CONCORD — Three prominent developers have emerged as the latest contenders for the opportunity to transform the former Concord Naval Weapons Station site into a full-fledged community — one of the East Bay’s biggest projects ever.
As envisioned by the city, the 2,300-acre site could become the home of as many as 13,000 housing units and millions of square feet of commercial and office space in coming years.
All three proposals submitted by the developers last month and publicly released by the city on Tuesday generally reflect that vision — including the promise that a quarter of the homes will be listed at affordable prices.
So it’s the key differences among the proposals that could ultimately determine which master developer the City Council chooses at its Aug. 21 meeting.
“This is like a job interview for a partnership with the city,” Guy Bjerke, the city’s economic development director, told this news organization.
One applicant, Brookfield Development, is a multinational company that has developed thousands of housing units including Pier 70, a 28-acre waterfront community in San Francisco.
The company, which is publicly traded, provided the city with extensive details about its finances and has glowing references from past partners, according to the city’s agenda for the Aug. 21 meeting.
Another prospective developer is Irvine-based City Ventures, which has done sizable projects around the state and Bay Area, including The Orchard, a development of 188 townhouses and 10,000 square feet of retail space in San Jose. The firm provided the city with financial statements indicating it has the bandwidth to take on the naval weapons site development.
Unlike its two competitors who say their ideas for the naval weapons site are consistent with the City Council’s stated vision, City Ventures’ proposal puts more focus on housing and less on commercial development, according to city staff.
The third contender is Seeno Company, a longtime local developer with a history of legal battles against East Bay public agencies and environmental groups, a track record so contentious that Save Mount Diablo has already organized a letter-writing campaign urging the City Council to reject its proposal.
Seeno and Discovery Builders, its partner in the naval weapons station application, sued in 2018 to prevent the U.S. Navy from transferring the weapons station property to the city, arguing that the proposed development’s massive scale would produce so much traffic congestion and air pollution that it could harm their own nearby housing and office projects.
And last year, the company also filed a lawsuit to prevent the Navy’s transfer of adjacent land to the East Bay Regional Park District, citing similar reasons.
The city has received more than 200 letters opposing Seeno’s proposal — most of them lifting the opposition text that Save Mount Diablo posted on its website — and is getting more letters every day, Bjerke said, adding he’s received only one comment in his inbox that supports choosing Seeno as master developer.
“The Seenos have a history of breaking environmental and other laws and not acting in the public’s best interest,” the form letters state. “Their business practices have been unethical and illegal.”
But at least for the moment, Seeno does appear to have one significant merit point over its competitors — an agreement to exclusively hire local union labor for construction and related work at the site. The other companies are still negotiating for similar agreements.
The city has made it clear that any developer interested in taking on the naval weapons station must be willing to cut a deal with local unions, known as project labor agreements.
Lennar Corp., the last master developer of the site, walked away from the project after refusing to commit to solely hiring union workers, even though it had invested years of effort into to make the project happen.
Seeno has been less forthcoming to the city about its finances than the two other developers, telling Bjerke in an email last month, “we feel that a broad, generic request for financial information (at this point) is premature and unnecessary.”
Representatives from the three developers did not to respond to requests for comment on this story.
After the council makes a choice, the city and developer must negotiate final terms for proceeding and prepare a specific plan that shows how the new community ultimately will look like. That process could take 18 to 20 months, Bjerke said.
The development will likely take years to complete.
For Councilman Councilman Edi Birsan, the sooner the better. “In two-and-a-half years, I want to see dirt moving,” he said in an email last month.
