The Concord City Council has directed city staff to release a formal request for qualifications (RFQ) from developers seeking to develop the former Concord Naval Weapons Station.

The council during a meeting last week asked for a few revisions to the proposed request.

The RFQ must require an executed project labor agreement with Contra Costa County’s Construction and Building Trades union and be willing to make it available to the public when submitted in July.

They also added a question about a developer’s familiarity with the process of cleaning up contamination. The council also asked respondents to provide comments regarding terms and community benefits on the previous draft term sheet the city gave the last proposed master developer, Seeno Homes-owned Concord First Partners.

Concord has failed in two previous attempts to reach an agreement with a master developer for the former weapons station, most recently in January.

The council voted 3-2 in January to reject that term sheet with Concord First Partners to tackle one of the largest redevelopment projects in Bay Area history.

The city rejected the Seeno deal after being widely criticized by the community. Among the points of contention were Concord First’s requests to amend the agreement to give them early property rights and reimbursement of costs should the deal fall through.

It was the city’s second failed attempt to come to a final agreement with a chosen master developer. The city’s deal with Lennar Five Point collapsed in March 2020 when Lennar couldn’t reach agreements with local labor unions, which was one of the city’s conditions.

Development of the 5,046-acre site on the city’s northeast side has been the city’s biggest issue since the Navy abandoned it in 1999.

The East Bay Regional Park District is developing 2,540 of those acres into Thurgood Marshall Regional Park – Home of the Port Chicago 50, commemorating the nearby Port Chicago tragedy during World War II.

The city wants to develop the other 2,300 acres into 13,000 units of housing and millions of square feet of commercial space.