Behind the Gate: Locked-up Land the County Wants for a Park

One day, Castro Valley, your children or grandchildren may fly kites or toss footballs here. For now, though, this land is Castro Valley's hidden gem.

The pictures in this video give you an insider's look at property now locked behind gates and carefully tended by maintenance staff at the East Bay Municipal Utility District, the property's current owner.

These 24 acres—bounded by Carlton Avenue, Stanton Avenue and Sidney Way—have become a major source of contention three times in the past half century, and their fate appears far from settled in June 2011.

Will they become a park? Or houses? Or maybe a mix of both?

In the course of attending numerous government meetings and talking with residents over the past two months, here's what I've learned:

1950s

This was once the site of a school and as many as 25 homes. But throughout the 1950s, the East Bay Municipal Utility District forced families to sell their homes through threat of eminent domain. The hilly site had value to a water district that used to require help from gravity to move its water supplies; that's a technically inaccurate explanation of the hilly property's appeal to EBMUD, but you get the gist. 

2006

In 2006, Castro Valley residents mounted a campaign to create more open space and park land in Castro Valley. Measure Q needed a two-thirds majority to pass and fell just short of that. The "yes" vote was 63 percent. It needed to be 66 percent.

At the time, the housing bubble was at its height and EBMUD appeared to be on the verge of selling the property to a developer of million-dollar homes. The developer also planned a park for part of the property. It's already equipped with water and electricity, which raises its value in the eyes of housing developers.

Measure Q failed and the housing bubble burst, leaving the land in EBMUD's hands, even though EBMUD doesn't particularly need it anymore, partly due to the modernization of its systems and processes over the last half-century (again, technical oversimplification—the engineering is not the point here).

2011

In 2011, the people drafting Alameda County's official blueprint for Castro Valley's long-term growth zeroed in on this property once again (some of them were also proponents of Measure Q) and proposed that a controversial new zoning designation be applied to the land. EBMUD has objected, as has the Castro Valley Unified School District, which is also tentatively earmarked for the controversial new designation.

The new land-use designation, "public facilities," would require an additional step—Alameda County public hearings—before school or EBMUD property to housing developers, which the schools and EBMUD say would have the effect of damping interest and lowering the value of the land, and potentially reducing the amount of money the schools can raise in future bond measures, since land is often used as collateral for such measures.

The Alameda County Planning Commission is still taking public input on the Draft Castro Valley General Plan, which is the official name of the community's blueprint for long-term growth. 

At this point, residents don't seem interested in the General Plan. Battles are being fought by EBMUD and the schools. But hidden amid the bureaucracy is the fate of these 24 acres.