Millbrae hears update on train station development

The environmental impact report, and the Kaiser Marston Associates; highest and best use study determined that a hotel would be the highest and best use because the decision of the council was to do a long-term lease rather than a sale of the property, Millbrae City Manager Tom Williams told the council during its meeting June 22.

Other property is being transferred to the city from Bay Area Rapid Transit, which shares the station with Caltrain and owns its property nearby. BART agreed to transfer parcels after requesting the city renegotiate a new agreement to ensure there is station access for various transit modes like bicycles, buses, vehicles and pedestrians.

The city renegotiated and, in March, both the BART board and the council approved the agreement. The city is awaiting approval of two remaining parcels by the Federal Transit Administration.

Several comments brought up by the public urged that the three parcels would be put up as excess surplus at the same time rather than separately. The concerns were that the process of doing the properties separately would be inefficient, and a likely waste of time and money.

“Issuing a single [request for proposal] for just one of the city’s lot promotes inefficient, piecemeal development,” said Milo Trauss, who represents one of the land use teams interested in doing an RFP for the city-owned parcels near the station. Councilmember Gina Papan also said they needed to declare them excess property all at once instead of piecemealing them.

Williams said there was some confusion in response to the comments and that all of the parcels would be combined into one parcel.

“Once we have title to the property, then we will do that and by no means are we piecemealing it,” he said.

Once the city receives written approval from the FTA, the City Council can take action to deem the property surplus.

From there, the following steps are to perform an appraisal, send notices out to other public agencies and affordable housing builders consistent with the Surplus Land Act under Assembly Bill 1486, allow a 60- to 90-day response period and, if they receive no response, they can move forward with an RFP for private development competition for the buildout of the site.

The estimated timeline for these steps are for the council to deem the property surplus on July 13, to start sending letters to agencies and affordable housing builders on July 19, finalize and release the RFP, assuming no outside interest, on Oct. 22., to have proposals due Dec. 17, and have a selection made by the City Council in the first quarter of 2022.

The city has also already approved the Serra Station development inclusive of 444 residential units with an affordable housing component, 300,000 square feet of office, and 30,000 square feet of retail and is waiting for the developer to break ground.

A month after, officials also approved the BART rail station project for sweeping residential, commercial and hotel development. Republic Urban is building 300 units of housing, roughly 47,000 square feet of retail space, more than 160,000 square feet of office space, as well as a separate development with 80 affordable units prioritized for military veterans near the intersection of El Camino Real and Millbrae Avenue. Plans also include a 116-room, extended-stay hotel to be operated by Marriott.

julia@smdailyjournal.com

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