you get off the freeway, or to get to one place or another, but actually to stop and be,” Mintz said.
The report presented to the council July 7 focused specifically on economic development and affordable housing and was funded by a grant from the Metropolitan Transportation Commission. No action was taken by the council.
“We’re having to get more flexible” to support existing and potential businesses, Mintz said. “As soon as there is a business license or somebody’s inquiring, we reach out, we find out what the situation is, what they need. We try to definitely walk them and help them through any building permits, but also to put them in connection with the Small Business Development Center, anything we can do.”
“A major thing we did is we stopped requiring use permits for restaurants,” Mintz said. “We’ve also simplified outdoor dining.”
Mintz said retail vacancies are at about 10%.
Although El Cerrito has been aggressive in encouraging housing, market changes have made building rental housing less attractive, with construction costs outpacing rental income. And the city has very little money left to support affordable housing, with only $95,000 left in its Affordable Housing Trust Fund.
Council member Rebecca Saltzman suggested the city consider setting aside some of the tax revenue generated from new housing development specifically for affordable housing.
She also suggested that the city look elsewhere, besides San Pablo Avenue, to provide additional housing. She suggested El Cerrito do something similar to what is happening in Berkeley, where duplexes and quadplexes are being built in areas previously zoned only for single-family homes.
“It’s not putting up giant apartment buildings next to a single-family home. We need to think about the rest of the city, and where we could get more modest density without changing these neighborhoods very much… just like what’s already happening with ADUs.”
Saltzman also said more needs to be done to make San Pablo Avenue an appealing place to hang out.
“It’s very unpleasant to walk on San Pablo, and this is nothing based on what the city is doing today… It was built for people to get through our city to the next city.” She said people often wonder why it can’t be more like Solano Avenue in Albany. While San Pablo Avenue has challenges Solano doesn’t have such as being wider, she said the city is doing things like making crosswalks safer and trying to work with Caltrans to lower the speed limit. But she warned that to make San Pablo Avenue more of a draw, people are going to need to be willing to see big changes.
She asked for additional study sessions on both affordable housing and housing in general.
Recording of July 7 council meeting. The presentation on the San Pablo Avenue Specific Plan Economic Development and Affordable Housing Analysis and Implementation Strategy begins at 1:15
July 7 council packet The San Pablo Avenue report is item 4A.
City website section on San Pablo Avenue Specific Plan
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