Concord Naval Depot Project Quashed, City Severs Ties With Developers

It seemed too good to be true—more than 2,500 acres of Bay Area land and plans to build nearly 16,000 new homes, finally moving toward approval after decades of on-again-off-again negotiations—and then it all fell apart in a single vote.

The $6B redevelopment of the former Concord Naval Weapons station on the Sacramento River is back off the table after the Concord City Council voted 3-2 last week to reject a term sheet and sever ties with the second master developer it had appointed to oversee the project.

According to a report in CBS News, city officials attributed the decision to send the project back to square one—a new master developer will need to be designated—resulted from a “changing political landscape” that sowed distrust between city fathers and the development team.

“Base reuse projects are very complicated,” said Guy Bjerke, Concord’s Base Reuse Director, in an interview with CBS. “There’s a lot of moving parts. And there’s also very high community expectations for what should come out of the project. And from time to time, the political landscape changes. And that’s what we experienced on Saturday.”

The City Council voted to sever ties with Concord First Partners, a Contra Costa County-based venture formed by Albert Seeno Jr., Discovery Builders President Louis Parsons and Oakland builder Phil Tagami. The group was selected in 2021 to develop the project after the first master developer fell out of contract.

Concord Naval Weapons Station was a military base established in 1942 north of the city of Concord at the shore of the Sacramento River where it widens into Suisun Bay. The base functioned as a World War II armament storage depot, supplying ships at nearby Port Chicago.

After the base was decommissioned, the East Bay Regional Park District received 2,540 acres of the Inland Area that will be developed for public use as Concord Hills Regional Park. In addition, 2,300 acres was transferred to the city of Concord, whose Concord Community Reuse Project has been overseeing a plan that has included housing, businesses, a college campus and other development.

According to a report in the San Francisco Business Times, Concord First Partners withdrew its initial proposal to build 13,000 units, telling the city six months ago that the $6B East Bay project was no longer economically feasible.

The developers then added 3,300 housing units to the mixed-use project and an adjustment to the project’s 25% affordable housing share reportedly improved the financial balance sheet for the project.

Plans for the development, which was to be built in phases over the next 40 years, encompassed more than 6M SF of commercial space as well as housing. The development needs to be is spaced out over four decades to facilitate the restoration Mount Diablo Creek.

The redevelopment of the former naval supply depot has been a top priority in Concord for the past 20 years, with several false starts, including the developer who fell out of contract in 2020—and now a second developer that the city has failed to reach terms with.