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To the Editor: 

It has been reported that Mayor Dean may propose that the city subsidize an artist warehouse co-op. This announcement should not fool anyone into thinking that the mayor is a patron of Berkeley’s artists and artisans. The reality is just the opposite. 

The idea of a city-subsidized artist and artisan warehouse coop was actually proposed last year by Councilmember Linda Maio. She is the one who has taken the lead in protecting our artists and artisans through the West Berkeley Plan, which Mayor Dean has always opposed. It is only thanks to the West Berkeley Plan that our city still has a substantial sector of artists and craftspeople. I am not talking about the upscale downtown Arts District, but the real center of working artists and craftspeople, in industrial West Berkeley. 

The main threat to artists and craftspeople remaining in Berkeley is office development, which drives up studio rents to levels that artists and artisans cannot afford. Unless office expansion is controlled in West Berkeley through zoning, it will drive out working artists and artisans. This is precisely what happened in San Francisco during the dot.com boom. The only reason it hasn’t happened in Berkeley is due to the 1993 West Berkeley Plan, which protects arts and crafts uses by limiting office proliferation. 

However, the West Berkeley Plan has never been adequately implemented by the city, so Berkeley’s artists and artisans remain at risk today. Our artists recently presented a petition with over 200 signatures from the arts and crafts community supporting a temporarily moratorium on new office uses in West Berkeley’s Mixed Use/Light Industrial (MULI) district (the center of artistic/artisanal activity in the city), while the Planning Commission investigates the effects of office expansion and the state of the West Berkeley Plan. Mayor Dean was opposed. On April 29, 2002, the City Council voted 5-4 to approve these interim controls. Dean voted against. 

Dean has been a vociferous supporter of rampant office development in West Berkeley, and an antagonist to industrial retention. In a New York Times article (10/23/99) she derided the West Berkeley Plan: “‘They’re stuck in the 60s,’ Mayor Shirley Dean said of those who stand firm on the city’s manufacturing friendly policies.” 

Industrial neighborhoods have always been home to artists. If we get rid of our manufacturing district, we also get rid of our artists’ and crafts studios. Berkeley’s dynamism rests on our social, cultural and economic diversity. Industrial retention is key to maintaining that diversity, and to making our city prosper. Destroying industrial West Berkeley would greatly accelerate the gentrification spiral, which threatens to transform and sterilize our city into a mere upscale bedroom community. 

Other forward-looking metropolitan cities have come to the same realization. Portland and Chicago now protect their manufacturing bases. Boston has initiated an ambitious industrial retention program, focused on creating the conditions in which industries (and arts and crafts) can grow and prosper. 

Berkeley needs a mayor who appreciates the unique contributions of its working artists and artisans, a mayor who fights to enforce, not to undermine, the laws that help them remain in Berkeley. Shirley Dean is not that mayor. 

Berkeley needs a mayor who appreciates the unique contributions of its working artists and artisans, a mayor who fights to enforce, not to undermine, the laws that help them remain in Berkeley. Shirley Dean is not that mayor. 

- John Curl 

Berkeley