Plans for marina advisory panel to be discussed Monday

SAN LEANDRO — Calling all residents, city commissioners, property owners, business owners, boat owners, affordable housing advocates, environmentalists and anyone else who thinks they should have a stake in the San Leandro Marina.

The city is looking for you to participate in a selective group that will play an important role in shaping the future development of the marina's 40-acre shoreline area.

On Monday, the City Council Shoreline-Marina Committee is expected to discuss how the city will go about creating a citizens advisory committee to assist the master developer chosen to revamp the marina and shoreline. The meeting will be at 9 a.m. in the Sister Cities Gallery at City Hall, 835 E. 14th St.

Applications will be available to advisory committee hopefuls later this month, city officials said. Choosing who gets appointed to the panel will be Mayor Tony Santos, Councilwoman Joyce Starosciak, Assistant City Manager Steve Hollister and City Business Development Manager Cynthia Battenberg.

The City Council voted last month to approve Cal-Coast as the master developer for the shoreline area after months of reviewing developer applications, banking on the hope that the Gardena, Los Angeles County-based company can bring a mixed-use project to the marina that will finally make it self-sustainable.

Looking to continue adding public input to the potential development, the advisory committee is being created to make

"It's important that any type of development that goes on reflects the desires of the community at large," Battenberg said. "So who better to represent the community than a group of citizens that reflect the desires of the various constituents?"

The citizens committee will be charged with several key tasks, including reviewing the marina's past development plans, performing site visits, analyzing traffic issues and gauging the feasibility of ideas proposed against the current financial market.

But while the advisory body will be integral in shaping future development at the marina, city officials said, it won't serve the same purpose as the noted citizens committee formed in 2006 to develop the city's downtown transit-oriented development, or TOD, plan.

For one, Battenberg said, the city doesn't have a grant — as was the case with the TOD strategy — to guide the committee's planning. And this time, the committee's job will be to develop practical ideas that can be quickly implemented at the marina, as opposed to just dreaming up the possibilities.

"The case in this scenario is that the city is working with a developer, and we want an economically viable project down there, so that needs to be considered," she said. "We can't just dream up pie-in-the-sky-this-is-what-we-want, because those things probably won't happen."

Reach Martin Ricard at 510-293-2480 or mricard@bayareanewsgroup.com.