The next big development debate

By Bil Paul
Thursday, November 29, 2007

There's a land-use controversy brewing in Redwood City that promises to be just as widely debated as the rejected Marina Shores project and the planned Palo Alto Medical Center in San Carlos.

The area in question is 1,400 acres of the Cargill company's salt evaporation ponds just to the south of Seaport Boulevard and the Port of Redwood City. This area, roughly the size of Redwood Shores, is being taken out of production as Cargill concentrates its salt harvesting on larger ponds across the Bay.

Cargill isn't a well-known company in the Bay Area but it's the second largest privately owned company in the world. It's primarily in the agriculture business, operates world-wide out of its headquarters in Minnesota and has deep pockets.

Cargill's salt-harvesting operations in the West Bay were diminished when the federal government with help from private groups bought many of the company's salt ponds there as part of the Don Edwards Wildlife Refuge. Within the refuge, some salt ponds are being returned to the marsh and wetlands they originally were. That purchase itself was rife with controversy when it was later revealed that an appraisal of the salt pond area that was used to determine its selling price was much too high. As a result, the feds couldn't afford to buy all the salt ponds, leaving the 1,400 acres in Redwood City unsold.

Now, Cargill and its real estate development partner, DMB Associates of Arizona, are testing the waters for eventual development of the 1,400 acres. They have immediately run up against conservationist and citizen groups that explain that, over time, fully two-thirds of the Bay has been filled in by everything from airports to housing developments. These groups see a chance to reverse course and want the remaining salt ponds in Redwood City to be entirely returned to wetlands.

Cargill and DMB say, misleadingly, that the government declined to purchase the salt ponds, and DMB characterizes the salt ponds as "a factory without a roof," which doesn't acknowledge their past as wetlands and marshes.

Cargill did its homework when it partnered with DMB Associates. DMB has executed large housing developments in Arizona and California, and is seen as a patient, progressive developer that doesn't take government and community approvals for granted. It favors housing projects with a small-town feel, an emphasis on walkability, and low impacts on the environment. Yet, any sort of development on salt ponds will actually have a high impact on the environment by permanently filling in more of the Bay.

DMB has been working on a large development near Gilroy called El Rancho San Benito and it's instructive to see how it operated there. DMB hired local people for its staff, some with local governmental experience, which created ties to the community. DMB mailed a survey to nearby residents ostensibly to learn their concerns and desires for the development. In reality, the survey was a subtle way to plant feel-good ideas about the project. For example, the survey asks if recipients approved or disapproved of below-market-rate housing as part of the project, or of DMB offering to help fund schools and parks.

DMB tries to create a groundswell of positive public sentiment about a project to put itself in a position of power when it asks for government approvals. In the El Rancho San Benito project, for example, rather than flying local government officials on a junket to see a completed DMB project in Arizona, it chose ordinary residents instead.

Locally, DMB is going to great lengths again to ask residents what they want in a Redwood City Saltworks development. The assumption is that development is inevitable, rather than presenting a total return to wetlands as an option. DMB does admit in its literature that some people want a total return to wetlands but characterizes them as a "small constituency."

When I asked John Bruno, vice president and general manager of the saltworks, what percentages of local residents want various things for his development, he couldn't come up with numbers, which is interesting because his organization has been so meticulous. So far, DMB has held two well-publicized and well-attended public meetings in Redwood City and plans another for January. These meetings aren't government mandated but try to convey the idea that the company is development-neutral and bends to community wishes and needs. The next step, said Bruno, will be the drawing up of a preliminary plan for a development to be presented in the second quarter of 2008.

Countering the DMB public relations push are local nature organizations, which are gearing up to do battle. Save the Bay Executive Director David Lewis said, "(DMB's public meetings are) a charade (and they) shouldn't be misinterpreted as an impartial, unbiased public process. It's not. It's their attempt to sell the public on development."

The Sierra Club will probably take a stance against the development, according to Lewis. The Friends of Redwood City group, which played a major part in torpedoing the first Marina Shores plan, proposed last year to use Cargill's 1,400 acres for a 30-acre community park, and use the rest for open space and wildlife habitat, with public access.

DMB appears to be willing to offer a carrot: that part of their 1,400 acres be returned to wetlands habitat, and toward that end has hired the Biohabitats company. However, the overall concept is still a combination of housing, parks and open space. Since Cargill and DMB need to design a profitable development, housing would be the main ingredient.

Ultimately, everything hinges on Cargill and DMB Associates obtaining governmental approvals for development. If they don't, I expect their 1,400 acres will have a greatly reduced value, except for sale to become wetlands. This has to be DMB's toughest project by far in terms of overcoming opposition. Bay Area conservation and nature groups are many and strong, and they have wealthy contributors. The catchwords "filling in the Bay" are an emotional call to arms for them.

Foster City and Redwood Shores were created from landfills in the 1960s, but we've come a long, long way since then, haven't we?

Bil Paul's column appears Thursdays in the Daily News. Reach him at natural_born_writer@yahoo.com.

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