CCA UPDATE: Landmarks Preservation Advisory Board Oct. 28, Then City Council
On October 16, the Planning Commission unanimously approved final EIR and applications from Emerald Fund to demolish all 10 CCA buildings, preserving only Treadwell/Macky Hall and its carriage house. The plan would build 448 housing units in two large structures, one 95 feet high at Clifton and Broadway, the other up the hill and extending the whole width from Clifton to the edge of the property.
However, Emerald Fund, the prospective developer, says it doesn’t “pencil out” now. So OHA has proposed that CCA and the developers execute an interim use plan for some or all of the vacant buildings to safeguard the site, keep it active, and prevent blight. The commissioners were sympathetic to this idea but did not encode it in the approvals. We will be contacting the LPAB and City Council members. The project will again be heard at the Landmarks Preservation Advisory Board on Monday, October 28 at 6 pm, in City Hall. Please support OHA at this meeting.
To attend the meeting, come to City Hall at 6 PM. Click this link for meeting information.
Write in With Your Support
City Council committee and full hearings aren’t yet scheduled but we will alert you. Please write today to the LPAB and to Dan Kalb, District 1 council member. Sample letter and addresses below. Thank you for your support!
Dear LPAB Chair Rice and Members,
Please weigh in on the demolition of an Area of Primary Importance, the former CCA campus. While I support housing on the site, I urge you to recommend saving one or two college-era structures. Such an alternative was ignored by the EIR. The hundred-year cultural and physical history of CCAC (later CCA) should not be obliterated.
I also urge you to recommend interim use of some or all of the site, as the project proponent says they will not build soon. To prevent blight, fire, graffiti, encampments, and damage, the current owners (CCA) and developer must provide for temporary use by arts, educational, residential, or workplace use in the meantime. Occupancy is the only real protection for this prominent site and its neighborhood. As we have seen in other projects, vacancy may be prolonged.
Thank you
