Many people, especially parents of children in the baseball program at Berkeley High School, were disappointed by the City Council’s recent vote not to consider a proposal to close Derby Street in order to build a hard ball field at Derby and Martin Luther King Jr. Way. This was a difficult vote for me because I am a strong supporter of programs for our young people. Initially, I favored the baseball field and felt that closing the street to build one was reasonable. Then I came to realize it was not that simple. As I considered the neighborhood around Derby at MLK, I realized it had always seemed to lack a sense of place. Large institutional uses surround the site, Iceland and a UC administration building to the east, East Campus and a large childcare program on the site itself, and a major thoroughfare, MLK, to the west. The neighborhood and the many families would not be well-served by a large, fenced field that will tend to further erode its sense of cohesion. When I visualized closing Derby and fencing off the vacant land, almost two whole blocks, for a baseball field, I could not agree. The extensive fencing loomed like a barrier, one that would further cut into the residential soul of this neighborhood.
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