wrote that the particular legal challenges facing the developer in this case were emblematic of how CEQA might be used to forestall affordable housing in California.
“Six months ago, the trial court determined the appellant’s CEQA appeal to be ‘almost utterly without merit,’ yet this litigation has already put the project’s financing, and potentially its entire viability, at risk,” Bonta wrote, adding that “the mere filing of an appeal in a CEQA case must not be permitted to thwart the construction of necessary affordable housing.”
Eden and the city of Livermore officially closed escrow on the downtown site in September, according to the developer’s website. But Osgood said Thursday that “every day of delay” brings with it increasing risk that the funding stack assembled by Eden to support the project’s construction will be rendered insufficient by the quick pace of construction cost increases.
The CEQA suit against the project is slated to go before an appeals court before the end of this year, she told me, adding that the timeline for the project’s completion beyond then was too speculative to forecast. If the appeal is dismissed, Eden will have to reapply for the state funding it lost because of the litigation — a lengthy and competitive process that can sometimes take affordable developers multiple award cycles to complete.