Empty Acreage Could Become Senior Community

At its meeting on Tuesday night, members of the City Council of Foster City heard presentations from two different land development companies who wish to develop the City’s 15 acres of vacant land that lies just south of City Hall, at the corner of Foster City and Hillsdale boulevards.

Both companies proposed building a senior living community combined with a large amount of retail space that would include shops, restaurants and gathering spaces.

Several months ago, the City Council made a public “Request for Proposals” in which it invited many land development companies and nonprofit organizations in the area to submit their proposals and ideas for what can be done with the vacant land. Nine or ten companies submitted proposals, and of those, the City invited three companies to make official presentations during Tuesday night’s meeting. One of the three dropped out of the process a few weeks ago, and Tuesday night, the firm Sares Regis of Northern California and a group formed especially for the purpose that called themselves the Foster City Community Partners, made up of representatives of many local companies, presented their ideas to the council.

Sares Regis said it would partner with other companies such as Mercy Housing and Northern California Presbyterian Homes and Services to manage the proposed living community, Bank of America/Merril Lynch to finance the project, and Perkins Eastman architects.

Sares Regis began the night with a proposal for a community called “Village Square.”

Various representatives from Sares Regis and their partners in the venture described Village Square as a group of homes made up of approximately 200 independent apartments, 30 assisted living apartments and 24 “memory care” homes, offering a Community Care Residential Community (CCRC) with three levels of care for seniors, as well as a retail center made up of shops, restaurants and gathering space.

With regard to the retail space and gathering spaces, “we see it as a town center and a community gathering place for the people of Foster City,” said Daniel Cinelli, an architect with Perkins Eastman. “The Village will become the ‘second place’ where people come to relax, spend time with friends and family, eat and shop. It will not only be a destination for the people of Foster City, but a regional destination as well.”

The living component would include modern, restaurant-style dining rooms; meeting rooms community groups can utilize; eight different wellness/fitness centers and more. Representatives for the project said it would be an ideal location for seniors who like to be able to walk to several places and be connected to and involved with their community, thanks to its proximity to the Peninsula Jewish Community Center, the library, the Recreation Center, Leo Ryan Memorial Park and more.

Surrounding the apartments would be a mix of both sit-down and fast, casual restaurants, as well as shops and boutiques, including coffee shops, bakeries, retail stores and potentially a natural grocery store such as Sprouts.

After each presentation, council members were given the chance to ask questions.

Following the Sares Regis presentation, council member Art Kiesel expressed concern over how tall Sares Regis was proposing the buildings to be; Sares Regis representatives said approximately seven stories.

Council member Pam Frisella appeared skeptical. She said before, with such proposals for other projects, potential developers would say the buildings would be of one height, such as seven stories, and as the project moved forward, the height would get raised over and over in an attempt to be able to make more money, eventually reaching as high as 12 stories.

Frisella also appeared to not like some of the photos in the Sares Regis presentation of some of the other communities they had built around the Bay Area, saying the quality of the communities looked “cheapy.” She said she plans to visit some of the other communities to see what the quality was really like.

“We don’t want to see plastic tablecloths, and that sort of thing,” she said. “That may sound trivial, but for members of the audience, we are used to a certain lifestyle in Foster City, and we want to keep it.”

The second presentation was made by Foster City Community Partners (FCCP), which is made up of many local companies such as Urban Community Partners, New Home Company, Campus Housing, Mid-Peninsula Housing and Merril Gardens/SRM Development.

FCCP’s proposal was for a senior living community made up of a mix of condos, apartments and for-sale homes, as well as approximately 37,000 square feet of retail space including restaurants, coffee shops, a specialty grocer and small shops; and a town square that features such amenities as an “interactive water feature,” a stage for small live performances, and plenty of shade and benches protected from wind.

Interestingly, FCCP explained their role as being the “master developer” that would acquire the land and coordinate the entire project, but would sell off pieces of the project to companies that would develop separate segments of the community—one company would be in charge of the senior housing, one company in charge of the retail space, and so forth.

Ian Gillis of Urban Community Partners said it’s much easier for five different developers to secure financing in five smaller amounts, rather than one entity trying to secure “one big mega-financing.”

“This way, if one of the elements falls through with its financing, the other four can still move forward,” he explained.

Gillis said each of the five segments of FCCP's project would cost between $25-50 million.

A few of the council members appeared confused by the way the arrangement would work and wary of dealing with five developers versus one.

When the concern over the height of the buildings was brought up again, FCCP said, due to the amount of space available for parking, they were proposing buildings of only three or four stories.

Pam Frisella said she was skeptical FCCP could actually attract as many restaurants and retail shops as it claimed, since that was where so many previous development proposals for this parcel of land fell through. She said previous developers called Foster City’s location a problem for attracting such manner of retailers, because it is more of a “destination city” than “on the way to somewhere.” However, Gillis and his partners said they had much experience in that area and were confident they could deliver the retailers.

In the end, Gillis told the council, “You have a difficult decision between two very different visions here,” adding that he felt FCCP’s proposal was more broad in vision, versus Sares Regis’ proposal that targeted only one specific market--seniors age 75 and up.

After the two presentations were over, members of the community addressed the council with their thoughts on the two proposals.

Claudette Main and her husband, both senior Foster City residents, urged the council to select the Sares Regis proposal because it featured a CCRC to offer seniors the care options local seniors desperately need. Claudette said every other type of housing is available to people in Foster City—apartments, condos and townhouses, single-family homes, duplexes and multi-unit homes—but there is no senior living community that offers extra care.

“We feel [without this] the seniors of Foster City will eventually be forced to leave the city to find the next level of housing that fulfills their needs,” she said.

Claudette and her husband said the FCCP proposal seemed to emphasize building more condos and townhouses, which they said Foster City already had too much of and would only exacerbate current problems in the city.

The council members plan to spend a few weeks researching the specifics of the two proposals and choosing one group they would like to move forward with. They plan to announce which developer that is at the regularly scheduled meeting on Oct. 3. After that meeting, if everything appears to be in order, the City of Foster City would move into a 60-day negotiation period with the chosen developer, going over the specific financials and business terms of the arrangement.