Rick Caruso, a friend and supporter of Gov. Schwarzenegger and a former member of the LA Police Commission, has abandoned plans to build a Grove-like mall on the same property as the Golden Gate Fields racetrack.  Caruso, president and CEO of Caruso Affiliated, has spent more than a year working with community groups to help mold the plans for his project to fit the needs of the community, as he has done with other projects in Southern California.  Of course, the Bay Area has its own special needs.  Caruso told me that the Albany project was the first time that any community group had requested a dog park as part of a development.

But, the reality is that no amount of negotiating and accomodating will satisfy the Bay Area community groups who just don’t want any new development that might bring in chain stores like the GAP (yes, even SF-based chain businesses are B-A-D) or Barnes and Noble.  Caruso promised the groups that the development would be water-friendly and picturesque.  But the community activists only want a dog park, bike trails and a small business park for the businesses they deem acceptable to the area.  They told the Oak Trib that “…we’ve tried to do a whole ring around the Bay of open space to the waterfront.”  Hummm….SF’s fabulously popular Ferry Building isn’t open space.  Nor is the AT&T ball park.  Nor is the new development that the Oakland City Council approved yesterday.  I guess only some projects that aren’t open space are okay.

Caruso intended to create a project that restored the waterfront and added a farmer’s market, housing, retail shops, a new park, a restored pier and access to the beach.  It would have revived Golden Gate Fields (the San Mateo racetrack, Bay Meadows, is scheduled to be torn down to make way for housing.  We’re hoping that the GGF racetrack does not follow the same fate.).  Caruso’s lieutenant, Democrat staffer Matt Middlebrook, who was LA Mayor James Hahn’s deputy mayor for communications and policy, lives in the Bay Area and commutes to LA.  Middlebrook, who used to work for Sen. Feinstein and understands the odd nature of Bay Area lefties, tried to help facilitate communication with the local activists.  Unfortunately, even his talents couldn’t help smooth the way for this project. 

Frankly, the Grove is an incredibly nice development that my family enjoys stopping by when we’re in the LA area.  I was looking forward to a family friendly, waterfront place that my kids would enjoy visiting while I’m able to get errands done for the family.  The open space these community activists love to advocate isn’t a nearly family friendly as they think.  Each year, my husband and kids clean up the Albany waterfront as part of PG&E’s Earth Day activities and my husband reports picking up a variety of drug- and sex-related trash that is definitely not family friendly.  Hopefully, Caruso will find another piece of property in the Bay Area (East Bay, please!) that is worthy of his energy and vision. 

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 19th, 2006 at 12:00 am and is filed under Blog Posts.