Old Castro Valley Library Saved for Veterans

Castro Valley’s old library building at 20555 Redwood Road may yet live on as a veteran’s resource center following a July 13 meeting of the Alameda County Transportation and Planning Committee.

The committee, made up of Nate Miley from District 4 and David Haubert from District 1, recommended that the supervisors reverse course and no longer pursue building housing on the one-acre site, vacant since 2009 when the current library opened.

They noted that the Castro Valley MAC (Municipal Advisory Council) had reached the same conclusion on Feb. 22 and that some 5,000 people had signed a petition to the Board of Supervisors asking to preserve the building.

“Let’s go back to what the Castro Valley community wants, not what the Board of Supervisors once wanted,” Miley said. “The Board made a decision to go in a direction the community opposed.”

Miley noted that the makeup of the Board had changed with the death of Wilma Chan and with longtime District 1 Supervisor Scott Hagerty not seeking re-election.

The county is also out of money, at the moment, for building affordable housing, according to both supervisors and Michelle Starratt, county housing director. That is because all the money from the Measure A-1 housing bond has been fully allocated to existing projects, Starratt said.

The supervisors had voted in March 2020 to tear down the current building. They called for replacing it with affordable housing specifically targeted at serving veterans, some 7,470 square feet of meeting space for veterans groups, and 40 parking spaces.

Veterans groups had opposed demolishing the old library building despite the promise of more veteran-oriented housing on the site.

The two supervisors, along with Starratt, noted that new affordable housing was being added nearby.

Building the housing would have necessitated demolishing the old building, as the site is relatively small, said Eileen Dalton, director of the county Economic and Civic Development Department.

Dalton also said the most economically feasible project, with 56 units, would have to rise to five or six stories to fit on the site. That’s taller than neighboring buildings, including apartment buildings, she said. The old library building is a single story.

“We need to move in the direction to save that building and forget all this ridiculousness about a six-story building,” Haubert said. He added, though, that the county still needed to keep building affordable housing elsewhere to comply with state requirements.