Housing Project Attracts Lots of Opposition

MARTINEZ, CA-Opponents of the controversial Camino Tassajara Integrated Project proposal extended this week’s Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors meeting by nearly 10 hours.

Most of the speakers lined up at the podium to offer advice on the proposal spoke in opposition to the project, although representatives of plumbers and electricians unions, whose members would work on the 1,400-home project, spoke in favor of it.

But during a break in the first five hours of the last scheduled hearing on the project, board chair John Gioia said the supervisors would delay voting on the matter until the next board meeting on July 9.

Southern California developer Shapell Industries has proposed the Camino Tassajara Integrated Project, which consist of 1,400 housing units in the East Bay’s Tassajara Valley. The project is expected to add 4,000 new residents to the area, which is east of Danville and San Ramon.

After the board had heard from everyone who wanted to speak on the issue, Supervisor Donna Gerber who opposes the project, which is in her district, gave a slide presentation of her own showing what she characterized as three “livable and walkable” communities of the sort that might serve as models.

Before that, Gioia told Shapell officials that he and Supervisor Mark DeSaulnier considered it to be a “threshold issue” for Shapell to pay a fee of between $1,000 and $8,000 for each market-rate unit approved in the project. The fee would fund specific infrastructure improvements, not necessarily in the area of Camino Tassajara, Gioia said.

Supervisor Gayle Uilkema sourly chided Shapell officials for the way they answered criticism that the project needed to provide transportation services for seniors. Shapell officials said a shuttle service was something that they hadn’t mentioned because provision such services is taken for granted. “I appreciate what you were saying, that it was so much a part of the project that that you didn’t include it,” Uilkema said.