An ongoing dispute involving a proposed 488-unit apartment project in Millbrae and the state’s high-speed rail plans took a turn last week, with the Millbrae City Council initiating proceedings to acquire a portion of land that could move the housing forward but throw a wrench in the bullet train plans.
The California high-speed rail project, envisioned as a 200-plus mph train linking San Francisco to Los Angeles, has been in the works for decades, and a stop is proposed in Millbrae to join with the city’s existing station that serves both BART and Caltrain riders.
But Millbrae officials, pointing to myriad disruptions the train could cause locally, plus other uses for the prime downtown real estate, have requested the tracks and station be built underground.
And in recent years, the sticking point has been the apartments, which would be included in a sweeping project with two 10-story and a nine-story building that would also include nearly 300,000 square feet of office space. The city approved the project in 2018, but it has not been constructed in part because the city has been unable to acquire land from Caltrain on which to build a road planned to serve the development.
“We need those 488 housing units to go forward,’’ Mayor Anne Oliva said. “That’s the crux of this whole deal.”
The City Council this week approved a resolution of necessity, the first step in eminent domain court proceedings, which could allow the city to acquire the thin strip of land in question.
The resolution states the housing development is a “more necessary public use,” than the bullet train, something the city may need to prove to take control of the parcel. It also questions if the train will ever come to fruition given a lack of funding for the Bay Area stretch.
“It’s going to be many, many decades before high-speed rail comes this way,” City Manager Tom Williams said, who pointed to the housing emergency declared by Gov. Gavin Newsom.
The city’s plan is to reroute an existing portion of California Drive closer to the Caltrain tracks and extend the street further north before turning it to El Camino Real to create a four-way intersection connecting to Victoria Avenue. The city already acquired multiple other parcels needed for the task that were previously owned by BART. The Caltrain-owned parcel spans roughly three blocks, though, only a half a block section is needed for the road.
The high-speed rail project intends to use the parcel for tracks, a platform and a pole to support electric infrastructure, said Gale Conor, an attorney for Caltrain, who added the use was “clearly not compatible with a city street.”
The high-speed rail project was approved by voters in 2008 with a proposition that detailed the route and stops and at the time it was proposed the stretch through Millbrae would be built underground. But with cost estimates blowing past the original $40 billion estimate, the tracks are now planned to run above ground next to the existing Caltrain line where they can share electrification infrastructure.
Steve Silva, an attorney representing the California High-Speed Rail Authority, the governing body overseeing the bullet train project, pushed back on the city’s framing that completion was an uncertainty.
“High-speed rail isn’t a speculative use in the future, it is happening now,” he said. “Unfortunately, this particular road acquisition imperils the authority’s use of this property.”
Construction is currently underway on a 172-mile stretch to link Merced with Bakersfield. But with no funding for the rest of the project, now estimated to be well over $100 billion, some have lost hope the train will ever link the state’s two largest metropolitan areas.
Silva, however, pointed to other large infrastructure projects in the state that took several decades and were subject to speculation they would not be completed, like BART and Interstate 105 in Los Angeles.
“Respectfully, this is an infrastructure project of statewide and frankly national importance and constitutes the greater public use than this street project,” he said. “Not to take away from the use and importance of housing in this market … critical infrastructure of statewide importance simply by magnitude is of greater public use.”
The city originally approved the California Drive extension in 1998, and for years has sought to redevelop the area near the station. A development with housing and office space east of the tracks is currently underway, but the western portion in question has remained filled with aging and unused industrial buildings and vacant lots.
Councilmembers have expressed concern that some of the structures are used as shelter by unhoused people, which could pose a fire risk, and that the area currently lacks proper drainage to handle flash floods.
Additionally, of the planned 488 units, 73 would be offered with below-market rate rents to be affordable to low-income residents.
“It’s where housing should be,” said Oliva, who added she was limited on what she could say for legal reasons. “There’s obviously going to be some sort of litigation here.”
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