By Barry Eberling | DAILY REPUBLIC | February 06, 2009
Alan Alvarez walks his 6-month-old daughter, Jaela, around their Rio Vista neighborhood in the Homecoming housing development Thursday afternoon. Photo by Brad Zweerink
FAIRFIELD - Rio Vista dramatically illustrates the stark differences between two competing Bay Area growth visions for the next quarter century.
The small, eastern Solano County city along the Sacramento River has expanses of vacant land. It is waiting for the day when the economy stabilizes and workers once again begin hammering together a sea of subdivisions.
'I think for our city to survive, we need the population growth,' Mayor Jan Vick said. 'Otherwise, we're not going to bring in jobs.'
The Association of Bay Area Governments is working on its Projections 2009 report that maps out the nine-county region's future through 2035. The draft report's so-called 'Scattered Success' vision gives Rio Vista the growth that the city desires. A city of 8,000 people would triple to 25,000.
Solano County also continues to grow, just as it has for decades, from about 425,000 people to almost 585,000. All seven cities boom.
It's a continuation of the post-World War II American Dream: A suburban house with a yard and car in the driveway gassed up for a trip to the supermarket.
But hold the bulldozers. ABAG has an alternative vision it calls 'Focused Future,' which calls for Solano County to get half that growth. Rio Vista a generation from now would have 11,000 residents.
The Bay Area would still grow from 7 million people to 9 million people, but the traditional pattern that sees the outlying counties taking the lion's share of newcomers is stood on its head. Instead, inner urban Bay Area places such as San Francisco and Oakland would see huge growth gains.
It's a possible new American Dream: An urban condominium within walking distance of restaurants, stores and doctors' offices, with a bus or train stop nearby for longer trips. Among the goals is to prepare for higher gas prices and to cut down on greenhouse gases that many scientists believe cause global warming.
'If we want people to choose walking or transit, we have to build our communities at a pedestrian scale and have real transit options,' Paul Fassinger of ABAG wrote in the draft report.
A slow-growth Rio Vista runs contrary to the master plan the city devised in the 1990s. The city needed money at the time and, after rejecting such measures as allowing a card room, turned to growth. Developer fees on new homes would help fill city coffers.
Vick isn't ready to trade the city's long-standing vision for ABAG's new one.
'We have planned for that growth for years and years,' Vick said. 'I don't think you can derail that. I don't think you can stop this train at this point. I don't think it's bad. If Rio Vista is allowed to grow, if we have the housing, we can attract businesses and maintain a lot of our business employee base in town.'
A larger population would also allow Rio Vista to expand its mass transit options, she said.
Fairfield, on the other hand, has a voter-approved growth boundary around the city. Rampant growth is impossible as long as those boundaries stand.
The 'scattered success' vision calls for Fairfield to grow from 108,000 to 145,000 by 2035. The 'focused future' vision calls for it to grow to 130,000. Fairfield in a letter to ABAG says the slower growth is more in keeping with the city's General Plan.
In the face of such feedback, ABAG has come up with yet a third growth vision. This one is somewhat of a hybrid of the other two in balancing where the growth might go, though it's closer to 'focus future.'
The agency will gather comments at a meeting from 9 a.m. to noon Monday at the MetroCenter, 101 8th St. in Oakland.
Under this third alternative, Rio Visa grows only to 10,800 residents. Ideas emerging from ABAG's Oakland offices seem at odds with what the River City is planning.
'Rio Vista and other parts Solano County are really not Bay Area,' Vick said. 'We're valley. It's really hard to relate sometimes to what they're doing there.'
Solano County Supervisor Mike Reagan thinks another force will be at work besides the planners to shape the region's growth -- the market. ABAG can seek to guide where growth goes, but the agency can't dictate what happens.
'I'm a little skeptical that the majority of the population is going to make a buying decision that basically herds them into stacked flats,' Reagan said.
Reach Barry Eberling at 425-4646, ext. 232, or beberling@dailyrepublic.net.
Growth estimates 'Scattered Success' 'Focused Future'
City 2035 2035
Benicia 33,600 29,214
Dixon 31,600 25,582
Fairfield 145,000 129,917
Rio Vista 24,600 11,292
Suisun City 38,600 34,969
Vacaville 132,000 114,076
Vallejo 162,900 144,163
Rural 15,500 17,003
County 584,000 506,218
(Source: Association of Bay Area Governments)
