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In the last decade, Oceanview has transformed from an industrial zone and working class residential area to a lucrative shopping district attracting crowds from as far away as Walnut Creek and Silicon Valley. Thursday night’s meeting of the West Berkeley Project Area Commission brought out all the frustrations of an area under dramatic transition, which one commissioner called, “vignettes of class warfare.” 

At the center of the controversy is a proposed weekend street market to be located between Hearst and University avenues on Fifth Street. 

“The market is intended to support low-income residents and vendors who are not benefiting from the Fourth Street economic boom,” says Jim Masters, a project consultant for the West Berkeley Development Corporation. Adds Besty Morris, also on the WBDC, “We’re trying to serve low and moderate income residents of West Berkeley who cannot access the wealth of West Berkeley. This market will provide affordable organic goods, give area artists who aren’t part of the established Berkeley scene a place to sell their work.”  

Working with Kevin Crane, a smartly dressed Caucasian business man from Miami, the corporation wants to open a market which Crane said would be “re-enforcing the cultural and ethnic aspects of this area” similar to one Crane said he’d opened in Little Haiti, Miami. 

But opposition to the market comes from many sources. Everyone at the meeting said that, while they enjoy markets, and like the idea of fresh produce, the market will exacerbate already existing parking problems. Customers coming to Fourth Street businesses have already overrun existing parking facilities. While business owners want the city to subsidize a parking solution, residents don’t want their streets lined with parking meters.  

Other concerns about the proposed market ranged from car and noise pollution to security and vandalism problems. 

David Larson, a local resident and vice president of marketing for a local firm said: “With a street market here, the litter problem from the itinerant population will only get worse.” 

Others felt that it is these low income residents who have been forgotten as the area charges ahead with redevelopment, and that the debates over how to spend the $2 million in redevelopment money sound like “little vignettes of class warfare.” 

“Everybody is questioning the little people, but who’s questioning the yuppies that come from Walnut Creek? Who’s questioning cars? Studies show that if you build a bigger parking lot, then more cars will come. We need to think about bigger issues than just more parking,” said Commissioner Rhiannon. 

“If there’s so much opposition, they can hold the fair in front of my little shack,” she added. 

While much of the resident opposition did arise from a “not in my backyard” perspective, other issues which might hold up plans for the market center around weekend access to local businesses and parking lots. The managers of Spenger’s Fish Grotto need to grant permission for one of its access ways to the parking lot on the south side of the building to be cut off before a market could be held.  

“That’s simply not agreeable” said Dana Ellsworth, a representative of Spenger’s. “Management does not want their parking lot blocked off.” 

Scott Stone, who represented the owner of two nearby buildings said that such a market would increase his client’s fire insurance and was also worried about access, trash and vandalism. 

If such access issues cannot be resolved, it could spell the end of the proposed market.