Bracing for buildings on the city’s edge

While views of Inner Bair Island, the most inland section of the restored wetlands, are still one of the neighborhood’s defining features, views from the Bay-facing land south of Whipple Avenue and north of Seaport Boulevard are slated to change considerably as several new housing and office developments proposed for waterfront sites move through the public planning process.

Witzel, now 78, is well aware of the challenges that will accompany new developments like the Blu Harbor project expected to create more than 400 residential units available at 1 Uccelli Blvd. or the 131 three-story townhomes proposed for 1548 Maple St. less than a mile away from his home. But he feels the need for additional housing projects, especially those with a mix of affordability, supersedes the congestion and limited parking about which many have expressed concerns.

“I just think we need, we’re going to need people … who can afford to stay here,” he said.

Having rented a studio in Palo Alto for $39 per month as a young adult, Witzel has watched rents for nearby studios skyrocket above $2,000 per month, sending firefighters, police officers and teachers to other cities across the Bay Area and beyond for affordable housing. He and his wife moved to Emerald Hills in 1977 and raised two sons there before moving to Half Moon Bay. He said the couple moved to their condominium at One Marina to be closer to their family and familiar destinations, and have found the condominiums to be occupied by mostly younger professionals and small families.

But he does wonder how the combination of the new projects proposed for his neighborhood will unfold. With plans for a 1.2-million-square-foot office complex project, dubbed Harbor View, currently up for review and a 338-unit apartment building with 100,000-square-foot fitness center proposed for the site of the former Century Park 12 movie theater at 577 E. Bayshore Road, Witzel’s neighborhood could see thousands more visitors and residents in the next few years.

Since he has moved to the One Marina condominiums, he has already seen an increase in traffic coming through his neighborhood as a Courtyard by Marriott hotel opened its doors at 650 Bair Island Road in the last year and said car dealerships located across the street have had to adjust where they park cars in recent years as well. The Whipple Avenue overpass, which Witzel said was one of the only ways One Marina residents can go in and out of their homes, has experienced wear and tear and is in need of repair after increased use.

“That’s one of the problems with high growth, you’ve got a lot of infrastructure problems,” he said.

Jim Crampton, also a One Marina resident, said recent talks with city officials to build a pedestrian and bike undercrossing beneath Highway 101 could ease access waterfront residents’ access to the city. Chair of the Bair Island neighborhood association, Crampton said the Whipple Avenue overpass isn’t realistically accessible to pedestrians, and noted a time when Highway 101 was closed, leaving residents attempting to leave and enter the area in a lurch.

“That will make things much better here,” he said. “It’s virtually impossible to walk across the Whipple interchange. You’d be taking your life in your hands.”

Crampton and his wife, who is head of the One Marina homeowners association, have been active in bringing One Marina residents together with residents of neighboring apartment buildings over monthly food truck gathering and happy hour events.

He acknowledged the difficulties of Docktown Marina residents, whose community of floating homes located just south of One Marina is set to disperse next year in response to a lawsuit settled last year with an attorney and Docktown neighbor that found the floating community to be a violation of the public trust. An estimated 100 residents living across Redwood Creek from the One Marina project are required to vacate the marina by early 2018 as part of a relocation plan the City Council approved in December.

Crampton hoped a better connection could be built between the land south of Redwood Creek, which splits the neighborhood into a northern portion, where One Marina stands, and a southern portion, where Docktown and the Peninsula Yacht Club currently stand. An extension of Blomquist Street, which current ends on the southern portion of the neighborhood at Maple Street, proposed as part of the Harbor View and 1548 Maple St. projects could foster that connection. But Crampton wasn’t sure if the benefits expected to accompany the projects were, on their own, reason to approve them. Julie Berkson, a Bay Area native and pet sitter, said she has been dismayed by the uptick in developments approved and proposed for the Bair Island neighborhood in recent years. A former resident of the Villas at Bair Island Apartment complex at 700 Bair Island Road, she still visits the neighborhood almost every day to walk her clients’ dogs and said area is not the relaxing, quiet community it once was.

“It’s too much, too fast,” she said, of the developments underway and those proposed for the neighborhood.

Though Crampton is focused on improving connections between his community and more central parts of the city, he said he and his wife have enjoyed exercising and spending time outdoors on the edge of the Bay. The couple, who raised a family in Saratoga, moved to San Diego to retire but moved back to the Bay Area four years ago to be closer to their children.

“It certainly has given us a chance to be closer to nature than we ever have before,” he said. “So that’s a very positive thing.”

anna@smdailyjournal.com

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