Everything Happens to Me

Reds Lose 3 of 4 to Dodgers,Nuggets Knocked Out, the Anatomy of Acacia Meadows Part 1 and Lesley Gore

Happy Tuesday everyone. I hate to do some research so I couldn’t get this blog out yesterday. Today we start with some brief sports remarks and then we get into the big story as we get into one of my biggest deals in affordable housing - Acacia Meadows in south Sacramento. Fun fact that we’ll get into - a critical, pivotal piece of the financing was moved up because of comments I made to a California Housing and Community Development (HCD) at the Rubicon Brewpub. We go out with a strong song from the 2000s version of pop singer Lesley Gore that reflects my thoughts on my career in affordable housing.

Let’s get to it shall we?

Reds Lose 3 out of 4

The longest road trip of the season for the Cincinnati Reds resulted in 7 losses and 3 wins as the Reds lost the final game, 4 to 3, to Los Angeles at Dodger Stadium. The Reds have now lost 18 of their last 23 games and are now in last place in the National League Central. It’s going to be a long season for me.

Nuggets Sent Home

My pick for the NBA championship, the Denver Nuggets, are going home, having fallen to the Minnesota Timberwolves 98-90 on Sunday in the seventh, and final, NBA Western Division semifinal conference game. The Timberwolves will face the Dallas Mavericks for the Western Division championship.

For the Eastern Division championship the Boston Celtics face the Indiana Pacers. My money is on the Celtics to win it all but don’t follow my advice. I know nothing about NBA basketball.

Acacia Meadows

Here’s a sharp photo of the team that built the 140 unit Acacia Meadows Apartments in 2005. I’m not sure why my Construction Manager, Mike Satowski, is not in the photo. He deserves lots of credit for his work on this deal.

And here is one photo of the development that really doesn’t do it justice since there are like eight buildings in total

This was the largest deal I had done to that date and, as such, it has a number of stories attached to it.

Acacia Meadows is located in the unincorporated part of Sacramento County not far from the South Sacramento Kaiser Permanente facility. CHOC purchased a 10 acre flat site for $1.00 because the owner was able to gain favorable tax advantages by selling the site for beneficial uses.

The problem was the site was landlocked. Further, the zoning was for single family housing development. As a result, I had to purchase some land from the owner of the adjacent parcel in order to gain access to frontage along Stockton Boulevard. At the same time, we had our civil engineering firm, Cunningham Engineering, design a site plan for the 10 acre parcel. We agreed that the site should contain a mix of developments. We would carve out about 5.5 acres for the 140 unit development and then we sprinkled around 22 single family homes along the perimeter. Finally, we carved out another 2 acres for a smaller senior housing development. We felt that this was a creative approach to the development.

In order to achieve this development mix, we would need to rezone the site to be a Planned Unit Development (PUD). We felt that this process would take about a year but, as it turns out, it took 2 years. Two painful years.

The land purchase was made difficult because the owners of the property thought that we were a dumb nonprofit that had no idea about how to develop the property. One of the owners said, “You guys probably don’t even know how to read a preliminary title report.”

But I knew that these so-called sophisticated real estate magnates needed to sell the property. I knew it because you just needed to look at the parcels they owned to tell that they weren’t savvy guys after all. They owned a number of parcels at the intersection of Mack Road and Stockton Boulevard, one of the busiest intersections in the south Sacramento area. Yet, they were only able to sell three of the parcels and these were not high end uses - one was a Motel 6, another was a Denny’s Restaurant and the third was the newest one - a Jack-in-the-Box fast food restaurant. This left about 15 acres of raw land located in a rapidly growing area during the booming economy of the late 1990s -early 2000s.

Despite their attitude, these two guys sold us the parcel at a reasonable price, knowing full well that this road access would benefit their property as well. Most of these negotiations were done by my boss, the Executive Director of CHOC, Nancy Conk.

Our parcel was an in-fill property which meant that we were requesting a rezoning that would generate interest from our neighbors. We had hundreds of neighbors too. To the east and north of us we had a large seniors-only single family development similar to those Del Webb subdivisions that blanketed the West during the sixties. These were single storey small homes on small lots with a community center, pools and tennis courts. This was known as SunCountry. To the west of us was an older condominium development that consisted of two-storey townhomes as well as a community center and a pool.

Neighborhood Opposition

Once we filed our application for the rezoning to Sacramento County in early 2002, the neighbors started to organize their opposition. We all know about NIMBYs, right? Not In My Back Yard folks. These were the classic NIMBYs.

Now let me tell you my thoughts on NIMBYs. First, if you ever had a positive opinion on the nature of human beings, thoughts that people are, by nature, logical, rational and thoughtful, you’ll learn through experience that this is not true. Even before Donald Trump was elected President of the United States, I knew, from my experience with NIMBY, that people are fearful, selfish and unreasonable.

So, take it from me. Neighborhood opposition never results in better outcomes. I mean, let’s face it. If the neighbors really opposed our developments, then they could always get together with their fellow neighbors and purchase the property itself before CHOC purchased it. But they chose not to.

SunCountry Opponents

Our most fierce opposition came from the SunCountry residents. All of them were homeowners and they lived in a gated community with a full complement of amenities on site. Because they were homeowners, many of them had disposable income and idle time to devote to opposing our project.

We met with the SunCountry Board of Directors at their community center and, while it was cordial, they made it clear that they were opposed to our development. We offered to take them on a tour of other CHOC properties to see how they looked and operated but no one took us up on the offer.

I must say that the SunCountry residents were, in general, quite nice to us in person. As expected, they would generally acknowledge the need for affordable housing but, you see, this site is not a good site. Translated into plain English, this meant Not In My Back Yard.

But I couldn’t say anything nice about the condominium folks.

Condominium Opponents

While the SunCountry residents were a tight-knit group of like-minded people, the condominium opponents were downright dishonest and, for lack of a better word, evil. Apparently the condominiums were in a stage of decline so that many of the townhomes were not just rental properties. The management of the properties consisted of two or three people who would act nice and then turn around and spout ugly thoughts about nonprofit low income housing developers. They were the first to go to their elected officials to complain about the development.

We met with the condominium group for a wholly unpleasant evening. On the other hand, it was clear that this group was disorganized and would be unable to generate effective opposition, particularly given that many of the residents were renters and were not engaged with their neighbors.

Kodama/Diseno

Our architecture for Acacia Meadows Apartments was Kodama/Diseno out of San Francisco. The original project manager for Kodama was a guy named Larry Mayers who now has his own firm, Mayers Architecture, in Oakland

Larry was an eager guy who was firmly committed to developing affordable housing. But he was also a bit brittle, which, as you will see, was not helpful for the project at the outset.

Public Meeting - South Sacramento Advisory Committee

One reason why folks don’t like to rezone property the process requires public comment and disclosures. Our first big public hearing was a mandatory presentation to the South Sacramento Advisory Committee, a body appointed by the local county supervisor which at that point was Don Nottoli. Don was a lukewarm supporter of affordable housing.

Larry Mayers and I showed up with some elevations and floor plans for the Acacia Meadows Apartments. I introduced the committee to the work of CHOC and explained our plans for the site, which included a mix of rental and ownership housing.

From the outset, the questions came flying in from the committee. How do select the residents? What happens if a resident commits a crime? What about pets? How many cars will be parked on the site?

All of the questions were about behaviors. There were no comments about design or landscaping or any other concerns regarding the built environment

Larry Mayers was nervous so he started in by trying to explain the project to the group. I know a lynch mob when I see it so I whispered to Larry, “Don’t talk about affordable housing benefits to this group. We just have to endure two hours of screaming and fear.” So we sat there for the next few hours and listened as the committee, along with public folks who showed up, brought up concerns about traffic, bad people, crime and all manner of things. The committee then voted 5-0 in opposition to the project. I got home about 11:00 pm.

The next step was the Sacramento County Planning Commission. By this time Larry Mayers was gone, replaced by a more experienced architect who was undeterred by public opposition. While the Planning Commission approved the project, the SunCountry then filed an appeal which meant that the final decision was now going to the Sacramento Board of Supervisors.

And that’s where we will take this up next time.

Someday

The Palms Playhouse in downtown Winters is a nice venue for live music. It’s small, about 100 chairs, with snacks, beer and wine. It was here in 2005 when I noticed that Lesley Gore was appearing so I called my brother, Joel, to ask if he’d like to see her.

Lesley Gore, as you may know, had lots of hits in the sixties, all of which were produced by the legendary Quincy Jones. These hits included It’s My Party, Judy’s Turn to Cry, You Don’t Own Me and Maybe I Know to name a few. But the hits stopped in the seventies and I had no idea she was still around.

So Joel and I went to the Palms and, there she was, all 4 foot 10 inches of her, with a small band. And she had a new album out and, let me tell you, it’s an awesome album. It’s mature, thoughtful music - certainly not pop music.

So, from that album, I’m featuring Someday from Lesley Gore’s 2005 album, Ever Since. I love the sentiment of this song because it reflects how I approached my career as an affordable housing development:

“I’m going to get there. I know it.”

“I do not care how long it takes/I do not care who stands in my way/I don’t care what anybody has to say/I know myself/I know myself and I am not afraid.”

Written by musician/composer Mike Errico, here’s Some Day.

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