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Before moving here I did my research and found that Fremont had a low crime rate, had great schools, and seemed like a great place to start a family. It is located such that one could easily commute to San Francisco, Silicon Valley or elsewhere.
However, when it comes to city planning, I was not impressed.
Where’s the Downtown?
The General Plan from 1970 talked about building a downtown around the Fremont BART station. Obviously, that didn’t turn out. Indeed, Fremont has been unsuccessfully struggling to create a vibrant downtown area for decades. We’re starting to see some success on Capitol Avenue, and Niles is charming, but these pale in comparison to what’s already been done in other nearby suburban cities like Pleasanton, Livermore and Hayward.
Fremont’s recent retail efforts have centered around Pacific Commons, which is has no character or uniqueness and is not walkable. Indeed, people going to multiple stores there often drive to get to each store. The ‘Block’ is supposed to be a walkable area but, of course, one has to drive to get there. If you like hanging out in a huge sea of parking, Pacific Commons is great, but for most people, it is not an attractive place to spend time.
Rather than adding new economic activity to Fremont, Pacific Commons pulls shoppers from other, more walkable areas of town. It’s not surprising that some of Fremont’s older shopping areas like the Hub have been devastated and are surviving only by adding housing developments.
My vision is to create walkable downtown areas centered around our current neighborhoods. I’ve heard from too many people that they have to travel to nearby cities to get the retail and dining experiences that they desire. There is no reason we can’t prioritize healthy, walkable retail and entertainment areas in Fremont.
Community Based Planning
Fremont’s development patterns have largely been individual property owners developing in a manner solely to maximize their profits by figuring out how to put the maximum number of homes into their parcel. The net result is monolithic neighborhoods with no sense of community. The larger developments may have common areas, but these don’t connect with the rest of the community, lack retail spaces, and are typically underutilized.
The Patterson Ranch development that got me involved in Fremont politics is an excellent example of this. The resulting development is an auto-oriented development disconnected from the rest of the city.
Fremont needs neighborhood spaces that make people feel like they are a part of a community. These include smaller neighborhood parks, walkable retail areas, and “third spaces” where community members can participate in civic life.
More Sustainable Development
Fremont went through its first growth spurt when cities were designed around cars. The city’s infrastructure reflects this.
In my time on the Council most of the development that was approved was such that almost all of the trips from the development would be via the automobile.
Obviously, the automobile will continue to be a critical part of our transportation system. But we should be providing safe options for those that prefer to use alternative modes of transportation. Children under 16 and many others can not drive and should also be able to get around town.
It’s obvious that climate change is producing warmer and warmer summers. Planting trees is an excellent way to beautify our city and a way to mitigate urban heat islands. The City of Fremont needs to step up its efforts to implement grant funding that it has received to do just that. A number of tree advocates are frustrated with the City’s slow pace of getting more trees in the ground despite receiving millions in grant money to be spent on planting trees.
Preserve Open Space
Sadly, we have lost many of the open spaces in Fremont to residential development. We need to preserve what few remaining places we have left.
Integral Properties has tried to develop over 3,000 homes in the wetlands near Pacific Commons. Developers have been working to push development higher up the hillside. At Kimber Park, a developer tried to put homes inside the park.
In Newark, numerous residential developments have been approved in the wetlands and others are being considered. Union City is considering developing in the hills north of Niles Canyon which would require purchasing land within the City of Fremont.
The threat of further development of our open spaces is very real. Fremont needs a leader with a proven track record of fighting to preserve our open spaces. I am the only candidate in this race with such a proven track record.
Affordable Housing
We can not rely on the “in lieu fees”[1] from more and more market rate housing to provide funds for affordable housing. We have been relying on the in lieu fees for decades and the net result is the affordable housing crisis we have today. Incredibly, people like my main opponent will still argue that building more market rate housing will somehow solve the affordable housing problem.
We need to stop allowing developers to build purely market rate developments. Quite simply, we need to build more affordable housing. Some things we could do as a city are:
- Increase affordable housing fees on new development. (My opponent voted to lower fees even below what staff had recommended.)
- Restructure incentives to encourage developers to include affordable housing in their developments. Currently, developers almost always pay the in-lieu fees.
- Protect prime spots for affordable housing from being developed with market rate projects.
For far too long our city has served as a rubber stamp for developers proposing projects that maximized their profits without consideration of the broader community. I was elected to the Fremont City Council in 2012 and was the first to challenge this pattern of rubber stamping delopments.
[1] Fees paid by developers used to subsidize the development of affordable housing. They are paid “in lieu” of providing affordable units with the developer’s project. Developers in Fremont have a choice between including affordable units in their projects or paying in lieu fees. They almost always choose to pay the in lieu fees.
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