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Aug 17, 2023

Splashy 44

A parking lot at the Claremont Hotel and Spa in Oakland was to have been the

A parking lot at the Claremont Hotel and Spa in Oakland was to have been the site of a 44-unit housing project.

For years, a developer pursued splashy plans to build 44 homes on the parking lot of the Claremont Hotel and Spa — a Tudor-style chateau in the Oakland hills, envisioned as a creative site for new housing in a region in dire need of it.

But the high-profile condominium development, which at one point was scheduled to wrap up construction last month, now appears to be dead.

"The current project is not moving forward," developer Michael Ghielmetti said in an interview, seven years after his company, Signature Development Group, unveiled renderings of 43 units packed in two and four-story structures atop a terraced lot outside the hotel lobby, along with underground parking, a new swimming pool and cabana, and one single-family home on Tunnel Road.

Ghielmetti declined to elaborate on what led to the project's downfall, but records released by the city show frustrated correspondences between the developers and Oakland planners, and a tortured, years-long process to review an application that would land on a shelf.

Instead of representing Oakland's ability to innovate and build chic dwellings, the Claremont project came to illustrate the challenges of pushing even a modest development across the finish line.

City spokesperson Jean Walsh said Signature put the Claremont project "on hold" in January, effectively freezing the development. Officials also pointed to staff shortages that slowed down an already complex review, and said Signature had lagged in submitting some required materials. This week, Redwood City firm Ohana Real Estate Investors appeared poised to buy the hotel, a deal that didn't affect Signature Development's housing proposal.

Although it confronted fervent pushback from the neighborhood, records suggest that politics alone did not kill the project. Ultimately, it stumbled as the developer and city planners spent more than three years laboring over an environmental review that by law was supposed to take one year. The final environmental impact report never materialized.

Plans to build beneath the bell tower of Oakland's castle on a hill had been gestating since at least 2002 — the year former Mayor Jerry Brown praised the city's planning commission for blocking legislation to landmark grounds outside the building, clearing the path for housing.

Former Claremont owners Fairmont hotel group and financier Richard Blum, the late husband of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, chased the dream 12 years later, hiring Signature to study what it would take to put condos on the property.

The sales pitch came easily: homes abutting a pool complex and tennis courts on a "grande dame" resort; restaurants and boutiques within walking distance; a paved parking lot put to better use.

It appealed to retired community college dean Stuart Lichter, who lives near the Claremont and told The Chronicle in 2016 that he would consider moving in. Interviewed seven years later, he said he still supports the development, and would have liked to see it break ground.

"I’m in favor of more housing," Lichter said. "Why should it only be built at the BART stations?"

Many of Lichter's neighbors were wary, and some coalesced to write petitions and threaten lawsuits if the project moved forward.

The thrust of the opponent's arguments rested on a number of familiar themes: They warned of traffic congestion, scarce parking, light pollution, the threat of building on the Hayward Fault, and fear the new residents would choke roads if everyone suddenly needed to evacuate in a disaster — residents frequently invoked the 1991 Oakland hills fire. Some critics said they understood the demand for housing, but viewed the proposed buildings as architectural monstrosities, and might welcome something smaller.

"Part of our objection to the condominium tower was that it was going to be gross and ugly," said David Kessler, a member of Save Our Claremont, one of two groups formed to obstruct the project. "If they were to build something smaller and solve the evacuation problem," Kessler said, he and his neighbors might have accepted it.

However, it's unclear to what degree a well-organized opposition may have contributed to the development's demise. A prospective timeline that Signature prepared in 2017 anticipated that construction would begin in 2019, and said the last phase of architectural coating for the club facilities would end last month

"Over the past three years of processing the reference application for 43 residential units, one single-family home and an expansion of health club improvements by approximately 7,000 square feet, I believe that we have worked in a cooperative manner to address staff's concerns in their review and analysis," Signature Senior Vice President Eric Harrison wrote in a November 2019 e-mail to Oakland Planning and Building Director William Gilchrist.

In the letter, Harrison said his team and city officials spent more than three years laboring over an environmental impact report that apparently never materialized.

To Aaron Eckhouse, a member of the pro-housing group East Bay for Everyone, the ill-fated Claremont condos exemplify a much larger problem in the region and throughout the state — of cities toiling for years on environmental reviews, and killing projects in the process. Claremont could be the latest unintended casualty of California's Environmental Quality Act — a landmark law that aimed to make government agencies assess, and mitigate, the potential harms of infrastructure projects. Now, housing advocates lament how the law is wielded to hold up housing developments, with the definition of "harm" expanded to include noise, crowds, shadow or undesirable aesthetics.

While Oakland and Signature have not shared all the details of what happened in this case, they were both working under the threat of at least one lawsuit by two nonprofits — Save Our Claremont and Claremont Preservation Coalition. The pressure to make the environmental impact report bullet-proof may have led to delays, Eckhouse said.

"Why does a 44-unit project that's consistent with the underlying zoning need a multiple-year environmental (analaysis)?" Echouse asked. "This is not an Oakland-specific problem." He noted that the delays had quashed a development that seemed to embody all the values Oakland supports: density on a paved lot; access to stores, restaurants, roads and transit; homes that pose no risk of displacing anyone.

"We aren't worried about gentrifying the Claremont," Eckhouse said.

Yet if community resistance played any role in the delays, members of Save Our Claremont seemed to have no knowledge of it, city records show. As time went on they persistently asked the city for updates on the project, and appeared confounded by the lack of communication. In one email, Save Our Claremont board member Janet White said the group had contacted the city 10 times upon learning in August 2021 that Signature wanted to resuscitate its draft environmental report. Oakland did not respond until January 2022.

"It's news to us if the development has been formally stopped," Kessler said, adding that he isn't certain the war is over.

With Ohana Real Estate now on the verge of acquiring the Claremont, Kessler and others wonder whether a new development team would revive the condo proposal. Representatives of Ohana did not respond to a request for comment.

Reach Rachel Swan: [email protected]