I don't like smacking other people's deals down...I know how much work goes into making something happen, into breathing life into it. I know what it is like to have rocks thrown at my projects. It hurts.
That said--this is a deal that once I understood the numbers, and looked at all the reports, plans, and budgets, made me scratch my head. No, it actually left me dumbfounded that this passes for planning and what we want on this site.
This 400,000 square foot, no tax paying, project went through its approvals--including a bulletproof EIR--by EDAW--and is now facing the construction risk part of the sequence. They whacked over a third of the project in 2005 to keep in within the $220 million budget they were given in 2003. Working drawings are in process. Meanwhile, construction costs on private sector projects are going up 2% a month in the Bay Area.
The land is 275 acres of some of the best waterfront, southern exposure property I know of, adjacent to the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge, next to a good windsurfing beach, and is 17 miles from downtown San Francisco. Access to interstate 580 and 101 are adjacent. And did I mention there is ferry service adjacent that goes direct to the Ferry Building in downtown SF? And if you are a legal resident of California--you are part owner (along with 34 million of your neighbors).
Yep. Its the new Glamour Slammer, or in official terms, the Condemned Inmate Complex Project at San Quentin. I won't get into the politics here and here. Or what the Sierra Club says here about an earlier project on the grounds. Or what the State Auditor said in 2004. And at a cost of roughly $270K/bed budget where the average statewide cost is $150K/bed.
So how did we come to deserve all this penal goodness? Let's take a look at the numbers...
The state did a reuse study in 2001 that showed relocating the entire 5,700 inmate requirement to a new location would cost $800 million. The land was worth about $100 million under existing land use policies (500 units of housing) after demolition and cleanup. If a denser transit village option with new transit hub, ferry terminal and 2,100 units of housing were entitled, the state would recognize roughly an additional $300 million. If the property were entitled for 3,500 units, the state would recognize roughly an additonal $100 million on top of this.
The State Auditor's math basically said our county could use the property to help solve some of its housing and transportation issues, but the state would have to spend roughly $400 million to build a new facility elsewhere.
Status: The Department of Corrections is completing working drawings for the Condemned Inmate Complex at this time. BCDC is reviewing Major Permit Application 2-06 to place an electrified fence, guard tower, etc. within the 100 foot shoreline band of the site.
Baseline: San Quentin State Prison is located on 275 acres located on San Francisco Bay. It is home to approximately 5,700 inmates and 1,600 employees. 640 of these inmates have been condemned, and are awaiting execution. This number grows by about 20 per year.
A bill requiring San Quentin to be decommissioned no later than December 31, 2010, SB901 died in the State Senate in on January 31, 2006. Methinks it died because it called for a complete project CEQA exemption--which would save a couple of years, but asked for an unallowable lack of oversight and absence of public dialogue.
The Legislature budgeted $220 million in August 03 to build a new prison on San Quentin grounds because the antiquated facilities, lack of an electrified fence and a security perimeter increased the likelihood of escape of these extremely violent prisoners, particularly in the event of a major earthquake. The state currently has a 5,000 maximum-security prison bed shortage. California state law requires all male condemned inmates to be kept at San Quentin.
The Department of Corrections borrowed $8.5 million from the General Fund in 03 to start planning and approvals. An EIR was done in 2004. The initial cost estimate was 400,000 square feet at a cost of $139PSF or 43% of the total budget. Soft Costs and site prep were estimated at 31%. Contingencies and allowances were budgeted at 26%.
Meanwhile, the County has prepared a draft land use plan that states "Reuse of the site...would be limited to that which result in impacts no greater than impacts from prison use of the site prior to its proposed reuse."
OK--so how do we quantify these impacts?
The Upside--Marin County residents and visitors would get 86 acres of open space, a new bayfront trail, a city, a multi-modal ferry transit hub with deep water ferry access (no more dredging), a museum in a historic schoolhouse, and hundreds of affordable housing units--if the vision plan is to be believed, a Cinque Terre on the Bay. The vision plan is available here.
Water use by this transit village is estimated at 450 acre feet /year (AFY), 500AFY less than the 961AFY used by the prison in 2003. This savings constitutes more than 10% of our existing potable water shortfall for the county, perhaps delaying the construction of MMWD's desalinization plant.
Property tax revenue would be in the range of $8 to $10 Million per year upon full buildout. The existing site pays no taxes. 15 to 20% of the housing would be set aside as affordable--that's 300 to 400 units in a county with the highest housing prices in the country. A pedestrian, car-free environment (think Cinque Terre).
Don't forget "Due to the crowded, antiquated facilities, inadequate physical plant security; and insufficient medical, exercise and service space, the department {Department of Corrections] has concluded that housing the condemned male population in the current facilities at San Quentin poses a severe safety and security threat to the public, staff, and other inmates".
The State of California would have a new prison, designed to the latest codes, and in a location where operational costs would be more reasonable.
The Downside--There is a $400 million net cost to the state to replace the existing prison in another location. (that is about $12 per California resident, or about $65 per Bay Area resident, or $2200 per Marin County resident). Traffic from the site would increase five-fold with the housing and transit hub operations, even with a better modal split. (Existing 3050 trips/day, Glamour Slammer adds a projected 213 trips/day, Transit Village estimate is 15,900 trips/day per EDAW). Sir Francis Drake would have to be widened from 2 to 4 or 6 lanes fm 580 to the site to accommodate this and add an westbound onramp.
The Rub--The environmental review process for a re-use of this site is long, expensive, fraught with loss of focus, and does not take into account both the direct and the ripple effect of the multiple benefits that a new community on the shores of the Bay would have on both sides of the Richmond-San Rafael bridge.
For example, in 2004 EDAW stated "this alternative [the tax paying, productive 4,000 resident transit village] is environmentally inferior to the proposed project {Glamour Slammer]." Ouch.
And this is what passes for planning today? No wonder housing is so fricking expensive here--and so far away from where you work. The "experts" can't even understand what the real benefits are. It is not the consultant's fault, it is the way we frame the discussion about net impacts of different land uses.
Reuse will be limited to those land uses with impacts no greater than current impacts from prison ops. How do you net out the impacts of a billion dollar project? Does
- reducing our net water consumption,
- increasing our open space,
- our access to the Bay,
- providing thousands of construction jobs,
- developing 2100 units of housing within walking distance of transit options,
- deep water ferry access--no more dredging,
- hundreds of affordable housing units, and
- increasing our property tax base by $8 to $10 million
counterbalance the traffic increase?
Does bulldozing a 150 year old, antiquated, operationally risky, hard to staff, cramped prison with security issues and replacing it with a transit village on the sunny shores of San Francisco Bay count as a positive impact?
Does putting $1 billion of our capital to work productively on building this new community count as a positive impact?
My take away is that because we can't get our land planning act together, we can't effiectively recycle this property, and hence we lose an opportunity to recapture a great location.
The wheels are in motion to spend up to $220 million here to house 1,400 condemned prisoners in a new facility to "provide security for the public from some of the most violent inmates in the state". On the sunny shores of San Francisco bay.
To me, it looks like right project, wrong location. This isn't a NIMBY reaction--it is simply not the best use, and we are using litigation and bureaucratic duress instead of an action plan that listens to what this amazing site wants to be.
The Numbers--the Department of Corrections would have to reduce its annual operating costs by 7% over thirty years to get this relocation to pencil out for the taxpayers. San Quentin is more expensive to operate, more dangerous for the corrections officers, and has recruitment and retention problems due to its location (only 14% of the labor force lives in Marin, including 86 homes on the grounds). This shouldn't be hard to do.
The Risk--no one wants to own is to be responsible for breathing life into the vision of a new community on the Bay. The $10 million in at-risk capital and ten years to get this new community through the entitlement gauntlet to come out the other end with a walkable, new, productive community on the sunny shores of San Francisco Bay. </p>
<p>Instead we get a prison. And plenty of vision studies that tell us what could have been. With an approvals process this broken, maybe that's what we deserve.
