Concord enters exclusive negotiation to develop former naval weapons station

CONCORD, Calif. - The Concord City Council has unanimously selected Brookfield Properties as master developer for the former Concord Naval Weapons Station project.

Development of the site has been the city's biggest issue since the Navy abandoned it in 1999. The city wants to develop the available 2,300 acres into 13,000 units of housing and millions of square feet of commercial space.

About half of the total site will become a new park in the East Bay Regional Park District named Thurgood Marshall Regional Park - Home of the Port Chicago 50.

Brookfield Properties was interviewed in a special meeting Saturday morning, where the company laid out its plan to develop the acreage in the Base Reuse Project.

Originally, the Council was going to interview two companies - Brookfield and Housing America Partners, but Housing America withdrew its application in the middle of this month.

The city is requiring the developer to have an executed project labor agreement with Contra Costa County's Construction and Building Trades Council and be willing to make it available to the public.

This was the third time the council tried to hire a master developer for the 5,046-acre site.

The city's deal with Lennar FivePoint collapsed in March 2020 when Lennar couldn't reach agreements with local labor unions, which was one of the city's conditions.

The city's agreement with Seeno-owned Concord First Partners was scuttled this January when the City Council rejected CFP's term sheet after community members widely criticized CFP's requests to amend the agreement, giving them early property rights and reimbursement of costs should the deal fall through.

According to the city, the next steps for the project include outlining the terms of an exclusive negotiating agreement (ENA), drafting a specific plan, and a term sheet, which is a document that established procedures and standards for the negotiation of the development agreement.