Features

The Daily Planet received a copy of this letter read to the City Council at a Nov. 6 Public Hearing on the General Plan: 

I am speaking tonight in favor of the height limit provisions, incorporated in the Initiative Ordinance presented to the City Council last week. 

Firstly, it urges a more stringent review process for development on hill sites. 

Secondly, it modifies projects that totally disregard the existing context or scale in cohesive neighborhoods in our built- up city. 

Thirdly, it reduces heights where a state density bonus would exceed the standard for height, approved in the area plans, by allowing additional floors. In addition, it would give greater protection to abutting residences for light and air circulation, and would slow parking and traffic overflow problems generated by commercial disticts. 

A great many zoning districts in the Height Limit Ordinance were left unchanged because up to the present, they have been respected and enjoyed for their human scale. For one example, the Neighborhood Commercial areas of College and Solano Avenues. (Even these areas are targeted for intense development by the Eco-City promoters.)  

Other zoning districts on commercial traffic corridors have many building sites that have been held off the real estate market for years, awaiting the most lucrative time for development. That moment may well have been missed given the current economic downturn. In addition, new statistics show more people are leaving California each month than are entering, suggesting that the population increases projected by ABAG are exaggerated and will benefit only their collaborators. However, the usefulness of these projections becomes quickly apparent when “healthy” corporations often suddenly dismiss thousands of devoted workers. Even Berkeley of all places, now has a sizeable inventory of vacant rental units. Our alternative proposal on page one, suggests that civic attention should be attending to numerous infrastructure deficiencies, such as power and water sources and to improved public transit service. 

A great percentage of Berkeley’s housing stock is appropriately scaled for a city perched on a known seismic fault. One of the goals of the Height Limit Initiative, therefore, is to redirect the General Plan Draft by encouraging the development of alternative plans in which existing height limits are selectively reduced. High rise buildings are not needed to improve the city’s prestige. 

Martha Nicoloff 

Berkeley