Category Archives: Warm Springs

Master Plan for the Last Parcel By Warm Springs BART Approved

By 1 commentCity Planning, Housing, Warm Springs

On 4/5 the City Council approved the Master Plan for the Old Warm Springs parcel by Warm Springs BART. I was the lone dissenting vote.

We were told that the development around the new Warm Springs BART station would be an ’employment-oriented BART station’. We were shown pictures of large office buildings and well-designed plazas lining ‘Innovation Way’. This was indeed a chance to build a mixed-use transit-oriented development (TOD) that could have been a model of how to do TOD. Instead, we got a 4,000 unit housing development that will be a boon to the developers that bought the land, and will provide little benefits to the existing residents of Fremont.

I see many examples of mixed-use, transit-oriented development near BART stations and CalTrain stations throughout the Bay Area. With ample employment and retail, these areas become destinations for the host city bringing in many employees and shoppers from outside of their city. These locations also become destinations for the local residents providing places to work and shop near home. This development claims to be mixed-use but I would disagree.

The parcel on the agenda was the last of the three big ones near the Warm Springs BART station. It is a 28.7 acre parcel to the north of Grimmer and to the east of Fremont Blvd. Of the buildable area, 73% will be dedicated for residential development with 42% of the total being townhomes. I don’t know how you call that “employment-oriented” transit development.

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How Much Parking is Enough at Warm Springs?

By Development, Transportation, Warm Springs

Lennar gave an update on their project at the future Warm Springs BART station. There isn’t a lot to report as they mainly just showed some specifics of where the building footprints would actually be. They did present some specifics on parking requirements and I questioned whether these would be adequate. (I will defer the similar discussion about Walnut / Guardino since we have a study session on that tomorrow.)

For the Lennar development, the rental units would all have a requirement of only 1.0 spaces per unit. This seems woefully inadequate. It’s also unclear how guests would park at the facility. Some of the Warm Springs developers talked to me early on saying that they wanted to see the parking requirements raised to 2.0 spaces per unit for part of their development. They noted that it would be hard to sell a unit in that location with less than two parking spaces given there is no ‘there’ there yet in Warm Springs and there likely won’t be for several years. (more…)

Lennar Development Approved at Warm Springs

By Development, Jobs, Warm Springs

The big item on the agenda last Tuesday night was the Lennar project in Warm Springs. At 2,214 homes, this is probably the largest project ever approved by the Fremont City Council. When this project was first proposed we heard that development around the new BART station was going to be “jobs-centered”. I applauded that idea and liked the concept of a mixed-use development – even one that included a large housing component. However, I believe the proposal from Lennar is far from the ideal that was originally presented.

In short, Lennar got what they wanted – the right to build 2,214 homes/apartments. The City got vacant space where we may get jobs-centered development some day.

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Study Session for Warm Springs Development

By Development, Warm Springs

There was really only one important item in Tuesday’s meeting – A study session of the Master Plan for the property to the west of the Warm Spring BART station. Lennar is currently in negotiations with Union Pacific to buy the property from them.

Their proposal consists of 2,214 homes and potentially 680,000 sq. ft. of office space and about the same amount of Research and Development space. About half of the residences would be rental units.

The bulk of the public discussion was around the 12.9% affordable housing that Lennar is proposing. Since there will be so many rental properties, Lennar is able to propose less than the standard 15%.

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