By Devan Patel | [email protected] | Bay Area News Group

After a multi-year process to define residents' vision for future development at the former Pleasant Hills Golf Course, neighborhood leaders are accusing pro-housing advocates of interfering in the project by continuing to push higher-density developments that nearby community members opposed.

Housing advocates criticized the City Council's approval of a plan for 1,716 new units on the 115-acre site, citing the need for higher density to help meet the region's desperate demand for housing -- with Catalyze SV even going as far as to schedule a May 23 design workshop allowing local residents to create their own proposals for the site.

In a letter to San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, District 8 Community Roundtable President Pat Waite and Land-Use Director Robert Reese warned of ramifications if the city cowed to lobbyists and paid advocates, including eroding public trust in government and negating "decades of work to strengthen neighborhood associations as a key mechanism for resident engagement and representation."

"Despite our readiness to embrace densities greater than the surrounding neighborhoods, housing advocates are now attempting to undermine the established process, pushing for high-rise development that is not only inconsistent with the suburban character of our community but has been overwhelmingly rejected by residents," Waite and Reese wrote.

Pleasant Hills Golf Course, located near East San Jose's Lake Cunningham, opened in 1960, but has remained shuttered since 2004, except for intermittent grazing on the property.

Lakeside Community, headed by South Bay real estate veterans Tony Arreola and Mark Lazzarini, is the development firm behind the project at 2050 White Road.

While the property has sat vacant for more than 20 years, the city took a different approach to exploring potential development at Pleasant Hills by bringing in community engagement from the beginning.

"Rather than having a single meeting on a single day, they had multiple meetings at different times in the evenings where folks who worked could attend," Reese said in an interview. "It was quite an effort to get everybody at the table and everyone pitching in with their ideas."

Community members asked for a mix of densities, rental and for-sale units, and affordable housing. They also requested that the residential components not exceed three stories, and that the developer locate lower-density units closer to the existing nearby single-family home neighborhoods.

Waite said that while the neighborhood understood the need for more housing, the city and developers also had to consider the impact on traffic congestion and city services, and how the development could be built without harming the value of nearby single-family homes.

"We went through all the issues with the developer, and they took those to heart to put together what we believe is a fair proposal," Waite said in an interview. "The balance is blending in density with the community around it. The developer needs to make things pencil out, and the city needs service delivery fees from our property taxes and whatnot."

Catalyze SV Executive Director Alex Shoor countered by saying that the design Catalyze SV has proposed accomplishes those goals better than "the current boring, outdated, short-sighted, traffic-inducing, sprawling design."

"Their design is about as dull, dreary, and drab as walking on a dark day through freezing rain with a terrible cold," Shoor said.

By 2031, San Jose must plan for 62,200 new homes as mandated by the state's Regional Housing Needs Allocation, making Pleasant Hills a critical property to help chip away at the housing shortage.

"As perhaps the largest contiguous piece of empty land in the heart of San Jose, the redevelopment of Pleasant Hills is literally a once-in-a-century opportunity," Shoor said. "An opportunity not just to build thousands of homes to bring our region's cost of living down, which San Jose desperately needs, yet also to create a new neighborhood gem San Jose definitely deserves."

However, while San Jose has either received plans or issued permits for dozens upon dozens of multifamily housing developments, the vast majority have sat idly on the shelf due to challenging market conditions.

Last year, the city saw zero market-rate multifamily housing developments over 20 units start construction. Permitting data also showed that the city is already several thousand units behind schedule in meeting its RHNA target.

Waite and Reese warned that forcing stringent requirements on the developer could prevent much-needed housing from coming to fruition.

Clashes between neighborhood groups and housing advocates have become more frequent in recent years as the region has grappled with the housing crisis.

"Urban planning in neighborhood settings is complex and requires compromise," said Bob Staedler, a land-use consultant for the Diridon Area Neighborhood Group and Stateholders+Neighborhoods Initiative. "When outside groups push personal ideological agendas under the guise of supporting neighborhoods, it undermines public trust in the development process. During the Diridon Station Area Plan discussions, neighborhood leaders were unfairly labeled as NIMBYs, when in fact they were advocating for a thoughtful balance between density and livability."

This month, residents of the Cory Neighborhood continued their opposition to a 17-story housing development at 826 N. Winchester Blvd., which, if approved, would have represented the largest building by far in the immediate vicinity.

In initially approving the guiding principles, the City Council had also asked for a fiscal analysis of the impacts of the land uses and densities and how financial tools like a special assessment district could potentially pay for increased infrastructure, public safety, and other costs once the city receives a completed application.

In an interview with Bay Area News Group, Mahan stressed that engagement efforts with the community were only one part of the decision-making process because the city also had to balance its housing needs, impacts to city services and the traffic concerns.

"This part of town lacks transit infrastructure and already suffers from significant traffic problems," Mahan said. "The type of density that might work downtown or even along Stevens Creek in West San Jose is not the right fit, but we still have to find that right balance."

While he stressed that the guiding principles are not the end product, Mahan said he did not believe that the final development would differ significantly from them.

"We need to understand the fiscal impacts to make sure we are not making a decision that worsens our ability to provide services to all San Jose residents," Mahan said.