The Faria/Southwest Hills Project aims to construct as many as 1,500 new single-family homes concentrated around the Los Medanos Ridgeline. Proposed by Discovery Builders — owned by Concord-based developer Albert Seeno III — the project has twice been approved by the Pittsburg City Council.

The Contra Costa Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCO) — a powerful group of city, county and special district officials in charge of overseeing the growth of city boundaries — greenlit the reorganization of the Seeno-owned land in a 5-2 vote Wednesday. Faria’s forward momentum relied on LAFCO’s approval in order to ensure that the future development can access the Contra Costa Water and the Delta Diablo Sanitation districts’ services.

Before the vote, Pittsburg City Manager Garrett Evans urged approval, citing the project’s plans to protect the ridgeline, focus housing development in the valley, provide access to Thurgood Marshall Regional Park next door and preserve 44% of the property as open space — double the amount originally proposed.

“This is a better project than it was 20 years ago,” Evans said Wednesday. “This is giving us hope, development and opportunity.”

The two dissenting commissioners — Scott Perkins, San Ramon’s vice mayor, and Charles R. Lewis IV, a non-elected official representing the public — raised concerns that the developers’ extensive list of environmental documents failed to answer all of LAFCO officials’ questions about impacts on the surrounding open space.

Lewis was adamant that crucial details about the Faria development site and grading plan were still missing — information that LAFCO’s executive officer, Lou Ann Texeira, requested in at least a dozen “polite but firm letters.” These records, he said, are vital not only in helping the public understand the proposed project, but also for LAFCO to consider approving annexation.

“There’s no limit to the information that the applicant has provided — several boxes of documents — but it does not include the project level,” Lewis said, indicating a lack of specifics about the impacts of the development.

He said the city should have demanded more documentation from the developers before approving the project. “This does not seem to me to be simple negligence that (the city of Pittsburg) overlooked it or forgot. This is willful noncompliance with the orders of this commission. I find it both a substantive and procedural failure of due process.”

Winter King, an attorney representing the environmental group Save Mount Diablo, shared Lewis’ concerns — advocating that LAFCO reject Pittsburg’s application for annexation.

However, Tom Geiger, the commission’s legal counsel, said Pittsburg’s final environmental certification last year is adequate, especially because no lawsuits were filed following the City Council’s approval in April 2023. Additionally, he pointed to a 2022 court ruling that a programmatic EIR was “appropriate and legal.”

“There was a small window of time to challenge it,” Geiger said, “but that time has passed — the city certified it more than a year ago.”

Commissioner Federal Glover said he was not initially a proponent of the Faria development but had a change of heart after years of discussion and modification of the plan.

“I know I have tried over the last couple of months to get the parties together, but it didn’t happen,” Glover said. “I don’t know that any more dialogue that’s going to take place between the applicant and Save Mount Dablo is going to result in anything more.”

But that buffer is not enough to protect the open space nearby, according to members and supporters of the nonprofit Save Mount Diablo, a land trust and conservation organization that has advocated for years to “Save the Ridge.”

Environmentalists sent hundreds of letters urging LAFCO to reject the annexation, saying the Albert Seeno III development is “disastrous” and threatens to “bulldoze the top of Pittsburg’s hills.” Opponents say Discovery Builders “never provided project-level environmental review as LAFCO has repeatedly said it requires,” nor has it submitted a detailed grading plan or an engineered subdivision map with house lots and streets.”

Seth Adams, land conservation director for Save Mount Diablo, was unsuccessful in convincing the commission to require more green space — up to 500 feet — against the regional park. He contends that heavy grading during construction could negatively affect wildlife habitats, access to nature, neighborhood traffic, fire risks and the community’s scenic views. He said Seeno’s development team was unwilling to come to the table to openly discuss alternatives.

“Save Mount Diablo supports sensitive development and open space protection,” Adams said. “We don’t care if Seeno builds their project. We just want them to save the ridge and make the development less of an impact. It’s not that hard to do.”

But for nearly two decades since then, plans to build single-family homes on a portion of that land have been tied up in development disputes and environmental legal challenges.

That battle may come to an end on Wednesday if local officials agree to cede control of 606 acres to Pittsburg — potentially clearing the project’s final hurdle for approval.

The Faria/Southwest Hills Project aims to construct as many as 1,500 new single-family homes concentrated around the Los Medanos Ridgeline. Proposed by Discovery Builders — an affiliate of Concord-based developer Albert Seeno III — the project has twice been approved by the Pittsburg City Council.

But Faria’s forward momentum has been stalled, awaiting annexation of the unincorporated agricultural preserve, which Discovery Builders owns, into Pittsburg’s city limits and service areas of the Contra Costa Water and the Delta Diablo Sanitation districts. The Contra Costa Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCO), which oversees such boundary changes, will vote on the annexation Wednesday.

This decision was postponed in April amid mounting opposition, including hundreds of letters from members and supporters of the nonprofit Save Mount Diablo — a land trust and conservation organization — urging supporters to help “Save the Ridge.” They say the Albert Seeno III development is “disastrous” and threatens to “bulldoze the top of Pittsburg’s hills.” Opponents say Discovery Builders “never provided project-level environmental review as LAFCO has repeatedly said it requires,” nor has it submitted a detailed grading plan or an engineered subdivision map with house lots and streets.”

For more than a decade, Seth Adams, land conservation director for Save Mount Diablo, has fought to protect Pittsburg’s hills from being developed by Seeno and questioned the homebuilder’s motives for wanting to fast-track approvals before the public can review detailed blueprints. At the same time, Albert Seeno III has attempted to distance himself from a history of familial spats and environmental violations clouding developments led by other members of his family’s building empire across Contra Costa County’s hills.

In addition to a youth recreation center and trails that will connect to Thurgood Marshall Regional Park, plans for the other half of the Faria/Southwest Hills Project along the ridge include 265 acres of open space and a greenbelt buffer against the East Bay Regional Park District’s land, which is sandwiched between a billion-dollar, 12,200-unit housing development slated for the former Concord Naval Weapons Station on the other side of the hill.

Adams is urging the commission to require more green space — up to 500 feet — against the regional park, contending wildlife habitats, access to nature, neighborhood traffic, fire risks and the community’s scenic views could be negatively affected by heavy grading during construction.

“I think a whole bunch of issues can be resolved by making a bigger buffer on this county unincorporated land between the development footprint and the edge of Concord” he said in April.

Faria’s vision for Pittsburg’s southwest hillside has been disputed for years.

The first application for the project was filed in 2010, but a premature annexation bid was quickly withdrawn in 2011. Developers modified the proposal in 2014 and again in 2017, then resurrected the plans in 2020. After gleaning council approval in 2021, a lawsuit arguing that the project would mar the hills and habitat subsequently forced Discovery Builders to redraft environmental reviews, which the Pittsburg City Council re-approved in April 2023 — against the recommendation of Pittsburg’s planning commissioners.

Elected leaders’ have increasingly cited pressure to not only generate millions of dollars of much-needed tax revenues, but also meet its state-mandated housing development goals to keep up with its above-average rate of growth in Contra Costa County. Pittsburg’s population is expected to swell from 77,500 to approximately 91,600 residents by 2040, according to the city’s previous Housing Element, and the city’s current plan was already out of compliance with current state law by March 1.

“I’ve urged the city, the developer, and Save Mount Diablo to work together on preserving some permanent open space in that area — that’s the best I can legally do,” Texeira said ahead of Wednesday’s meeting. “It’s been a challenging process, but I think I have all the information I need to bring this forward (for approval). I hope this moves forward without any hiccups.”

Louis Parsons, president of Discovery Builders and the former project manager of the Faria development, has long described Save Mount Diablo’s challenge as “meritless.” In April, he said that environmentalist group “is confused about the Contra Costa LAFCO’s role or is attempting to confuse the public and decisionmakers.”

“The fact is the shape and scope of the project is already approved by the city of Pittsburg,” Parsons wrote in an email. The proposed development “satisfies all environmental regulations, including important habitat conservation policies adopted by various local cities and the Contra Costa County Habitat Conservancy.”

But this change is not intended to spur projects like Hope Village at Grace Presbyterian Church, where six ADUs will soon be built alongside on-site supportive services such as counseling, health care referrals and laundry facilities to help support low-income seniors transitioning out of homelessness.

Instead, the Walnut Creek City Council unanimously approved amendments to the city’s ADU ordinance Tuesday night — creating a more conservative path for religious leaders to help residents struggling to secure an affordable home. In addition to allowing for approval without requiring input from the city’s planning commission or council, the intent is that owners of religious-based properties will not have to wade through extensive community pushback and environmental reviews that commonly disrupt higher-density blueprints.

Mayor Pro Tem Cindy Darling applauded this carveout to accelerate more modest ADU projects.

“This is going to be a way for a faith-based organization that is having a hard time getting a preschool teacher that can live in town — and I can see several churches that have those kinds of needs — to build something on site,” Darling said Tuesday. “(The ordinance is) for people that just need a place to live in a city without very many of those.”

Additionally, the amended ordinance fills a gap for projects that don’t take advantage of numerous state laws that further streamlined faith-based properties’ housing initiatives, such as SB 4 and AB 2162, which facilitated Hope Village’s ongoing development.

Aaron Sage, principal planner, said during Tuesday’s meeting that the city issued 147 building permits for ADUs between 2015 and 2023. While that represents only 7% of all housing in Walnut Creek, those homes accounted for 55% of the city’s total below-market units.

But the city’s ordinance historically only allowed those kinds of homes — often called in-law units, granny flats or carriage houses — on properties with single- or multi-family dwellings.

The council voted to expand those building rules to include lots that are zoned for “religious assembly use.” Sage said Walnut Creek will allow construction on sites dedicated to religious worship and incidental religious education, but not private schools. These approved plots of land will now span neighborhoods that feature single-family homes, pedestrian retail centers and commercial uses, including the city’s downtown core.

These structures will be largely limited to 1000-square-foot floor plans and a 16-foot maximum building height, which will likely be single-story units. The ADUs must be designed, however, to visually match or compliment the architectural features of the religious-based structures on the same property.

Following Tuesday’s approval, the council is slated to adopt and implement the amended ordinance on June 18. Sage said the final ordinance also now aligns with the promises Walnut Creek made in its most recent Housing Element to increase affordable housing options within city limits. The effort will be implemented before the June 30 deadline set by state officials to maintain their certification of the city’s plan.

While ADU regulations are often a hot button issue at council meetings across the Bay Area, no residents spoke during Walnut Creek’s discussion Tuesday night when amendments to the ordinance were ironed out. Only three residents emailed their thoughts: one largely in support; one wary of impacts on safety, parking and tax equity; one in stern dissent, arguing that the city is already too overcrowded to sustain the “uncontrolled growth” feeding these kinds of housing projects.

“The streets are congested. Parking is horrible. At some point enough is enough,” resident Julie Fletcher wrote. “The charm of Walnut Creek is slipping away. Please ask yourself if current residents are interested in squeezing more people into this finite space. It’s too much!”

None of the elected officials shared those anxieties, but Councilmember Cindy Silva was concerned that a previous draft of the amended ordinance that aimed at protecting commercial areas from ADU construction would also prevent several of the city’s roughly 35 religious assembly properties from taking advantage of the new rules.

City staff ultimately clarified that up to two ADUs can be built on faith-based properties, as long as that land is zoned to permit both residential use and religious-based uses — narrowly avoiding a legal mess that would have excluded congregations at St. Mary’s Church, Walnut Creek Presbyterian Church and St Paul’s Episcopal Church, which are all located between Highway 680 and the city’s downtown.

Silva also suggested drafting objective design standards that would allow flexibility for the styles of windows, roofs and other features — intended to not only avoid forcing ADUs to include spires, minarets or stained glass, but also prevent those homes from inadvertently looking like commercial storage units.

“I think we need to be really cautious that we’re defeating the (ordinance’s) purpose, which is the mission of the faith-based communities,” Silva said. “They may find this a good opportunity for them.”

But hundreds of the shareable electric scooters have vanished across the Bay Area in recent years — a pivot from industry promises to revolutionize micromobility in an eco-friendly, affordable way.

While some brands such as Lime and Bird are still powering forward, a growing number of e-scooter companies have quietly shuttered, declared bankruptcy and even abandoned communities outright, often without any explanation.

Rent-a-scooter companies frequently blame this downward trend on financial woes — stemming from both over-investment of private equity and lackluster revenue streams. As e-scooter enterprises continue to take their business and equipment offline, some commuters, tourists and residents have been left to their own devices trying to cope with gaps in service that buses, trains and other traditional modes of public transportation struggle to fill.

But it’s unclear whether local governments are politically motivated — or physically equipped — to help address the complicated safety and access concerns that are exacerbating the micromobility industry’s economic struggles.

In May 2022, the e-scooter company Superpedestrian launched a fleet of 200 stand-up scooters and 50 seated scooters in Berkeley. Nineteen months later, they were gone.

Superpedestrian announced that its scooters would stop rolling by the last day of 2023, despite raising $125 million in funding just 18 months earlier. Joining a host of shared e-scooter brands that folded in major metropolitan areas worldwide, their neon chartreuse “LINK” e-scooters are no longer visible on the company’s app-based maps of Berkeley and Oakland — two of the cities where machines were yanked before being put up for auction.

Meanwhile, VeoRide is the only remaining option to rent a scooter in Berkeley — at least through the end of June. Spokesperson Matthai Chakko said the city is currently working through the “permittee selection process” for the next fiscal year, which will determine the number of operators and e-scooters that will be available for use.

He said that out of the 224,048 total e-scooter trips across Berkeley last year, roughly 22% were taken on Superpedestrian e-scooters. Looking ahead, Chakko said that “the city is open to expanding the available fleet, however, expansion is dependent on operator performance and user demand, among other things.”

The current outlook for e-scooters — which generally cost under a dollar per minute to ride, along with an unlock fee — is a lot less rosy than when the industry first got rolling in California just seven years ago.

Bird e-scooters were the first ones to appear by September 2017, when the company scattered hundreds of them on the streets of Santa Monica within just a few days. Bird was valued at $1 billion within its first year in business and $2.5 billion by 2019.

However, Bird was temporarily grounded after it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last winter — only three months after acquiring one of its competitors, Spin, for $19 million.

By April 5, the company announced it had successfully sold its assets and emerged as part of Third Lane Mobility Inc. — now the largest micromobility operator in North America, encompassing both the Bird and Spin brands, which recently won multiple new competitive bids and started service in several new cities, according to the April news release.

The list of shuttered or acquired companies has grown since their 2017 introduction. For example, while Spin, Scoot, Lime and Jump were awarded permits to operate in San Francisco in 2019, only Spin and Lime were still in business in the city by July 2023.

Despite headlines about bankruptcy, acquisitions and an overall lack of cash for some rent-a-scooter operators, the fate of the industry hasn’t dimmed entirely.

According to an annual report from the National Association of City Transportation Officials on the state of shared micromobility in 2022, there were 56.5 million trips nationwide on “dockless” e-scooters, which can be parked anywhere. Compared to 65 million trips in 2021, the report attributes the recent dip to the industry’s recent financial struggles and business shifts. However, the total number of trips has hit 730 million since 2010.

While the South Bay has a slightly smaller list of options, e-scooters operated by Lime, Spin and Bird can be found in cities like San Jose, Santa Clara, Sunnyvale, Redwood City and Millbrae. Wheels powered by Veo, however, are concentrated in the East Bay and Southern California.

Looking ahead, national association said communities must tackle redesigning streets, such as adding wider bike lanes that can better accommodate more people traveling at different speeds in order to help support e-scooters and other micromobility systems.

“One billion trips on shared bikes and scooters is just around the corner,” the report said, “and cities that form strong partnerships with both their operators and the communities they serve will be the ones that lead the way.”

Sandwiched between Berkeley and Oakland, Emeryville has not only maintained a range of options for rentable e-scooters, but the city’s elected officials have made a concerted push for finding safer places for riders.

Former Emeryville Mayor John Bauters said the success of any form of micromobility transportation relies on a local government’s ability — and desire — to invest in infrastructure specifically designed to accommodate those options, such as protected bike lanes and the car-free Emeryville Greenway. He said one of the biggest problems started when American roadways were redesigned to primarily accommodate automobiles.

Despite the benefits of reducing emissions and the costs associated with car ownership, Bauters said people may shy away from accessing e-scooters and other alternative forms of transportation because they lack safe places to ride — on roadways and sidewalks, alike.

“Scooter companies — predictably, in my opinion — are not succeeding because cities aren’t responding to the public desire to have choices by giving people safe infrastructure that matches those choices,” Bauters said. “The people who are choosing to use them — whether it’s because they’re more cost-effective, faster or more fun — they’re being pushed out of using it because the sidewalk isn’t for them, and neither is the street. We haven’t given them a space. Companies fail because there’s only so long in which a person who’s trying to use something that is innovative and more accessible decides it’s not worth it.”

Whether modernizing heating and cooling equipment, lighting fixtures or building control systems, the Texas-based multinational company has boasted that its services not only reduce energy consumption, but also save school districts money in the long run.

But several watchdogs responsible for ensuring effective spending of taxpayers’ dollars are now ringing alarm bells over one multi-million-dollar Schneider Electric project in Contra Costa County. Complaints have snowballed into questions about whether the Mt. Diablo Unified School District (MDUSD) illegally allowed Schneider to scope, design and construct energy-efficient improvements to buildings district-wide, ultimately doubling their cost to $50 million.

What’s more, an oversight committee is claiming that the district is stonewalling its attempts to investigate this contract, perhaps in violation of California law.

The school district’s Citizen’s Bond Oversight Committee (CBOC) on Thursday discussed sending a formal letter in June to the county’s civil grand jury about its concerns, shortly after sharing the same grievances with District Attorney Diana Becton’s office.

Committee members — who are appointed by MDUSD’s governing board — are looking into allegations related to Schneider Electric’s “energy savings performance” contract with the district. Similar contracts at the crux of Schneider’s pitch to educators have been clouded by allegations of malfeasance, including criminal forfeiture of $1.7 million and a $9.3 million settlement in Dec. 2020 involving at least eight projects with the federal government.

Under current regulations, contracts classified as “energy savings performance” can be approved without being put out to competitive bidding, as long as the amount of money saved from efficiency upgrades exceeds project costs. The district took Schneider at its word that the projected savings will surpass $37.7 million within 20 years; in fact, the contract stipulated that the company’s data on projected savings would be approved without any additional measurement or verification.

Concerns that the school board has not properly handled these allegations have gotten so serious that the oversight committee has tentatively suggested starting a campaign to recall MDUSD’s board trustees, who approved the contract and subsequent revisions with Schneider.

Jack Weir, a member of the oversight committee, has spent two decades doing similar work on over $1 billion in school bonds for six different oversight committees. He said at a March 7 committee meeting that, “we would prefer the district to clean this up if there is a problem. But from my perspective, we aren’t getting any cooperation back from the (school) board, and this has gone on for months, and months, and months.”

Gina Haynes, the oversight committee’s chair, said reaching out to the county’s district attorney — and potentially a civil grand jury down the line — was a last resort, after school district Superintendent Adam Clark and the board denied the committee’s request for $14,250 to hire independent legal counsel to review allegations of possible wrongdoing.

“I just want to know, did we do it wrong? And learn from it,” Haynes said Thursday, adding that the oversight board has asked for independent legal help on this issue for more than a year. “I applied for this committee — I’m not here just to rubber stamp. My job is to report out to the public, and I feel like I can’t do that.”

MDUSD Superintendent Adam Clark defended the project’s legality and completion, arguing that the CBOC’s repeated requests and complaints about the bidding process and energy savings of Schneider’s project are “clearly outside of their scope of responsibility.” After the committee was not satisfied with Schneider’s answers over several meetings, he said that the CBOC also refused to use the list of attorneys — and narrower scope of investigation — that the district offered.

“The role of the CBOC is — after a project is complete — to basically verify that we did what we said we would do,” Clark said Friday. “Of course, if something’s amiss, I want to get to the bottom of it. My concern is if we start hiring attorneys on their behalf and keep going down different rabbit holes, that’s not very responsible and not even how we do business.”

Potential trouble began brewing in March 2023, when the total project cost swelled to $49.4 million after the school board unanimously approved an amendment to Schneider’s May 2022 contract to replace lighting fixtures and ceiling tiles district-wide. The expanded scope included nearly $25.1 million of additional work on heating and cooling systems, which was not separately put out to bid.

Schneider has signed similar contracts with several other school districts nationwide, including Northern California projects in Berkeley, Dublin, Dixon and Stockton.

But state officials have advised other government officials for years that this no-bid-extension process may violate state laws regarding conflicts of interest.

In addition to a letter sent in 2019 to the city of Pleasanton, California’s Fair Political Practices Commission also advised the city of Concord’s legal team in 2020 about this same concern.

Marc Starkey, an account executive for Schneider Electric who has managed over $150 million in school district projects for the company, including the Mt. Diablo district, refused to comment on the accusations or respond directly to the oversight group’s push to investigate the contracting issues. However, he said he believes that a new state law, which went into effect in January, ensures that their two-step contracting process is “completely legal.”

In 2018, voters approved Measure J, a $150 million school bond bookmarked for campus infrastructure improvements and energy system efficiency upgrades. According to flyers ahead of the election, more than 85% of polled voters shared four top priorities for that money, which is paid back by increased property taxes: improvements to technology and science in classrooms, building repairs to aging roofs, plumbing and electrical, campus security measures and upgraded computers and engineering classrooms.

However, Schneider’s heating and cooling work, and lighting work has already accounted for more than 60% of the total $46 million spent on Measure J projects by the end of March, according to a quarterly report the oversight committee released this month. Those records also show that the district still owes another $20.3 million for the company’s contract.

Haynes, the committee chair, said this discrepancy between funded projects and the district’s $1 billion “wish list” of priorities provides “a little snapshot of what we really need to upgrade at all these school sites. If we could have gotten all this work done for half the price, we wouldn’t want to make this mistake again.”

Schneider’s federal settlement from 2020 echoes the Mt. Diablo Unified School Board’s bond oversight committee’s current concerns about doing the right thing, and learning from past mistakes.

“Ever since we brought this up and wanted to investigate, there’s been all this pushback, especially from the superintendent,” Haynes said, adding that she’s uncomfortable with how contentious meetings have become. “We’re volunteers who are just trying to do oversight. It shouldn’t be this hard.”

Speedier approvals for rate hikes is one of the key reforms insurers say is necessary for them to stay afloat amid a growing number of costly claims in the Golden State, especially tied to recent wildfires and other mounting costs of climate change.

Newsom said he is drafting a “trailer bill” that could cut the current approval process down to 60 days — legislation he hopes will quell an exodus of insurers bailing their business out of California and soothe residents’ financial anxieties around canceled policies.

The current process allows the Department of Insurance up to 84 days to approve filings for insurance rate increases, but that timeline can take substantially longer if a public hearing is requested by consumer advocates or other groups.

“We need to stabilize this market,” Newsom said during a Friday press conference about his revised budget proposal. “We need to send the right signals, we need to move.”

While this change may temporarily usher in more expensive bills for consumers, proponents argue the changes will make home insurance more available. In turn, more options may also allow residents to avoid taking their chances with California’s “FAIR Plan,” the state’s “insurer of last resort,” which offers exorbitant premiums compared to regular insurance, and is also inching towards insolvency.

Denni Ritter, the American Property Casualty Insurance Association’s department vice president for state government relations, praised the news about expedited approvals Friday afternoon.

“Expediting the rate review process is a vital component to addressing California’s insurance crisis,” Ritter said in a statement. “We look forward to working with the Administration, Legislature and Department of Insurance on this crucial reform and other reforms necessary to fix our broken regulatory system and increase the availability of insurance for California homeowners, drivers, and businesses.”

The governor said he opted to work with state lawmakers on this “trailer bill,” rather than pursue an executive order to move the process along.

California’s Insurance Commissioner, Ricardo Lara, started working with Newsom last fall to modernize and overhaul three decades of state’s regulations, including efforts to allow insurance companies to use catastrophe models to set rates, as well as bill consumers for the costs of reinsurance, which is insurance for insurers.

Lara said that ongoing work, however, isn’t expected to materialize until December.

That timeline isn’t fast enough in the governor’s eyes. If Newsom’s bill is passed within the state’s budget for 2024-25, it may take effect as early as July 1.

“(Lara’s) team is working their tails off, I know how concerned the legislature is on this,” Newsom said. “But December? I don’t think we have that much time.”

Rather than push back on Newsom’s announcement of his new bill, Lara thanked the governor’s support of his own effort, which has been dubbed the Sustainable Insurance Strategy.

“Newsom is right: time is of the essence,” Lara posted to X, formerly Twitter, on Friday. “Our partnership with the Governor and Legislature are essential to stabilizing our market. We’ve taken significant steps forward, but there is more to do.”

CONCORD — Transforming an abandoned military base into a massive $6 billion, mixed-use community is no simple task — and Concord has the $40 million bill to prove it.

For nearly two decades, the city has attempted to revitalize the former Concord Naval Weapons Station into tens of thousands of homes and millions of square-feet of schools, offices, shops and restaurants.

But that vision had only racked up nearly $40 million in expenses by the end of 2023 — with almost nothing to show for it. The project is on its third developer, specific plans have not been finalized, construction timelines remain unclear and the U.S. Navy still technically owns the 2,300-acre site.

The project has been a boon for consultants who help in-house staff draft a slew of environmental studies, conceptual renderings, legal contracts and other permitting admin required before any shovels can break ground. While compensation for that work started in October of 2005, delays tied to the pandemic and the city’s decision to abandon problematic agreements with previous developers have since exacerbated those costs.

Despite the long list of expenditures, Concord officials are confident that the city’s coffers will be spared from those past (and future) debts.

That’s because the project has been funded entirely from state and federal grants, the city’s now-defunct redevelopment agency and city loans. While those loans will eventually be repaid by future home sales, developers have committed to fully reimbursing the city for all project costs.

That requirement is now on Brookfield Properties — the third and current developer of the Naval Weapons Station.

In March, the Concord City Council, acting as the Local Reuse Authority (LRA), tentatively approved Brookfield’s plan to develop roughly 6 million square-feet of commercial space, 880 acres of greenspace and more than 12,200 homes at the Naval Weapons Station.

More recently — and quietly — Concord’s elected officials approved $1.6 million for 12 one-year agreements with legal and professional consultants, who have started ironing out details of a Development and Disposition Agreement (DDA) with Brookfield.

The agreement with Brookfield includes a commitment that both the company’s upfront investments and loans from Concord’s general fund to the LRA — currently tallying $14.6 million, which is already in the $40 million bill — will be repaid as homes are sold. This is profit-sharing model that aims to recoup everyone’s money after the first 10 years of residential construction, according to Guy Bjerke, the city’s director of Economic Development and Base Reuse.

Brookfield has estimated that their sunk costs will total $22 million by the time the project is fully entitled. After the first phase of construction is complete, that total may balloon to around $200 million in order to cover all of the initial, backbone infrastructure investments necessary to start getting residential units on the market — such as sewage lines, water utilities and roadways.

In return for taking on the risks of financing the project up-front, Brookfield will be compensated with an “entitlement fee” from future home sales, equal to three times the amount of all incurred costs.

The nearly $40 million in consulting expenses is due in large part to the project’s troubled history with its previous developers — Lennar Urban and Concord First Partners. Agreements for both of those plans were eventually scrapped in 2020 and 2023, respectively, following a host of labor disputes, power plays and allegations of backroom deals.

Those false starts have prompted questions about Concord’s ability to adequately craft complex contracts and make good on its promise to develop an economically feasible project.

After a resident complained about financial transparency, a Contra Costa County Civil Grand Jury report from June 2023 asserted that “little (had) been achieved” since Concord started studying how best to utilize the decommissioned Concord Naval Weapons Station. But Bjerke contends that the critical grand jury report fails to understand just how much detailed, painstaking work the LRA has tackled over the last 18 years.

He said the new arrangement is designed so that the city could maintain ownership of the Naval Weapons Station land, while also retaining some control over a project that effectively pays for itself.

“One of the overarching goals is to be fiscally neutral to the city of Concord — or even beneficial, but not negative,” Bjerke said, explaining the costs associated with starting from scratch on otherwise dilapidated land. “The Navy probably would have taken a re-use plan written on the back of a napkin … (but) we were trying to get this planned and approved in an appropriate way, and that can be an expensive endeavor.”

But the reimbursement plan doesn’t solve the need to pay projects planners in the meantime — expenses which have been covered by past grants, redevelopment agency funds and money the city has effectively loaned to itself, through the LRA.

Between Oct. 2005 and Dec. 2023, the city of Concord has signed agreements worth a cumulative $30.7 million to 38 vendors and consultants — a quarter of which are currently working on the project.

An additional $8.6 million has covered Concord’s payroll and other office costs associated with the Naval Weapons Station, which is sandwiched between Thurgood Marshall Regional Park and residential neighborhoods along Concord’s northern border, near the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.

Averaging roughly $2.1 million in annual expenses, Bjerke said that total may continue to swell through March 2028 — the deadline to negotiate a property transfer agreement with the U.S. Navy, draft a specific plan, prepare an Environmental Impact Report and tackle other necessary legal permits. However, Brookfield and Concord’s team are aiming to finish that work early in 2026.

Concord resident Hope Johnson applauded such detailed conversations about the money involved in such an extensive project.

“I am maybe the biggest skeptic of developers in Concord, and I would like to say that Brookfield has dealt with us credibly and honestly,” Johnson said at a council meeting in March. “(Financing) is not sexy, it’s not fun, but it’s going to come up again and again.”

It was replaced by a plan to transform its contaminated “brownfield” land into the residential subdivision that was completed in 2003 — a vision of coastal-view homes and preserved greenspace that required extensive remediation of the soil and groundwater that had been polluted there over three decades.

Now, officials in Contra Costa County are wondering if Victoria by the Bay could be a model for the shifting energy and housing needs of other communities.

A growing number of refineries around the country have shuttered in recent years, as many states pivot away from fossil fuels — such as California’s ban on sales of new gas-powered cars within the decade — and exorbitant costs are required to upgrade often century-old equipment and infrastructure. Some petroleum processing facilities have started transitioning to biofuels in an effort to reduce greenhouse gasses — and stave off the threat of being decommissioned and demolished — but for many, the future is uncertain.

Four refineries are still churning within Contra Costa County: the Marathon Martinez Refinery, Chevron Richmond Refinery, Phillips 66 in Rodeo and the Martinez Refining Company.

On Monday, the county’s Sustainability Commission, which advises implementation of the county’s Climate Action Plan, took a closer look at Victoria by the Bay as a possible test case officials can study to guide future remediation projects if those refineries shut down, too.

Commissioner Mike Moore said the project provides local insight into the immense collaboration required to balance state, county and city laws, in addition to requirements and tests from a slew of environmental agencies.

However, Monday’s meeting also made clear that there’s no one-size-fits all plan for how to transform these industrial plots of land.

Little is still known about the possible long-term health, safety and financial risks associated with remediation and redevelopment projects. Commission members Shoshana Wechsler and Norman Cohen specifically asked about how the county can ensure continuous monitoring of toxicity levels in neighborhoods like Victoria by the Bay, as well as the full extent of cancer diagnoses among residents over time — questions that currently lack any clear answers.

“I think we have a confounding influence of the age of the refineries — not just how long they have been running, but also what technology they were founded on initially, so each one may have a different characteristic in terms of ground contamination,” Cohen said. “It’s great that they were able to remediate that (Pacific Refinery), but we need to know more to compare apples to apples.”

It took several years to clean up the former Pacific Refinery site, which the Hercules City Council sold for $4.7 million in March 1997 to Hercules LLC, a subsidiary of Catellus Development Corp.

Crews hauled out soil, extracted toxic vapors and filtered ground water under guidance from agencies like the Regional Water Quality Control Board and Bay Area Air Quality Management District, which cleared more than a half-million pounds of hydrocarbons from the property by July 2000, according to commission records.

That work was deemed complete by the end of 2001 — nearly three years after the clean-up plan was first approved.

The list of defunct refineries in California has only grown in the years since.

In August of 2022, the Phillips 66 Company in San Luis Obispo asked county officials for permission to demolish and remediate its Santa Maria Refinery facility, which halted operations at 2555 Willow Road in Arroyo Grande by Jan. 2023. A 714-page draft Environmental Impact Report for that extensive process was released last month and will be open for public review until May 6.

As Phillips 66 prepares permits and permissions, it’s still unclear just how expensive that multi-year process will be, or what kind of development — if any — will utilize that soon-to-be vacated space.

That’s why some members of the Sustainability Commission discussed tapping the Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office to help put concrete rules and regulations and policies in place if one of the county’s refineries close, in addition to working with organizations crafting a just transition plan for these kinds of plants.

Chuck Leonard, who sits on the county board as a political representative for the plumbers and steamfitters of Local Union 342, emphasized the need to start creating a clear plan to manage the potential legal and financial liabilities associated with remediation — preferably before any plans for future development materialize.

“It’s of dire concern if a plant closes, and a refinery just decides to walk away,” Leonard said Monday. “What’s going to happen to a plant that’s 120 years old that has 100 times more challenges than what happened right there in Hercules?”

Staff researcher Veronica Martinez contributed to this story.

Local governments and public universities that accept $100,000 or more in public funding from the state of California — and that means nearly all of them — cannot act on divestment demands. It’s been barred since 2016, when then-California Gov. Jerry Brown signed AB 2844.

Last week, hundreds of pro-Palestinian students and their allies gathered in and around tents pitched in front of the steps of UC Berkeley’s Sproul Plaza, vowing to stay put until the university system officially pursues divestment. At Stanford, students also rallied with a focus on divestment. Matt Kovac, spokesman for UC Berkeley Divest Coalition, said he doesn’t “see mobilization stopping until the U.S. and UCs begin to take this seriously.”

Yet how can they? The law forbids the award of state grants or contracts of $100,000 or more to government and state organizations that support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, known by the acronym BDS.

While protesters and human rights organizations have decried anti-BDS legislation, contending it unconstitutionally violates the First Amendment, more than 75% of U.S. lawmakers have embraced the controversial stance over the past decade.

That includes financial divestment, a tool pushed by the BDS movement along with cultural boycotts and sanctions to pressure Israel to follow international law and end its ongoing assault on Gaza, which has killed 34,000 people in retaliation for an Oct. 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel that left 1,200 people dead.

The California bill specifically prohibits funding from being awarded to organizations that discriminate against foreign countries — and explicitly mentions Israel. Proponents argue that divestment violates state and federal civil rights laws regarding business and employment. Furthermore, the BDS movement has been accused of being anti-Israel because it directly questions the legitimacy and sovereignty of the Jewish state.

After South Carolina and Illinois passed the first such laws in summer 2015, 36 other states followed suit — often with bipartisan support.

Organizations such as the National Lawyers Guild, the Center for Constitutional Rights, the ACLU, and Palestine Legal have repeatedly pushed back on laws like AB 2844 since their inception, arguing that they are “intended specifically to suppress campaigns for Palestinian rights” and “burden and deter constitutionally protected speech.”

Many of those First Amendment arguments, however, have since been quashed by courts across the country, including the U.S. Supreme Court’s unanimous refusal to review a boycott case last year.

In a statement, the UC Office of the President said that it “has consistently opposed calls for boycott against and divestment from Israel” and that “a boycott of this sort impinges on the academic freedom of our students and faculty and the unfettered exchange of ideas on our campuses.”

The last time the University of California complied with students’ calls for divestment was nearly four decades ago when mass protests that erupted in April 1985 eventually culminated in UC’s divestment of $3 billion in South Africa-related stock holdings. Nelson Mandela said in 1990 that the divestment was a catalyst that helped end the country’s apartheid.

But the BDS movement has languished in the decades since.

In 2002, UC regents chairman John Moores said the university wasn’t likely to divest any time soon. While the regents were “deeply disturbed and saddened by the continuing violence in Israel and Palestine,” he said they also “have a fiduciary responsibility to protect the security of the University’s pension and endowment funds.”

And last week, UC Berkeley spokesman Dan Mogulof further affirmed that there are no plans to change the university’s investment policies and practices.

By the end of 2023, the University of California’s investment portfolios managed $169 billion in assets — a $16.2 billion increase over the previous year, according to UC’s investment committee.

While the regents have not disclosed what proportion of its current investments have ties to Israel, the UC Berkeley Divest Coalition — representing 75 student, staff, faculty and alumni organizations calling for UC to divest — said in a statement that the UC system invests more than $2 billion in companies that supply arms.

It’s unclear how many protesters are aware how laws like AB 2844 stymie the call for divestment.

Protesters like Malak Afaneh, a third-year Berkeley Law student and Palestinian American leading the Pro-Palestine encampment, heard about the anti-BDS legislation for the first time last week while organizing on campus. But the news didn’t come as a surprise, she said, because it echoed other ways she’s seen UC Berkeley, community members and the United States’ legal system treat pro-Palestinian students’ activism.

“We see this with First Amendment rights where there’s a Palestine exception to free speech,” Afaneh said.

There is more responsiveness to similar investment demands regarding climate change or even animal rights, which aren’t subject to anti-BDS legislation, she said. “I think it just goes to show how this country is willing to protect its economic and political interests with Israel at all costs,” she said.

Notably, the only two “no” votes for AB 2844 out of California’s 120-member Legislature were cast by former Monterey County Democrat lawmakers: Assemblyman Mark Stone and Sen. Bill Monning.

Shortly after the 2016 vote, Monning and Stone both told Monterey County’s weekly newspaper that they believe boycotting is a constitutional right, comparing the competing views of pro-Palestinian protests to similar efforts by the United Farm Workers of America and Martin Luther King Jr.

Monning reaffirmed that stance Thursday.

“I voted no on the anti-BDS legislation based on my support for economic boycotts representing a nonviolent means of political expression protected by the First Amendment,” Monning said in an email. “I continue to believe that individuals and companies should not be penalized for exercising their right to participate in a peaceful, voluntary economic boycott to protect and advance the civil and human rights of oppressed minority populations.”

Staff researcher Veronica Martinez contributed to this story.

The three acres of land abutting the small industrial yard he owns on Giant Road are wedged between BNSF Railway tracks to the east and a Union Pacific Railroad line to the west.

While those railroad lines date back to at least 1915, Engel said his problems began nearly a century later — culminating in an arduous legal battle with the largest freight railroad in the United States.

As Engel’s complaint has slogged through Contra Costa County’s courts, a host of records his legal team gleaned from railroad staff, contractors and scientific experts has allegedly stoked concerns that the connector could potentially spell disaster for Richmond’s shoreline and the entire East Bay.

According to public records, BNSF and its contractors appear to have overlooked staggering issues during construction and maintenance of the connector; Engel’s attorneys allege that all pre-design and pre-construction surveys were conducted by an unlicensed surveyor, BNSF reneged on contractual responsibilities to preserve adequate, unobstructed drainage facilities, and construction crews took shortcuts to meet deadlines associated with the project’s public grant funding — all of which pose the potential threat of a derailment.

In 2013, BNSF and government officials started work on the Richmond Rail Connector, a $22.6 million Caltrans-approved plan to design, rehabilitate and construct 1.25 miles of curved track to transport crude oil and other cargo across Engel’s land, which aimed to sooth traffic congestion, reduce pollution exposure and increase efficiency to the Port of Oakland.

Engel sold the vacant lot as a permanent easement to the railroad behemoth for $1.6 million that summer, shortly after BNSF filed eminent domain proceedings to seize the land.

However, the 81-year-old eventually sued BNSF in August 2017. The amended complaint alleges breach of contract, negligence, nuisance, trespass and specific performance regarding the mostly publicly funded Richmond Rail Connector project, which was completed in 2015 and sits less than a mile inland from the city’s marshy shoreline.

The suit also includes negligence claims against BNSF’s third-party contractors — Asta Construction Company and the since-acquired engineering consulting firm J.L. Patterson & Associates.

This litigation over what Engel says are lax construction standards and poor track maintenance comes at a time when railroads across the U.S. are facing a swell of whistleblower complaints and lawsuits claiming they are at fault for private property damage, pollution, derailments and more.

BNSF is currently awaiting a verdict in Libby, Mont., where residents sued the Texas-based company, owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway conglomerate, for its role in exposing the community to asbestos.

Lawsuits specifically related to issues with water drainage around elevated BNSF berms have popped up in Missouri, Arkansas, Washington state and even further north in Contra Costa County.

Norfolk Southern agreed this month to pay $600 million to settle a string of lawsuits tied to the disastrous Feb. 2021 derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, which released 100,000 gallons of carcinogenic chemicals into the air and nearby waterways.

That same year, Evan Reis, a structural engineer for Hinman Consulting Engineers, released a report that estimated a 60% probability that a crude-laden train running from San Jose through Richmond to Martinez would derail within the next 30 years — odds that he said “would be of concern to me.”

Specifically, the dangers associated with train derailments range from health complications for residents and contamination of local watersheds to fiery explosions, especially when transporting Bakken crude oil, coal or other hazardous cargo.

Attorneys for BNSF, J.L. Patterson and Asta Construction all argue that Engel’s lawsuit, filed under his company’s name, North Richmond Properties, lacks any merit. Instead, they were quick to deny any wrongdoing, and each filed numerous petitions trying to exclude large elements of the plaintiff’s legal strategy — attempting to call into question several facts, arguments and expert testimonies in Engel’s complaint.

While this case started as a seemingly simple tort for damages related to the vegetation, encampments and flooding that began after the connector’s construction, the discovery process brought even more serious issues to light, according to Price Kent, the lead attorney in Engel’s case.

“(One of our experts) has opined that the standing water that rests at the base of that berm — sometimes year round — poses a threat, and I believe his testimony to be true,” Kent said, referring to testimonies and state studies that show saturated soil has higher risks of liquefaction and even collapse. That’s especially a concern for Engel’s easement, which is located near the Hayward fault line, a former toxic chemical site, high-pressure gas lines and an urban creek that feeds into the San Pablo Bay.

All three defendants have rejected most, if not all, of the plaintiff’s claims, instead asserting that the allegations within Engel’s lawsuit are due to his own conduct. One such argument is that the lack of water drainage is actually tied to improvements that Engel constructed on his industrial yard — allegedly after plans to build the connector were finalized.

Additionally, legal counsel for BNSF and Asta Construction have pointed fingers at each other, arguing over who would contractually bear the brunt of the liability and fines associated with the project, if any exist.

BNSF declined to comment on pending litigation, while attorneys for Asta Construction and J.L. Patterson did not respond to requests for comment.

A jury trial is finally slated to begin Aug. 26, following a slew of reassignments and continuances throughout the past seven years, including several months of complications during the pandemic.

Engel said he looks forward to wrapping up his years-long lawsuit against BNSF, J.L. Patterson and Asta Construction later this year. While he hopes the jury will rule in his favor and try to mitigate any potential hidden dangers that the connector poses in the East Bay, he said he will also find comfort in resolving the deluge of stress connected to drainage issues at 2801 Giant Road.

“I couldn’t in good conscience try to put a building up there, knowing that there’s flooding issues and possible stability problems — let alone the fact that there could be a potential of derailment at some point in time as well,” Engel said. “I’m just hoping that my kids are not going to have to fight these battles when I’m gone.”