Features

Berkeley’s City Hall and Corporation Yard were once located at Sacramento and University avenues. City Hall was moved to an appropriate, prominent location in the heart of the city. The Corporation Yard moved to an established residential neighborhood at Allston, Acton and Bancroft. Houses were moved to accommodate the yard.  

The city’s first architect, Walter Ratcliff, designed the main L-shaped building in 1913. Grassy fields and brick walls separated the new home for horses and wagons from neighboring homes.  

The grassy fields are long gone; the horses replaced by big diesel trucks pulling trailers. The Corporation Yard is in an R-2 Residential Zone, and constitutes the largest non-conforming use in the city. It generates unbelievable noise, dust, fumes and traffic.  

Public Works wants to demolish the “L” of the Ratcliff Building and install three portable buildings and 15 more storage containers (each 40 feet by 8 feet). They didn’t bother presenting this plan to the neighbors, but sent it directly to the Zoning Board, which will consider it on Thursday, June 26.  

Although neighbors understand and fully support the need to move city employees out of the un-reinforced masonry Ratcliff building, we believe the proposed project will create even more noise, pollution and traffic in our already greatly overburdened neighborhood.  

We disagree with the Negative Declaration and believe an Environmental Impact Report is necessary, including considering the cumulative impact of the school district plan to move offices, maintenance and vehicles within two blocks of the yard.  

The proposed modular buildings are close to homes, and will put congregations of people where sound will disturb neighbors. This project wastes valuable tax dollars on temporary buildings, temporary utility lines and the uncalculated costs of employee inefficiency due to working in an overcrowded facility.  

The proposal states surplus vehicles now stored at the yard will be sold. The history of the yard shows that those vehicles will be quickly replaced by an unending stream of damaged or over-age vehicles, kept for spare parts or awaiting sale.  

Neighbors are understandably wary after their 1987 experience. The city proposed to demolish part of one building, and replace it elsewhere. As mitigation, they would build a sound wall and expand off-street employee parking. Neighbors were shocked when a new 24-hour gas station appeared almost outside their living rooms, something never mentioned at the public hearings. It took nearly 10 years of protests to get the sound wall; the rest of the mitigation was never done. Instead, the city added 21 ugly storage containers in violation of their Use Permit.  

According to the 1987 master plan for the Corporation Yard:  

• When improvements occur they do so in a piecemeal fashion. 

• The 4.5-acre site is too small to accommodate all of the present operations.  

• Site location is incompatible with residential use.  

• General building layout is awkward, cramped and not designed for the functions of the Corporation Yard.  

• Facilities for divisions are scattered throughout the yard with no apparent organization.  

• Insufficient amount of off-street employee parking (at least 85 employee cars park on the street). 

• Equipment vehicles generate excessive noise pollution during day and night time hours. Volume of traffic to and from yard increases potential safety hazards and air pollution in the neighborhood.  

• The overall yard productivity suffers when work space is inadequate for the efficient performance of job activities, resulting in higher operational cost to the city.  

The Public Works and Parks departments need to look at the logic of keeping all of the current activities at the yard. Placing the Parks Department or Streets Division near the transfer station would make good sense, since their vehicles visit the transfer station nearly daily. There is city and private land in the industrial section of Berkeley that could easily accommodate one or more divisions on a temporary or permanent basis.  

In January 2003, Public Works claimed a new 6-acre Corporation Yard would cost $16 million, but days later, with no factual basis for either figure, claimed $25 million dollars. This was the foundation of their argument to City Council to allow demolition of the “L” of the historic Ratcliff Building. Public Works denigrated the “L” as “The Shed.” It is not a shed, but an integral part of the original building, which the Landmarks Commission considered worthy of landmark status.  

Over the past 30 years Public Works has not dealt in good faith with its neighbors. Their promises are hollow and forgotten quickly. They make little effort to reduce trips, obey traffic laws, limit noise and air pollution. They have yet to create an emergency evacuation plan for the neighborhood.  

The Zoning Board should consider that if they approve the proposed demolition and modular buildings, they are actually approving future construction of five permanent, new buildings at the Corporation Yard to replace existing buildings. The Zoning Board should not support this bad neighbor.  

This commentary piece was submitted by the Corporation Yard Neighbors, an informal group of area residents, who did not want their individual names published.