Should Shadelands stay a business park? How about building a nursery? Senior housing?

Back in the 1960s, creating a vast area of the Walnut Creek dedicated entirely to business seemed like a good idea.

Maybe companies moving in, like Safeway and Dow Chemical, would employ people living in all the new subdivisions replacing orchards in Ygnacio Valley. Publisher Dean Lesher, one of the visionaries who saw central Contra Costa County's potential as thriving center for commerce, culture and community, decided to establish the headquarters for his newspaper empire in this area off Ygnacio Valley Road, which was called Shadelands Business Park.

Fifty years after it opened, Shadelands is not the thriving  business park it was intended to be. It started to lose out companies that were relocating headquarters from San Franscisco and Oakland to the suburbs to newer business parks, such as San Ramon's Bishop Ranch, which offers easy freeway access. 

In the fourth quarter of 2010, vacancy rates Shadelands offices were as high as 20 percent. Sure, some of that has to do with the tough economy. Shadelands has 2.6 million square feet of office space. Vacancy rates in downtown Walnut Creek, are around 16 percent. In good times, those numbers should be around 10 percent, said Rick Steffens, a senior vice president with Grubb & Ellis. 

Steffens, who has been buying and selling commercial real estate in the I-680 corridor since the 1970s, was giving Walnut Creek city council members and staff some hard facts about their 240-acre business park. 

There have been some success stories, primarily in the health sector. Both Kaiser Permanente and John Muir Health, needed room to expand, have leased space in the Shadelands.

In the past few years, Oakland's Children's Hospital and Research Center has opened an outpatient surgery and specialty care facility on Shadelands Drive. Other jewels include  and the U.S. Department of Energy's Joint Genome Institute, which advances study of the genome to support clean energy development. Shadelands currently accounts for about nine percent of all jobs in the city and had the second-largest concentration of employees, behind the city’s downtown area, according to a 2004 city report.

That said, there are downsides, and city staff and council members concede that these make it unlikely that Shadelands will thrive under its original business park model.

There are inherent issues that make the Shadelands not an ideal business park," said Mayor Cindy Silva after Steffens presentation. 

Steffens said many companies are looking for what's called Class-A office space. A Class A building is one that offers prime location and access and is visually attractive expensive looking so that it can attract high-quality tenants.

Most of the office space in the Shadelands is Class B. Stylistically, many of the buildings look like office park relics of the 1970s and 1980s. Silva pointed out that some of the buildings don't have elevators to their upper floors, making then non-compliant with the American Disabilities Act. 

The primary way that the owners of Shadelands buildings have been able to keep their buildings filled is by lowering rents, Steffens said. Rents in the Shadelands average around $1.75 per square foot, whereas rents in downtown Walnut Creek range from $2.40 to $2.80 per square foot. 

Steffens, however, pointed out that companies can rent Class A office space in some of the highrises in Concord, which have freeway access, for similar rents they would pay for Class B offices in Shadelands.

Meanwhile, the Shadelands has 24 acres of prime land that could be developed, particularly at the corner of Ygnacio Valley and Oak Grove roads, which is just a vast field of grass and trees.

But in these recessionary times, not a lot of development is taking place anywhere, and not just in Walnut Creek, but up and down the I-680 corridor, Steffens said. He cautioned that when the economy starts picking up again, it's not likely that developers would be eyeing the Shakelands anymore as a place to build new Class A office space.  

Walnut Creek is among a host of East Bay cities that is hoping to become the new home of  the coveted Lawrence Berkeley second campus. The city put in a bid to house the campus in Shadelands.  But city council member Kristina Lawson said Walnut Creek winning that bid is a long shot, a view earlier echoed by Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Jay Hoyer. 

The concesus at the meeting is that Shadelands' days as primarily a business park are numbered and that it's time for the city to seriously adjusting its identity. 

A 1997 study that recommended against allowing housing in Shadelands now seems antiquated. Council members seemed to be more amenable to recommendations from a 2004 city report report that suggested allowing residential development in the Shadelands. That report said that the Shadelands, in the long term, should include a mix of business, residential and retail uses. The report also recommended transportation improvements for Ygnacio Valley Road. 

Both Lawson and Council member Kish Rajan said they was intrigued by the idea of Shadelands becoming more of a destination for medical campuses, with Lawson even envisioning a Mayo Clinic-type medical research facility there. This sort of facility, she said, would support housing or a hotel for people who would work, visit or undergo treatment.

Somewhat similarly, Silva said it could make sense to build senior housing in the Shadelands so that they would be close to medical officers that are already there. 

Other ideas floated included allowing restaurants and a fitness center to open in up Shadelands, or inviting school to open campuses--everything from preschools, which do currently operate there, to vocational schools to even a private K-12 school. 

Council member Gary Skrel said guilding new retail stores or a decent Navlet's-like nursery and garden center also would keep people who live in Walnut Creek shopping in Walnut Creek, particularly people who live in Ygnacio Valley who often find it is easier to shop in Pleasant Hill than to go into downtown. 

"I'm in substantial agreement to use considering other uses for the Shadelands," said Mayor Pro Tem Bob Simmons, adding: "For a long time the city has lacked a decent nursery.

After tossing around different ideas, council members discussed the process for encouraging Shadelands transition into something more than a business park. Would they need to launch a site specific plan, like the Locust Street/Mt. Diablo planning document that was years in the making?

Community Development Director Sandra Meyer suggested making the process less time consuming by letting developers know that the city would be open to zoning changes needed to change land zoned for office use to another purpose.