Features

Adeline street ‘breaks ground’

Daily Planet Staff
Tuesday October 24, 2000

There were speeches, cheers and a symbolic breaking of ground in an area of Berkeley often neglected by city officialdom – the 3200 block of Adeline Street. 

A $1 million grant and $200,000 from the city will bring bike lanes, add bulb-outs to make crossing the extra-wide street safer and more friendly, include public art and other amenities in the south Berkeley shopping center. 

No one could have been happier than Patricia Stocken, a nearby neighbor who had come out to hear the speakers. “It means bringing more people into the area. It means safety, friendliness, openness,” she said. 

Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, was present to lend her support. She shepherded the federal transportation funds through Congress. Sam Dyke, head of the Alcatraz-Adeline Merchants Association, introduced the speakers. The mayor was there, and so were people from the Metropolitan Transportation Commission and Vice Mayor Maudelle Shirek, in whose district the project sits. “This is another piece in the rising of South Berkeley,” Shirek said. “We aren’t done yet.”