Last night’s Fremont City Council meeting
By Matt Artz
Wednesday, February 10th, 2010 at 8:23 am in Uncategorized.
As expected, the council unanimously authorized the city to move forward with a $385,000 federal grant application to start up a bunch of studies of how best to redevelop the NUMMI site.
Apparently the feds have given Fremont lots of reason to think it will receive the grant, but the grant also requires the city take action fast. So after it officially applies for the money next week, it will send out word to consultants by next Friday with hopes of starting the studies in April and getting the results by early 2011.
Councilmember Anu Natarajan was pushing for more council/public input in the early stages. City Manager Fred Diaz offered up the idea of having people submit ideas for the NUMMI site on the city’s Web page.
Mayor Wasserman said something that I wouldn’t be surprised to read next week in an anti-consultant Marshak editorial:
There’s no question that this is the biggest single project ever in the history of Fremont. It’s really important that we do it right, and that’s why we need consultants.
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February 10th, 2010 at 10:26 am
Fremont intersection project to help water park
http://www.insidebayarea.com/ci_14369800?source=most_emailed
Interesting that the byline is Matt Artz/Oakland Tribune. This story did not make today’s edition of the Argus. I stumbled upon it on CNN/Local News.
So a story about Fremont runs in the Oakland Tribune while the Local page of the Argus carries two stories datelined from Oakland. Huh?
February 10th, 2010 at 11:39 am
VOR, the story was supposed to run in today’s paper. Something must have bumped it off. It’s not exactly a timely story considering it turns out construction won’t start until March. I highly doubt the Trib will run that story. It’s a pretty minor deal unless you live nearby.
All of our web bylines now read Oakland Tribune. It’s been that way for a few months. I don’t know why.
February 10th, 2010 at 1:05 pm
$1.5 mil in construction ain’t a minor deal in my neck o’ the woods. No mention I can find in the write-up of which pot this money is coming out of – General Fund, Measure B funds?
I don’t live that close to it, but the project could impact lots of people who need to go through that area between the hours of 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. when they have lanes closed. March will be here before we know it.
Do we need this work to be done or is it really only an effort to bump up the City’s revenues from the Water Park that’s only open three months a year? If you build it and they don’t come in sufficient numbers, spend money to fix the road.
February 10th, 2010 at 1:36 pm
If you only had $1.5M to spend on road work in Fremont, would you spend it on the intersection of Paseo Padre Parkway and Grimmer Boulevard
to “..improve traffic flow at the intersection and provide better access to the nearby water park, which opened last year.” – ??
To be sure, the ideas suggested seem sound . .. . I’m just wondering if this is the best use of the available road re-work resources.
How do we prioritize the very few resources we DO have ?
February 10th, 2010 at 2:34 pm
If you want to travel back in time drive the almost completed Washington Blvd. overpass heading south from Driscoll Road to Osgood. You go from a multiple lane roadway onto a two-lane road that hasn’t had an improvement since…..?
I understood the city had originally planned to complete that section of road to coincide with with overpass. I know, the budget.
February 10th, 2010 at 2:51 pm
I just checked out Google Maps to look at the Grimmer/Paseo intersection and the Washington Blvd./Driscoll/Osgood situation. The water park is now in their aerial shot as well as the new separation of grade projects at Washington and Paseo Padre.
February 10th, 2010 at 3:48 pm
Don’t know for sure, but I think the Grimmer project is a redevelopment project which has been on the capital improvement plan for a long time. The street is only half finished and there is not
development possible which would pay for it. It completes the street and was planned long before the water park was even thought of. I still hate the water park.
As for Osgood, the improvement is funded and things like property acquisition and utility movement has been going on for some time. Some of the funds were from the last federal surface transportation act 7 years ago.
February 10th, 2010 at 9:28 pm
THanks for the clarification, Gus.
Yours is an excellent reminder that timelines over which many municipal projects progress are very much decoupled from anything that would be considered competitive, cost effective or responsive in the private sector.
I’ll second your thought on the water park. The visual impact of this project to its surroundings was either not considered or was at the very least, subordinate to every other detail imagineable.
February 11th, 2010 at 6:40 am
Martz full report on COF and the NUMMI site:
http://www.insidebayarea.com/ci_14376055?source=most_viewed
“But development experts have advised the city that, given the poor economy, no single developer would assume control of the entire site, and the city doesn’t want it broken into smaller parcels, Wasserman said.”
So, what if the consultants say the same thing as the development experts? Does the city still hold with the all-or-nothing plan? Sounds like they just can’t give up on the ballpark village idea.
February 11th, 2010 at 11:39 am
Box,
I have always figured it took at least 4 years for an idea to become a reality in government. An idea is presented and the concept is refined. Funding is sought, identified, and obtained. An environmental review or EIR is completed (state law.) The project is designed to a very specific detail. The design is approved and put out to bid, finally the contract is granted to the lowest, qualified, bidder. And, then comes the construction period. That whole process probably averages four years, considering all of the state laws cities have to follow.
Design/build, where you turn the project over to a consortium who actually do the design and construction, shortening time considerably, is not legal in California without special legislation. Nor is sole source contracting.
When you add thing like property allocation and eminent domain, utility relocation where you depend on PG&E to do something in a timely manner (Bay Street undergrounding), or CalTrans or other agencies or organizations where the city cannot control, it simply makes things go on and on, frustrating councilmembers and staff who really are trying to get a project complete.
Four years is good.
February 11th, 2010 at 3:20 pm
The intersection of Grimmer and Paseo near the park has always been a bit strange and oddly overbuilt. I think they built it that way in anticipation of a nearby Paseo Padre interchange with the long-since-abandoned Mission Freeway.
Currently, northbound Paseo traffic expands from two lanes to four approaching Grimmer, then has to merge back to two lanes after Grimmer. For cyclists, the current design requires some unusual/unnecessary maneuvers. The new design appears to eliminate all these problems.
February 11th, 2010 at 3:38 pm
If it improves things for cyclers, that’s a good thing. Probably wouldn’t have taken all $1.5 mil to achieve that, but at least it’s progress.
February 11th, 2010 at 5:56 pm
Intersection work is expensive. The recent changes at Fremont/Grimmer/Eugene were about $1M to remove some pork chop islands and replace all the signals.
Fremont seems to be gradually reworking a lot of the older intersections to remove the pork chops and slip lanes, upgrade the signal hardware, etc. They were going to get to Grimmer/Paseo eventually.
The fix for the unusual/unnecessary cycling maneuvers at Grimmer/Paseo requires removing the extra island, which requires replacing the signals. Which is pretty much what this project does. There’s no cheap “bikes-only” fix they could have done.