The latest effort to build a 15-minute neighborhood is taking shape at the easternmost edge of the San Francisco Bay Area as part of statewide efforts to build more residences to address affordability concerns.
Planning officials in Livermore, a city in Eastern Alameda County, have signed off on a proposal for Cornerstone, a 253-unit residential development on a vacant 13-acre parcel at the northwest corner of Collier Canyon Road and Constitution Drive.
Livermore's latest housing proposal is part of the Isabel Neighborhood Specific Plan, an initiative that officials have called the largest and most complex proposal of its kind ever developed for Livermore. The effort aims to create what officials are touting as a 15-minute lifestyle, where residents could fill their daily needs — such as going to work or shopping for groceries — in a short time by walking or taking public transit from any point in the city.
The ambitious blueprint envisions the development of 1,100 acres of mostly publicly owned land surrounding a planned light rail station. Plans include a walkable mixed-use neighborhood consisting of 4,095 new multifamily units via several developments plus commercial space, parks, and pedestrian and bike facilities.
The plan, adopted in 2020, also envisioned building several hundred thousand square feet of new office space, but city officials have acknowledged recently that goal would be scaled back in light of the surplus in office space since the pandemic.
The growing demand for mixed-use developments reflects the nationwide shortage of affordable housing that has coincided with the explosion of remote work over the past five years.
California needs to build 180,000 residences annually to meet demand, a far cry from the 80,000 homes built on average each year over the past decade, according to the state housing agency. Livermore is on the hook for about 4,500 new residences by 2031 to address the housing shortage.
Transit-oriented plans
For its Cornerstone development, Pacific Cos., of Eagle, Idaho, is planning 143 townhouses — six of which are expected to be affordable for low- and moderate-income households — and a five-story apartment building with 110 units. Of those 110 units, 108 are set to be priced for low-, very low- and extremely low-income residents earning between 30% and 80% of the area median income. That figure is about $153,000 per household in Livermore compared to the national household median income of $80,610.
Earlier in 2024, officials gave preliminary approval to Isabel Crossing, a project being developed through a collaboration by the city and Los Angeles-based Harridge Development Group that aims to create a “Main Street experience” via 1,300 new homes plus shops and restaurants, parks, plazas, trails and bike paths.
Also this year, the Livermore City Council approved a 164-unit condominium project with 33 units priced for moderate-income buyers called Shea Aura. The developer is Southern California-based Shea Homes.
In staff documents, Livermore Economic Development Director Brandon Cardwell said the city aims to do its part to satisfy state requirements that cities build more affordable housing while creating a neighborhood where people can walk or bike to destinations just a few minutes from home to go shopping or socialize.
The Isabel Neighborhood Specific Plan is largely concentrated around a 22-mile passenger rail system called Valley Link that eventually promises to connect residents to San Francisco and other points west via the Bay Area Rapid Transit terminus in Dublin-Pleasanton, about 5 miles west of Livermore.
Initially, the development was supposed to coincide with a long-promised $1.6 billion extension of the BART system to Isabel Avenue in Livermore that would have helped thousands of Bay Area commuters who had moved further east in recent decades in search of affordable housing. But in 2018, leaders of the transit agency, facing funding shortfalls, voted to scrap the BART extension.
The San Joaquin Valley Regional Rail Authority said on its website that construction on the planned Valley Link system could start as early as 2025.
Mixed-use development
A similar mixed-use plan is taking shape elsewhere in the region, at Chevron's former headquarters about 15 miles northeast of Livermore in San Ramon.
The almost 92-acre campus at Bishop Ranch is in the process of being converted from one of the Bay Area’s largest office parks into a walkable neighborhood with 2,600 residences, 125,000 square feet of retail space, a 2 1/2-acre park and an outdoor performance theater. Sunset Development said it envisions the new Bishop Ranch as “a vibrant, walkable, mixed-use district combining residential, commercial and office uses.”
San Ramon approved rezoning the 92-acre former Chevron site at 6001 Bollinger Canyon Road from office to mixed-use space at the end of last year. Earlier this year, the first group of homeowners at Bishop Ranch began moving into 404 townhouses and apartments dubbed City Village that were built by local developer SummerHill Homes.
More recently, locally based Sunset Development proposed 426 housing units for the first phase of the Orchards project with plans for two more phases in the future. The project could be approved within the next 12 months, with construction aimed at beginning in 2026.
Studies have shown that most Americans prefer to live in walkable areas. While there is a limited amount of downtown real estate available, “by replicating the live-work-play environment in a smaller area, developers can deliver those active lifestyles to more people outside the urban core, and at a relatively lower cost,” said Julia Georgules, director of local research markets at JLL, in a report.