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Photographer Phillip Siddiq captured these cool moments on a hot day at the 2008 3rd Annual Laurel Summer Solstice Music Festival. Click to enlarge.

On May 30, 2008, AMG & Associates withdrew its application to construct a senior housing project at High Street and MacArthur Boulevard. After submitting a permit application in August 2006, the developer sought city approval to construct an affordable senior housing project on the vacant parcels of the former Roberts Tires, Laurel Liquors, and PG&E substation. The proposed project required several conditional use permits and variances to build housing with parking on parcels zoned for commercial and retail uses in a building taller and more dense than current zoning would allow.

For two years the developer maintained that site contamination had been removed. This led the city to grant the project a categorical exemption from the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). According to the case planner, Robert Merkamp, "this excused the project from undergoing an Environmental Impact Report (EIR)." An EIR records the scope of the applicant's proposal and analyzes all its known environmental effects. It can recommend costly mitigation measures or even denial of a project.

On February 20, 2008, the Oakland Planning Commission approved the project. The approval was appealed to the City Council and scheduled to be heard on May 20, 2008. Information surfaced that the site contamination was not mitigated to the extent claimed by the developer. The State maintains a list of contaminated sites not eligible for categorical exemption from CEQA. The Roberts Tires parcel was on the Hazardous Waste and Substances Site "Cortese" List. "When this information came to light," Merkamp said, "we advised the developer of the option of withdrawing its application and reapplying after cleaning up the contamination." When asked how the placement of the project site on a State list for underground contamination was missed, the planner said that it was probably "a combination of a mistake by the city and information not fully revealed by the applicant."

"The County enforces and regulates the clean up of contaminated sites," he said, adding that "Even with city approval there was little chance that any housing for seniors would have gotten built on a contaminated site."

The project had the backing of the Planning Department and several public officials. In a private email blasting city officials, one project opponent wrote: "The criticism that has been directed to those of us who have been protesting this development is that we are against senior housing. That is absolutely correct. I have always been against senior housing at this commercial spot because of air pollution, traffic, safety, and insensitivity to elderly people who have absolutely no choice in where they get to live when they are dependent upon the government for housing."

The email went on: "There is a reason that this would never be market-rate housing. That reason is that if anyone had a choice, they would never live within 60 feet of I-580. And they would never live on top of a toxic waste dump."

Go to the California Environmental Protection Agency Web site and search Program Types- Clean up Sites for "Roberts Tires" at: www.envirostor.dtsc.ca.gov/public/search.asp. Read what Dennis Evanosky wrote about underground contamination on this site in his December 2001 Metro column, "Shenanigans on the Boulevard." Go to www.macarthurmetro.org.