Jul 2, 2009 4:27 pm US/Pacific
Oakland Seeks $10M From Feds For Transit Village
OAKLAND (BCN) ―
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Fruitvale BART Station, adjacent to the transit village.
CBS
Oakland officials asked U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood for $10 million in federal funding Thursday when he visited the Fruitvale Transit Village, adjacent to the Fruitvale BART station.
Among those requesting funding to expand the transit village were U.S. Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, Oakland City Council members Ignacio De La Fuente and Rebecca Kaplan, Alameda County Supervisor Keith Carson and Gilda Gonzales, the chief executive of the Unity Council, a nonprofit community group that serves residents in the area.
Gonzales told LaHood that the first phase of the transit village received $14 million in funding from the Department of Transportation and has been hailed as a national model for building livable communities along a major transit hub.
She said the first phase was completed in 2004 and contains 15 private businesses, including restaurants and shops, a library, a senior center and other services.
Handing LaHood an application for $10 million in funding for the second phase of the project, Gonzales said, "This is cheaper than our request for Phase One."
She said Phase Two calls for 275 high-density housing units to be built on land that currently contains a street-level parking lot for the Fruitvale BART station. The total estimated cost for the second phase is $100 million.
De La Fuente told LaHood that the transit village is "a real transit hub" and is the second-highest tax-generating area in Oakland.
De La Fuente said that about 15 years ago, BART was reluctant to get involved in projects aimed at building housing next to its stations but that the transit agency has now embraced the idea and is also participating in developing transit villages near the Coliseum, MacArthur and West Oakland stations in Oakland.
LaHood told Gonzales that the Fruitvale Transit Village is "a great project" and "terrific" but didn't make any promises about future funding.
The transportation secretary, who had toured the Port of Oakland earlier Thursday, then rushed off to the Coliseum station, where he was to be greeted by Councilman Larry Reid and other officials.
Rather than taking BART from the Fruitvale station to the Oakland Coliseum station, which is the next southbound stop on the Fremont Line, LaHood was driven by staff in a black Cadillac Escalade sport utility vehicle.
After LaHood left the Fruitvale Transit Village, De La Fuente said that getting $10 million in Department of Transportation funding for Phase Two is the key to the project because if that money is obtained, it's likely that additional funding will then fall into place.
Gonzales said it's expected that additional funding will be provided by the state and by Signature Properties, the project's developer.
She said once the second phase is fully funded, it will take about two years to build it.
(© CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Bay City News contributed to this report.)
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