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Berkeley held its second public workshop on the downtown plan Saturday, a gathering as notable for heated tempers as for innovative visions.  

The session was the 38th gathering of the Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee (DAPAC), the citizen panel charged with drawing up the rudiments of a new plan for the city center. 

DAPAC members aren’t drafting the final plan—that will be the work of city staff, the Planning Commission and the City Council—but they are drafting the policy statements city officials say will constitute the basis of the plan. 

With their mandate set to expire Nov. 30, DAPAC members are pushing hard to finish the work they started with their first meeting on Nov. 21, 2005. 

Gathered in the Berkeley High School Library, committee members, city planning staff and members of the public gathered around themed tables, each devoted to a central element of the plan. 

City Planning and Develop-ment Director Dan Marks opened the meeting, citing the committee’s “sprint to the finish line” as their two-year mandate nears its end. 

While the committee will focus on policy, rather than specifics or the city zoning ordinance amendments needed to implement any changes mandated by the final draft, their efforts will still be enough to initiate the launch of an Environmental Impact Report, which will be drafted while planning commissioners, staff and the City Council hammer out the final plan, Marks said. 

Councilmembers must adopt the final plan by May 2009, or the city risks losing some of the funds U.C. Berkeley promised to pay for its creation after the public outcry over the settlement of the city of Berkeley’s suit against the university, which mandated a new plan. 

UC Berkeley campus planner Emily Mathinsen, Assistant Vice Chancellor for Physical and Environmental Planning, praised the committee’s effort, declaring that the results so far showed more agreement than disagreement with the university’s plans to add 800,000 square feet of new off-campus construction and 1,000 parking places in the heart of the city’s central business district. 

Then committee members rose one at a time to report on specific areas of the plan’s focus, starting with Juliet Lamont’s report on the environmental components, Patti Dacey on historic buildings, Jenny Wenk and Linda Schacht on economic development, Victoria Eisen on transportation issues, Jesse Arreguin and Winston Burton on housing and social services and Dorothy Walker on city interests in university developments on specific sites. 

Matt Taecker, the planner hired by the city with university funds to help draft the plan, discussed land use policies and streets and open spaces. 

After the initial presentation, audience member Ena Aguirre challenged the format: “The agenda should have been set up differently so that we didn’t have to sit here for an hour and a half listening to you guys. We should have been given a chance to participate.” 

Committee members, planning staffers and members of the public then gathered around their choice of a paired rank of tables, each titled with one of the themes addressed in the earlier presentations, for a short discussion period followed by a report on issues raised by the staff members assigned to each table. 

Then came the public comments. 

Heated tempers 

Berkeley folks who turned up for Saturday’s downtown planning workshop had lots to say but little time to say it. 

And what they said, at least in the 60 seconds they were allowed in the public comments session, was sometimes testy—so much so that DAPAC Chair Will Travis lost his cool, yelling at one speaker and offering a “thank you for that lousy vote of confidence” to another. 

Travis, whose day job is as executive director of the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission, has occasionally aimed sharply barbed comments at DAPAC members, but it was Doug Buckwald who finally managed to evoke a shouted “Doug, sit down!” 

Buckwald’s critique of AC Transit’s Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) and its proposed route through downtown—a centerpiece of DAPAC’s transportation planning—extended beyond the allotted 60 seconds and a more polite Travis request to end his remarks. 

At that point a visibly reddened Travis yelled, immediately drawing a rebuke from a man in the audience who called out, “Sir, this is inappropriate.” 

Buckwald spoke again, thanks to Gianna Ranuzzi’s surrender of her 60 seconds. When Buckwald contended that his remarks to earlier DAPAC meetings were cut short, as were “other members of the public not connected to developers,” Travis called him a “fifth-grader,” earning yet another rebuke, this one from Buckwald. 

“I apologize,” said Travis. “I was trying to compliment you because I find fifth-graders are usually quite bright.” 

“I think the committee needs to show respect for the public,” said Anita Thompson moments later, drawing applause from many in the audience and a few of the committee members. “I’d be very careful of what you say.” 

Moments later and after praising committee members and staff for their work, DAPAC member Dacey said she agreed that the committee should be hearing more from the public, and urged anyone with questions to submit them by email to Taecker and others (his email address is MTaecker@ci.berkeley.ca.us). 

“That shows there’s at least one person on DAPAC who isn’t rude,” Travis said. “Actually, there are quite a few.” 

While some of the comments dealt with BRT and density, two ongoing sources of contention, others, like those of Daniel Caraco, focused on fresh issues. 

After noting that state law requires all hospitals to meet strict seismic safety standards by 2014, Caraco said neither of Berkeley’s two major medical facilities—Alta Bates Summit Medical Center and the affiliated Herrick Hospital—conform to the requirements. 

“Herrick will probably close in five years,” he said. “What is being done to make sure the city has an acute care facility for the next 20 years?” Faulting the city for allowing Summit Alta Bates to locate in a residential neighborhood, Caraco said a hospital downtown would better suit the city’s needs. 

Elyce Judith added a more upbeat note, reporting that EcoCity Builders had just received the $150,000 in donations needed to retain internationally acclaimed landscape architect Walter Hood to prepare a plan for Strawberry Creek Plaza, the proposed pedestrian-friendly space that would be created by closing the block of Center Street between Oxford Street and Shattuck Avenue. 

While the plan wouldn’t be an official city document—planning staff referred to it as an “advocacy plan” during the last Planning Commission meeting—the addition of a famous name could help pave the way for a plaza with either a daylighted Strawberry Creek or another “water feature” as has been advocated by environmental groups and members of the city’s own UC Hotel Task Force. 

For DAPAC members, it’s back to work, starting with their next meeting Wednesday night, a joint session with the Landmarks Preservation Commission.