On to the CED meeting. A couple of issues OO will be focusing on today, the preliminary steps toward a potential ENA with Costco at Army Base, and the Fire Codes, which may widen Oakland streets

on the Army Base/Costco proposal. It's a very early days idea, not even an ENA, but preparing the potential for one.

CM Fife is giving the presentation.

Fife: "...opportunity to explore the possibility for a Costco...a preliminary step that that will allow the city administrator to begin discussions with cost Costco & DECA LLC, around terms for an ENA to develop a Costco in th".

Fife clarifying that htis isn't a binding contract...and actual ENA, if agreed upon, will have to come back to Council for a vote

Fife: "why Costco? The third largest retailer in world...significant new sources of tax revenue, hundreds of jobs in WO, localized spending, as Oakland residents will be more likely to shop here...opportunity for affordable groceries"

Fife says that the deal will have minimal impact on communities...Fife says that DECA has 15 active projects with a total value of 10 billion...DECA has approached Oakland on this deal...

Fife; "two recyclers wewre meant to be relocated to North Gate...with multiple agreements as far back as 2012, but they have not met their requirements, and there are currently no agreements"

Fife notes previous efforts, led by her, to a use Northgate parcel for crisis of homelessness. She says legal restrictions on residential use, resources required to get a waiver from the DTSC and environmental remediation needed/ funds are "neither feasible nor timely"

Fife says the first community meeting on the proposed project will be on 12/18 at 6pm in council chambers.

Sanford Forte says that the ENA will weaken the deal with the West Oakland polluters who were going to move there. He says there will be more pollution from Costco.

One issue when the City cancelled its DDAs with the recyclers is that the current sites, long a source of complaints, will stay there

Stephanie Tran of Chinatown Chamber of Commerce

Petra Brady of African American Chamber of Commerce supportive

Several neighbors of the recyclers are against the deal...but the City suspended the DDA with the recyclers almsot a year ago

Decca's rep says "this is what we do" convert industrial areas into new uses for retail, says there's a similar project in Socal converting a Philips oil refinery site into a Costco also. "this is a start of a very long process to maybe bring forth an agreement"

Decca rep says that the location allows shoppers to get in and out of a major corridor without extensive traffic, and adds revenue to Oakland and calls the project "transformational"

Another community member in support

Former mayoral candidate Cristina Tostado says she's a community activist and an actual Costco supervisor and extols Costco as an opportunity for workers "I would love to see Costco in the greatest city in the world'

Another supporter

Surprising bedfellow, Derek Barnes, CEO of EBRHA, which has previously regarded Fife as their mortal enemy, and whose board member regularly denigrates her, supports the proposal

Speaker misunderstood the item, it is not for an ENA and does not commit the City or Costco to an ENA

Brown says that there's feedback from community, and she wants to talk about concerns, traffic from trucks coming in and out of West Oakland. Brown asks if there will be any larger discussion outside of the December community mtg. Asks if there's a projected timeline

Fife says she was at McClymonds last week with a group of young people...they came alive when there was time for employment, if we could just make 16 dollars an hour, that would make a difference, instead of crime...we don't have enough opportunities for young people.

Fife says that "that I would not have community engagement on this process. I want to just put that to bed, because that is what I do, and that is who I am. I'm also deeply engaged with environmental justice groups to the point where I'm classified as in just incorrigible"

Fife: " I'm going to continue being Carol Fire in my district to support what the majority of my district needs, not a vocal minority. That said the timeline will depend on the CAO"

CAO Jestin Johnson says the office is very supportive of the potential..."one of the things we have to talk about is the need to be aggressive with economic opportunity..."timeline is perhaps end of Q1

Real Estate head Brendan Moriarty on timeline..."we would only be negotiating the elements of ENA...there's not that much that needs to be negotiated...Q1 sounds right"

CM Unger: "I appreciate CM Fife trying to make something good happen at that spot that has been fallow for so long" but has questions abiout why only Decca is being considered...

Moriarty says that there's a process for waiving the competitive process, he says that they will do an analysis when they come back, if this passes, if there's a need to forego competitive bid. Meaning, they could come back with a desire to have more bidders

Ramachandran extremely quiet, not surprisingly.

Fife says that Oakalnders should be spending 1.5 billion dollars per a study in 2008, but that goes to Emeryville and berkeley and SF due to lack of development. "this is something that is desperately needed as communicated to me by several individuals"

Fife: "I want to reiterate to the public, no other organization, no other company, no one has reached out to me outside of DECA" she says complaints about potential pollution are new, but they would be mitigated in any proposal

The Committee voted unanimously to forward the Costco legislation to 12/16 Council mtg on Consent

They're now into the new fire codes. OFD is pushing this, but some pedestrian/bicycle advocates say they'd create wider streets, instead of investing in more narrow ones.

OFD is giving a slide presentation on the fire code amendments

The changes; thorny thing here is width of access roads

"the need for even wider widths for some streets where buildings are tall, and require taller ladders"

"How wide should fire access roadways be...they should be at least 20 feet, to park there and allow other e-vehicles to pass...that's why 20 feet is a very important number to have, min width to operate in a safe manner"

"Appendix D adds language for road widths in major use for larger buildings, Brooklyn Basis, Wood Street...large buildings with large populations require wider roads...they require access by aerial ladder, therefore we need 26 ft...feel this section is very important"

OFD says that most jurisdictions have appendix d as a general practice...it's the norm

Aerial ladder, but still room to other vehicles to park. This is not a high rise, it's a warehouse in Oakland...not just for tall buildings

Just slides showing that aerial ladders take up a lot of space and require wider streets, i.e, 26 ft

Now a high rise

Noting how many vehicles are needed for this scope of operation

Can also involve rescue

OFD: "this isn't all streets...how do we know where we should enforce the code strictly, and room for latitude"

OFD has coordinated and collaborated with OakDOT

OFD says that with the push to build more housing, the necessity for appendix d is higher

Some pedestrian/bike advocates...Kevin Dalley of BPAC says that it feels that Appendix D is suddenly being treated as an urgency to pass, but OFD passed up opportunities to discuss it with advocates for three years

CM Unger has an amendment that smoke damper equipment be placed by certified contractors

Unger also has questions about Bike/ped issues..."this doesn't require that every street have 26 feet near high rises...oit's just a starting point for discussion?" OFD says that they would make decisions per street widths in development

Unger asks if this would foreclose future convos...OFD says that the relationship with OakDOT has increased.

OFD has invited BPAC to observe training to understand the needs

Fife: "you all sound so positive about the relationship with BPAC, but I just heard them ask to pull a section out...has there been a convo about that?"

OFD says that BPAC is a component in their relationship with OakDOT and that's how they're involved. They say that the concerns are about protected bike lanes [but that doesn't sound like what they're saying, they don't want wider streets because they cause higher speeds'

Fife asks if there's some emergency that requires for a decision to be made..."I am deeply concerned about speeding and how width of streets contributes to so many settlements...I do see enviro design as a way to mitigate the challenges of reckless drivers"

OFD says that the emergency lies with timelines. 1/1/26 the code must be adopted, so the goal is tto have the amendments ready prior...last Council mtg is 12/16 so amendments are ready when code comes into effect

OFD: "OFD agrees about vehicular violence, lowering htose numbers is the priority, the concern is how we do that...and while it may seem that pulling the fire code section might make them betterr" it limits OFD's input into the process. Removing it would be irresponsible

Fife aks why it took so long for this to come forward [one of the criticisms is they've had months to talk about it, but are bringing it only now in a rush]

OFD"s response was that it was a complex process. Looks like the amendments will move forward.

Fife also voted to forward to 12/16 on consent.

In open forum, Dalley says OFD's comment that other jurisdictions have Appendix D is misleading...Berkeley has removed it...he says having fixed hard coded limits are no longer considered best practice, but rather collaboration "it's better to not have street widths hard coded"

Blair Beekman says that in San Diego, city council is asking the same questions about Flock that Oakland has.

That's it for the meeting