The Walnut Creek City Council, in a three to two vote, voted down a proposal calling for a moratorium on new residential projects in downtown commercial districts for 45 days – a move some developers had labeled as drastic and unnecessary.
Tuesday’s vote came at a time when Bay Area communities are grappling with – and preparing to vote on – similar measures within their own respective governments.
Walnut Creek’s moratorium was proposed to prevent housing projects seeking conditional use permits to build on commercially zoned land. The council on Tuesday opted to amend the City’s General Plan to better address that issue.
According to city records, approximately 700 residential units in commercial districts are either currently under construction, approved or under review.
That a moratorium was proposed in the first place, planners and some developers have said, demonstrates the frustration some local governments are experiencing as they attempt to deal with surging housing costs. So far, San Francisco, Emeryville and Walnut Creek have each addressed the merits of imposing moratoriums, largely out of concern that the pace of residential development, driven by the demand for luxury housing, is making affordable housing harder and harder for residents to realize.
If they keep building like this, the closest parking space to Barnes&Noble will be in my garage, where my car is already parked. I will just have to walk from there, go by Whole Foods (the one in Lafayette) right, then left through Rossmoor and I’m good.
@Napoleon – Barnes & Noble? What’s that? A museum or something? I’m trying to find parking for my visit to Apple. Gotta get my new watch soon. It’s going to make me feel all Dick Tracy. (If any Miramonte students are reading this article, Google it. Dick Tracy was awesome.)
I’m still at a loss on how stopping the building of additional housing is going to alleviate the housing crisis and why having one more restaurant is needed. One too many market rate units gets built and the only way to get occupancy is for the prices to drop. A fact that I read recently in USA Today I believe. 69,000 housing units were built in Houston last year, a metro area of 6 million, where as California a whole 83,000 units were built for a population almost six times that of Houston.