Tom Staub? City of Alameda's City Manger in trouble on SunCal Alameda Point

Victim of a can't do city

This blogger returns from Comic Con to see that Alameda's a big mess. Forget Tom Staub, or Tony Hayward, or Fugazi, or cats that look like Hitler, or any questionable content, the Internet World should pay attention to how Alameda messed up.

The City of Alameda’s rejection of developer SunCal’s Alameda Point redevelopment plan and involvement is an example of the City’s awful political and staff leadership and it will cost the taxpayers millions of dollars and lost jobs over the coming years.

Perhaps just as damaging, unless something with SunCal can be salvaged, my sources say the City’s reputation has been irreparably damaged with Wall Street and the investment community and, now, any major developer would be foolish to even entertain driving through the Alameda Tube.

(Hey investment community, come to Oakland.)

That's too bad for a project, the redevelopment of what was the Alameda Naval Air Station and what we call Alameda Point, which was closed in what was called the "Base Realignment and Closure Act" of 1992.

I was on the first Alameda Base Reuse Committee, and the time table we had called for the project to be underway by now. But, thanks to Ann Marie Gallant, that's not the case.

Alameda’s interim city manager, Ann Marie Gallant is the problem. Period. She's become the Tony Hayward of the investment community in my view, and someone should be royally pissed off; I am. Ann Marie Gallant has been single-handedly behind the collapse of the SunCal project from the view of this space.

Gallant's recent stop-the-development-at-all-costs efforts in which sources say she secretly started reading the emails and correspondence of a well-regarded Councilwoman, Lena Tam, and then hired a private attorney to file claims against Tam, taking her out of the vote for the Alameda Point development and casting aspersions on Tam’s supporters.

While Alamedan’s don’t know the full story about Ann Marie Gallant, it will soon come out in this space, as both Tam’s top attorney John Keker and, separately, SunCal are looking at legal action against Gallant and the City of Alameda.

One of the big issues is the money SunCal spent in paying the City of Alameda's staff during the negotiating period and what the staff did and did not do during that time. To say that Gallant and the City of Alameda are in big trouble is an understatement.

Tom Staub? Forget it.

Stay tuned.