San Leandro East 14th Corridor Development Strategy

City of San Leandro, Planning Department

San Leandro, California

July 2002

to

January 2004

Strategic Economics was part of a team of consultants working with the community and staff of the City of San

Leandro to formulate a development strategy for the southern portion of East 14th Street. Previously an

auto-oriented commercial corridor, the southern portion of East 14th has become less vital as traffic has shifted to

area freeways and retail shopping patterns have changed. In order to reinvigorate the corridor, General Plan

policies (to which Strategic Economics also contributed supporting economic analysis) encourage the transition of

the corridor from commercial to residential and mixed-use land uses with concentrated nodes of retail. As part of

the team’s efforts, Strategic Economics performed demographic analysis and research on commercial and

residential real estate market conditions in the corridor and surrounding areas. In cooperation with the urban

design consultants, Strategic Economics used these analyses to create a menu of possible building and use

prototypes with good potential for selected opportunity sites. These prototypes included key development

feasibility factors such as parking ratios and the amount of retail square footage. This helped city staff and the

community conceptualize not only what kinds of uses, but also what types of building formats and site

configurations were generally possible for the opportunity sites. Strategic Economics also evaluated the financial

feasibility of the different development programs via simple pro formas modeling potential revenues, land values

and construction costs. The final component of Strategic Economics’ work consisted of suggesting various

financing mechanisms, funding sources and phasing for implementing the development strategy. The resulting

"Development Strategy” was adopted by City Council in 2004.