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Simeon Properties, the controversial co-developer of the troubled Campus Bay site, is UC Berkeley’s first choice for developing the adjacent Richmond Field Station, a UC official revealed Monday. 

Simeon, a Marin County firm headed by Russ Pitto, has drawn considerable heat from concerned neighbors of Campus Bay, both for his plans to develop a 1,330-unit housing project on the property and for problems with the ongoing site cleanup. 

The firm was selected by the university from among the applicants who responded to an April 9, 2004 Request for Qualifications issued by UC Real Estate Group Senior Planner and Project Manager Kevin Hufferd. Negotiations have been underway between Simeon and the University ever since. 

Though no final agreement has been signed, the proposal calls for the university to lease most of the site to a private developer for 60 years. 

The university is now in negotiations with Simeon to devise a workable plan to build a mixed corporate and academic research park on 70 acres of the 152-acre site. 

“We’re still trying to agree on broad terms,” Hufferd said. “There’s no deadline on negotiations and we hope to be able to reach agreement within the next few months.” 

Representatives for Simeon did not return calls for comment. 

Privatization could result in a tax windfall for Richmond, which can collect a possessory interest tax—equivalent to property tax—on all parts of the site leased by corporate clients, Hufferd said, though any property leased to the university would be tax-exempt. 

University plans envision the redeveloped site as “a financial resource,” which would provide additional revenue for the school. 

“The idea is to have a development that can meet the needs of the university and have private labs, especially for research that has connections to the university,” Hufferd said. 

According to an Aug. 17, 2004 “concept summary” distributed to field station employees, plans call for “a projected build-out of approximately two million square feet in the aggregate,” a figure that includes additions to the few existing buildings that would be spared from demolition. 

Many of the buildings on the to-be-leased area of the site were built before 1940, and four have “very poor” seismic ratings while 18 have “poor” ratings, according to a 1997 seismic survey of the site. 

While the April 9, 2004 proposal called for the developer to clean up pollutants on the site, Hufferd said the university now plans to tackle that responsibility. 

The site, located immediately to the west of Simeon’s toxics-laden Campus Bay site, is contaminated by substances ranging from acid-producing iron pyrite cinders to mercury and PCBs. 

The pyrite was dumped at the site by Stauffer Metals, one of the previous owners of the campus Bay site, and the mercury comes from the field station site in its early incarnation as the home of the California Cap Company, which manufactured fulminate of mercury blasting caps on the property. 

Cleanup of the university property is being conducted by the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board under a three-year-old cleanup order. The water board currently has no toxicologist on its staff. The school rejected a 1995 cleanup proposal from the state Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC), which is staffed with toxics experts. 

The adjacent Campus Bay site was also entirely under water board control until a legislative hearing in December prompted by irate Richmond residents caused developer Cherokee-Simeon to call for DTSC regulation of the upland portion of its site, home to a massive mound of buried pyrites and toxics. 

Some of the pyrites at Campus Bay were trucked over from the university property. 

Sherry Padgett, a leading activist in Bay Area Residents for Responsible Development (BARD), said she wasn’t surprised by the news of Simeon’s involvement at RFS, adding that it “is all the more reasons to have both sites under the supervision of DTSC.” 

“Starting last year I heard several people connected with the project refer to restaurants and recreational facilities to be built just west of the property line,” she said. “Now I know why.” 

UC’s proposals call for both types of facilities at the field station site. 

News of Simeon’s involvement came the day before Tuesday night’s Richmond City Council meeting, where Mayor Irma Anderson was scheduled to appoint a Blue Ribbon Committee for the Campus Bay Project and the council is to consider an ordinance on the demolition of buildings that have been used to make or house toxic chemicals. 

Mayor Anderson said the panel will include nominees from each councilmember, and may also include individuals with specific expertise. She said she had not decided on the committee’s size as of late Monday afternoon. 

“We’re having a lot of community input,” she said, “but we need to make sure its effective.” 

BARRD is also scheduled to present the council with a formal resolution signed by hundreds of area residents calling for the whole Campus Bay site to come under DTSC jurisdiction, Padgett said. 

While a 2002 “Richmond Field Station Working Paper” prepared by the university for their 2020 Long Range Development Plan rejected a proposal to place housing on the site because it “would require additional site remediation costs,” it raised the idea of building a “charter school” and conducting a major outreach program with local schools. 

Hufferd said Monday that there’s “not been a lot of active discussion with the developer” about the school. “It’s not part of the ongoing discussion.” 

Several proposals raised in the 2002 LRDP working paper have been implemented, including this one: “Rename the property to reflect the campus’ commitment to the site as a first class research environment.” 

The name chosen was Bayside Research Campus. 

The neighboring Campus Bay site was originally intended as a biotech research and development park until the biotech industry tanked in the wake of the post-9/11 stock market stumble. Simeon and financial partner Cherokee Investment Properties then shifted plans to a housing development. 

The university’s 2002 LRDP report noted that the field station “has the potential to play a significant role in the campus’ future growth, and how this site is developed may, in turn, affect both the nature and the magnitude of growth on and around the core campus.” 

Ousted UC Berkeley College of Natural resources Professor Ignacio Chapela has speculated that the new field station proposal is aimed to target it as a site for researchers cashing on the stem cell research bonanza funded by California voters in November.›