People enjoying an outdoor concert at Crab Cove in July 2013, part of the popular annual Concerts at the Cove series. Crab Cove and the beach are in the background. This illustrates the value of adding more open space adjacent to this concert site. The federal parcel is more or less 90° to the right of photo vantage point, about 100 yards away. The visitor center is also to the right. Photo by Richard Bangert
Help gather signatures for an initiative to expand Robert W. Crown Memorial State Beach at Alameda’s Crab Cove.
The measure would zone a 3.89-acre parcel of surplus federal property on McKay Avenue as open space, effectively halting the pending sale of the land to a housing developer (see “Feds threaten eminent domain for private development on state parkland”). Friends of Crown Beach is leading the signature-gathering effort to put the initiative on Alameda’s November city ballot.
The initiative drive is the latest of several obstacles the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) faces in its attempt to sell federal surplus property in Alameda to a housing developer. Both the California attorney general and the East Bay Regional Park District oppose the sale. The Bay Conservation and Development Commission (BCDC), which regulates shoreline development around the Bay, recently added another barrier.
In January BCDC executive director Lawrence Goldzband wrote to the GSA directing it to explain how the taking of McKay Avenue could be consistent with the San Francisco Bay Plan. The federal Coastal Zone Management Act (CZMA) requires that all federal projects along a coastline must comply with the laws of the state. The Bay Plan lists Crown Beach, including McKay Avenue, as a Waterfront Park Priority Use Area. Taking a state “coastal resource” is considered a project under the CZMA.
In November California Attorney General Kamala Harris responded to the U.S. Department of Justice’s letter announcing pending eminent domain to take McKay Avenue. Harris challenged the GSA’s “public use” rationale for taking state property saying, “In light of the highest and best use of this excess property, it becomes difficult to discern how the United States District Court or the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals will view the taking of State of California property—for the sole purpose of facilitating the sale of land to private developer Tim Lewis Communities (‘TLC’)—as a public use or necessity. But even more to the point, we fail to see how GSA will ever convince a federal court that a street and sidewalk already devoted to ‘public use’ still necessitates the condemnation of it.”
Harris added, “The ‘public use’ question is all the more significant in light of the positions stated by the East Bay Regional Park District and the local community in Alameda.”
In July 2012 the City Council rezoned the parcel to residential as part of the city’s Housing Element. But in 2008 the Council had endorsed the East Bay Regional Park District’s Measure WW, which called for acquiring this surplus federal property for park expansion when it became available. The District filed suit alleging that the rezoning violates environmental-protection laws and the city charter.
Before launching the ballot initiative, the Club and Friends of Crown Beach spent close to a year trying to convince the City Council to rezone the parcel as open space.
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To help with the initiative campaign, contact either Gretchen Lipow at gretchenlipow@comcast.net or (510)814-9592.
For more information, visit http://friendsofcrownbeach.com.
Richard Bangert
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