Features

Battle Over West Berkeley Bowl Nears Finale By RICHARD BRENNEMAN

Friday February 11, 2005

The battle of the Berkeley Bowl—centered on the proposed cloning of the city’s most popular grocery store—heads to yet another round before the city Planning Commission. 

Commissioners voted Wednesday night to add a final Feb. 23 public comment period to cap off a series of combined public workshops and hearings to determine if and how the Berkeley Bowl expands to a second location in West Berkeley. 

Owner Glen Yasuda is seeking amendments to city zoning codes and the West Berkeley Plan to allow him to build a new, larger store and warehouse at Ninth Street and Heinz Avenue. 

Before he can build, Yasuda needs official approval to breach existing regulations and policies that would keep the land zoned for manufacturing and light industrial use. 

While all sides generally agree that a supermarket is needed in West Berkeley, where residents now must leave the area to buy groceries, they divide into four main camps. 

The first offers basically unqualified support for the expansion; the second is willing to accept the proposed site but wants more action to address what they feel will be serious traffic problems; and the third says no to the location altogether and asks for no reduction in manufacturing/industrial property, while the fourth is willing to accept the site but not rezoning and plan amendments. 

But many nearby business owners and others fear that traffic generated by the larger, freeway-close Bowl would cause serious delays on thoroughfares, increase the demand for already scarce parking spaces and imperil the children who attend the Ecole Bilingue (often called the French School), which is located at Ninth and Heinz catercorner from the proposed site. 

A new face at the Wednesday’s workshop was Chris Barlow, a co-owner of much of the land immediately adjacent to the site. 

Though city codes mandate notifications to nearby property owners and residents, Barlow said he was unaware of the expansion plans until he read about them in the Daily Planet. 

“This is the first meeting we’ve been noticed of as a major stakeholder,” Barlow said, “which I find very unfortunate.” 

While he supports the Bowl’s move, he said he has serious concerns about increased traffic which could block access to his own property, which includes the Scharffen Berger Chocolate Maker building at 914 Heinz Ave. 

Eugenia Thomson, a traffic engineer hired by Urban Ore, said that traffic estimates reached by the Berkeley Bowl’s consultant underestimated the probable traffic flow by not accounting for the store’s power to draw a clientele from across the East Bay and beyond. 

Traffic to and from the store could total half again as much as the store’s consultants predicted, she said. 

A collection of other major property owners offered strong support for Yasuda’s plans, while former Planning Commissioner Zelda Bronstein, accompanied by attorney Stuart Flashman, had challenged the city’s handling of the proposal. 

John Curl, a West Berkeley cabinetmaker who is a strong supporter of maintaining West Berkeley as a district for light industry, manufacturing and artists, urged the commission to hand the proposal over to the Zoning Adjustments Board (ZAB). 

ZAB could then issue a conditional use permit that tightly restricts the use of the site and would revert to the current zoning if a new owner bought the site and abandoned or attempted to alter the permitted use. 

Curl also pointed out that city staff had failed to note that an actively used 8,500-square-foot warehouse on the site can’t be demolished unless the owner provides for a similar use elsewhere, which city Planning Director Dan Marks admitted might pose a problem. 

Marks said his staff will prepare a report examining the comments and documents presented during the hearings and making policy recommendations in time for the Feb. 23 meeting. Whatever action the commission takes, the proposal will then head to ZAB for more hearings, fine tuning and final action—barring an appeal, a near-inevitability in controversial land use matters in Berkeley of late. 

 

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