The Planning Board is holding a workshop at 7 p.m., next Monday, Dec. 14, in the City Council Chambers to review plans for a portion of Site A. The workshop will present the architectural design and waterfront street plans for an essential element of the site at Alameda Point known as Block 11. The block fronts onto Seaplane Lagoon and a planned waterfront park near the Naval Air Museum and Wrightspeed. “Block 11 is located at the very heart of the Site A Development Plan and Alameda Point Waterfront Town Center planning area,” the city stated in a staff report. 
At a workshop held in October, the Planning Board discussed the initial design concepts for the first three blocks at Alameda Point Site A, including Block 11. Since then the Planning Board’s Site A subcommittee has been meeting to review the evolving plans for Block 11 and the adjacent streets. Now the subcommittee and city staff wish to elicit comments from their colleagues on the Planning Board itself and the community at large. 
They are interested to hear about the most current architectural design for the building proposed for Block 11 and the adjacent streets, which will include a newly reconfigured Pan Am Way and a “shared plaza,’ which will link Block 11 with the park and the adjacent lagoon.  
City staff and the design team will use the comments shared at next Monday’s meeting and return next month with a final proposal and all the necessary recommendations and conditions of approval.
The proposed building — the first major new building at Alameda Point since the Navy left in 1997— will house ground-floor retail with enough space to accommodate 60 shops. The seven-story structure will have 221 housing units: 60 one-bedroom, one-bath, 750-square-foot units; 114 two-bedroom, two-bath, 1,067-square-foot units; six two-bedroom, two bath, 1,474-square-foot units; and 41 three-bedroom, three-bath, 1,697-square-foot units. There will be spaces to park 296 vehicles. 
According to the report the plan provides “a strong pedestrian-oriented, bicycle friendly, street front between the building and the park Block 11 fronts onto Alameda Point’s Historic District. The architects designed the new building to offer a transition between the Historic District and the non-historic portions of Alameda Point and Site A. 
“The Block 11 architectural design shares architectural elements, materials and colors that reflect and respect, without replicating, the Art Modern architectural style of the most important contributing buildings in the Historic District,” the report states. “Examples of these elements include the strong horizontal lines that define the architectural design of the (new) building.”