As part of the ongoing effort to reinvigorate development in Dublin, the City Council voted unanimously this past Tuesday to reduce some of the impact fees that developers pay to build secondary units. This recent vote dovetails with the Council’s decision earlier this month to reduce east Dublin traffic impact fees.

Secondary units include “granny flats” and casitas that are up to 1,000 sq. ft. in size. Projects like Positano have built secondary units to both meet the demands of new home buyers in Dublin and to help satisfy a portion of their inclusionary (affordable) housing requirements.

Here are the impact fees that have been reduced:

• Public Facility Fee - used to build facilities like parks, community buildings, recreation complexes, and community pools. The new rates will be $14,851/unit for east Dublin, $14,547/unit for Schaefer Ranch, and $10,509 for secondary units in all other areas of Dublin.
• Fire Facilities Fee – used to construct fire stations and purchase fire station equipment. The new fee will be $544/unit.
• Downtown Traffic Impact Fee – used to build roadways and other improvements required to accommodate additional traffic in the Dublin Downtown area caused by new development. The new fee will be $1,104/unit.

Tuesday night’s impact fee reductions were necessitated by the fact that developers had been paying the single-family residential impact fees twice – first for the main home and then again for the secondary unit. Given that secondary units are typically no more than 500-600 sq. ft. and never larger than 1,000 sq. ft., the impact fees for secondary units were revised to be the same as those paid for comparable multi-family homes (e.g., apartments and condos).

The Positano and Schaeffer Ranch projects will see a tremendous benefit from this impact fee reduction on the casitas and “granny flats” that they build in upcoming phases. This should allow the developers to pass the savings on to new home buyers and also encourage the construction of more new homes in Dublin – ultimately resulting in additional property tax, sales tax, and impact fee revenues to provide residents with the services and facilities that help make Dublin a great community.