Senior housing, wellness hub called off

“The project faced numerous challenges and economic factors including inflation, skyrocketing construction costs, and financing hurdles [that] became insurmountable in recent years,” the press release said. 

The health care district, founded in 1947, previously operated Peninsula Hospital in the space where Sutter-owned Mills-Peninsula Medical Center now stands. Since then, the district has used its tax money to purchase nearby property and has been aiming to productively allocate a use for the adjacent 6.4 acres. The most recent plans included 377 senior homes, 175 units listed at affordable rates and 202 units listed at market-rate. It was to also include a community center, a yoga area, raised bed garden, meditation garden, outdoor gathering area, exercise loop with senior friendly services, a grand lawn area and a health care hub with physical fitness facilities integrated with the seniors’ medical records.

For those who advocated for and designed the Peninsula Wellness Community’s affordable housing element, the announcement is deeply disappointing. 

MidPen Housing President and CEO Matt Franklin recalled attending a meeting alongside other housing and economic development leaders 14 years ago to help the district decide how to use the land. 

Since then, MidPen Housing was selected to helm an entirely affordable, 152-unit portion of the project and, in October, was subsequently informed it would not be moving forward. Developers PCB and Generations were slated for other elements of the project, like its market-rate housing and wellness center. 

“The idea that after all this time and the time that so many highly qualified people put into this … that they are folding their end on this deal, for these kind of vague reasons, is just really disheartening,” Franklin said. 

MidPen Housing put in almost $400,000 in out-of-pocket costs on this plan, not including staff labor, for a five-year period, he said. The county had also allocated $400,000 in financial resources and 38 project-based vouchers, which have since been returned but were unavailable for other projects for years. 

In a statement to the Daily Journal — board members and district CEO Ana Pulido were not available for comment — the district said that while the affordable senior housing development was “viewed very favorably,” it wasn’t feasible to split off one component of the project.  

“The district remains committed to constructing an affordable senior housing project on some of the PWC land. The District will explore a separate development path for this type of project,” the statement read. 

The market-rate housing component, which was designed for independent senior living, would have been financially out of reach for many residents, making it inappropriate for public land, the statement argued. In addition, a proposed “wellness center for innovative health services,” a main objective of the development, wouldn’t have been financially feasible. 

Cindy Cornell, a longtime advocate of a totally affordable housing project at the site and founder of Housing For All Burlingame, said she had been asking for a completely affordable project on the land since she heard about its existence. It was unnecessary to develop expensive, for-profit resort-style housing on public land, she said. 

“I always thought it wasn’t appropriate to have market-rate housing there, because I didn’t think it was something people would want, really expensive housing there, but that was their call,” Cornell said. “I always thought that the best use, the most good, for the use of public land would have been a completely affordable project.” 

Franklin expressed a similar sentiment about the district’s reasoning for shutting the project down. 

“I think the whole discussion was very confusing,” he said. “They said for six years they wanted to do market-rate housing. The reason they wanted to do market-rate housing was to make money. I don’t find their reasons to be understandable.” 

District board members chose to not attend a meeting with Franklin for further conversation on the decision, he said. 

For Cornell, the revelation that a decades’ worth of work will not be coming to fruition has been heartbreaking. 

“Now, you just killed any hope that in a few years there would be homes for people,” she said.  “I will cry about it — tears of anger and frustration and cynicism that they were never ever going to do this.” 

holly@smdailyjournal.com

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