City working to improve living conditions, add affordable housing in west Modesto
The city is focusing its attention on west Modesto — one of its most diverse, poorest and oldest communities — with an effort it expects will improve housing and living conditions for residents.
Modesto wants to hire a consultant that would identify the barriers developers face in building affordable housing and ways to overcome them and evaluate the development of vacant or underused sites for housing and/or mixed-used development.
The consultant also would look at how to improve traffic corridors to make them safer and more appealing for people who travel by bus, on foot or by bicycle.
Modesto issued what is called a request for proposals March 8 to solicit consultants. The deadline for submissions is April 14. Staff expect to ask the City Council to award a contract around October. Principal Planner Brad Wall said once the contract is awarded, he expects it would take the consultant about a year to produce a report, at a cost of about $200,000.
The RFP states the consultant will produce “a report that will present a comprehensive analysis of needs and opportunities and identify a strategy to arrive at the actual development of additional housing units.”
That includes market-rate and affordable housing and a range of housing types, from single-family homes to multi-family housing and other housing types.
The consultant’s focus will include the Paradise Road corridor, which is west Modesto’s main thoroughfare, as well as what the city is calling major opportunity sites, including the now-closed nine-hole Modesto Municipal Golf Course, the 18-hole Dryden Park Golf Course and John Thurman Field, home of the minor league Modesto Nuts.
Wall stressed that having the consultant look at these sites does not automatically mean they will be redeveloped. He said the study will help the city evaluate potential options.
Modesto will pay for this work with a state grant. Wall said that in the past couple of years, the state has provided grants to cities and other local jurisdictions to help them produce more housing.
That does not mean Modesto will build the housing, he said. Instead, it will focus on how it can set the conditions that encourage developers to build. That includes looking at barriers housing developers face and adopting policies that promote housing.
Wall said west Modesto was picked because it has not received as much attention as other parts of the city. “It felt like a really good opportunity to evaluate new housing, transportation systems, amenities, the things that make neighborhoods complete.”
While the consultant will look at how to increase housing production, Wall said, that will be done with minimal gentrification so existing west Modesto residents aren’t forced out because they can no longer afford to live there.
Wall said as part of the study, the consultant and city will conduct outreach to gather residents’ ideas on the future of their community.
The RFP identifies the study’s boundaries as Highway 99 to the east, Carpenter Road to the west, Maze Boulevard to the north and the Tuolumne River to the south. But Wall said the boundaries may be refined as the city works with the consultant on the project’s scope.
Some of west Modesto is unincorporated and in Stanislaus County’s jurisdiction. Wall said the city would work with the county on the study.
This planning effort comes as the city undertakes a comprehensive update to its general plan, including updating its housing element and creating a citywide housing plan. He said the west Modesto study complements these efforts and will provide a more detailed look at that community.
