Features

Given their penultimate chance to raise issues for the environmental impact report on the new Berkeley Bowl store planned for the corner of Ninth Street and Heinz Avenue, most speakers focused on one issue: traffic. 

The Planning Commission was the venue of the scoping session, in which concerned members of the public were allowed to raise issues they thought should be included in the official report examining potential impacts of new development and possible ways to alleviate them. 

The largest share of the 55 or so people who filled the seats at Wednesday night’s Planning Commission were parents of students in the Ecole Bilingue—also called the French School—which is located at the northeast corner of the intersection cater-corner from the store site. 

Their biggest single concern was the threat that increased traffic generated by the new market might pose to their children as they were dropped off and picked up from school. 

Sally Drach, who spoke on behalf of the other parents, said they welcomed the addition of the market as “a positive project and welcome to the neighborhood,” but said their concerns were directly related to the safety of the students and parking. 

Traffic, she said, was the foremost issue, both for students parents were delivering to and picking up from the school and for pedestrians crossing an intersection that will see heavier traffic as a result of the development.  

Drach said she and the other parents were skeptical of findings in the project’s draft environmental impact report (EIR) that indicated the new store would cause no significant increase in traffic on Ninth Street north of the school or at the Ninth and Heinz intersection. 

“We want to discourage traffic on Ninth Street” either by means of fixed barriers or moveable barriers that would reduce traffic during drop-off and pickup times. 

“Additional measures can only serve to benefit the project and reassure the community so that it will allow us all to welcome the Berkeley Bowl into our community,” she said. 

Drach also said that she expected that, despite the surface and underground lots included in the plans for the project, surface streets around the store would see an increase in parking “because they are providing only slightly more spaces than are required by law.” 

The school has limited parking, and the reduction of on street parking—plans call for elimination of 35 spaces—and the inevitable use some of the remaining spaces by store customers will make it harder for parents and school staff to find parking spots. 

Other parents expressed concerns about the impact of construction on students, while parent Janice Kim, a pediatrician and a public health officer, said she was concerned about the impact of heavier traffic near the school and emissions that could pose health risks to students. 

Lise McAdams, a resident of the low-rental artists’ lofts building at 800 Heinz Ave., said she was concerned not only with the traffic and parking impacts of a new market, but of their cumulative impacts when weighed with other major development projects currently planned for the immediate area. 

McAdams also said that colleagues at her San Francisco workplace who commuted past Berkeley were telling her that they would swing by the new market on their way home, further increasing traffic on Ashby Avenue. 

A major new laboratory/manufacturing building now planned for 740 Heinz Ave. will add to the traffic burdens, she said, “and there are rumors of an expansion of car dealerships in the area.” 

Mayor Tom Bates is seeking rezoning along the Ashby, University and Gilman avenue corridors to attract more car dealerships into the city and to prevent existing dealers from leaving in an effort to raise the city’s sales tax revenues. 

Contrary to the study done for the draft EIR, McAdams said, “an independent traffic study already concluded that traffic was at capacity” along Ashby. “Seventh Street backs up two or three blocks just so drivers with be able to turn onto Ashby,” she said. 

Ecole Bilingue attorney Dave Bowie reiterated the parking and traffic concerns. 

“They need to be studied more fully, and I think the traffic” impacts are underestimated, he said. 

Mary Lou Van De Venter, a co-founder of Urban Ore, reiterated the concern that Ashby traffic was already at capacity, comparing it to a river about to overflow its banks. Widening Ashby wasn’t an option, she said, because it would involve extensive structural demolitions. 

Two speakers specifically commented on benefits the project could bring to the poor and those without cars in a West Berkeley that lacked an opportunity to buy a wide range of fresh organic produce. 

West Berkeley resident Christine Staples said the market was needed “as a matter of public health and economic justice.” 

Natalie Studer, a registered dietician who holds a master’s in public health, presented a 2003 study she and two other researchers had prepared on the Berkeley Bowl, subtitled “How Politics, Policy, and Community Affect Food Access.” 

The document reports how West and southwest Berkeley have the city’s highest rates of low-income and minority tenants, who have the least access to fresh produce and other healthy food. 

“This is an opportunity to improve the availability of food to people in need,” she said. “It will bring affordable healthy food to West Berkeley.” 

The final scoping session was held last night (Thursday) at the Zoning Adjustments Board meeting.›