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Red Tape Snares Animal Shelter 1 Year After Vote

By Matthew Artz
Tuesday November 25, 2003

Ask anyone on City Council about passing a tax hike in Berkeley these days and they’ll say it’s no easy task. Last year only one cause out of four won the hearts and votes of two-thirds of Berkeley’s increasingly stingy voters: a new animal shelter. 

A year later, with the $6.4 million bond languishing in the bank and with no agreeable future home in the offering, shelter supporters and city officials say mustering the votes was the easy part. 

“We’re pretty much stuck,” said Jim Hynes, the staffer from the city manager’s office who is coordinating the land search. 

Hynes has offered to consider purchasing available parcels at University Avenue and Third Street near the railroad; Ashby Avenue and Ninth Street, adjacent to Urban Ore; and Carleton and Eighth streets, across from the Bayer campus—but shelter supporters have rejected them, arguing that these locations, like its current home, secluded at Addison and Second streets, would put the shelter out of sight and out of mind. 

“I don’t see the point of perpetuating the problem by building a new shelter where nobody knows where it is,” said Jill Posner, chair of the City Council Subcommittee on the New Animal Shelter. 

“Visibility equals use. Every time a shelter is hidden away it means more euthanasia, fewer volunteers and less connection to the community.” 

Posner wants a chunk of one of the city’s most sought after pieces of realty—a two-acre site at Sixth and Gilman streets purchased three years ago by the school district as a future school bus yard, but which some in the city view as prime retail space close to the Target slated to rise a few blocks west on the Albany side of Gilman. 

Shelter supporters tried to engineer a buy-and-swap of the three-acre Carleton Street property for the Gilman site, both valued at approximately $3 million, but that fell through when Deputy City Attorney Zach Cowen opined that, by law, the bond money had to be spent on land for the future shelter, not for an eventual swap. 

That meant that the city would have to purchase and trade of the privately owned Carleton Street property and simultaneously trade it to the school district—a nearly Herculean task considering that a private developer would be needed to build on the part of the Gilman land not used by the shelter.  

Posner, though, thinks the deal could have been consummated had Berkeley politicians shown more support. “The site is going to become available,” she said. “The question is will the politicians have the guts to say this is the right place to put a shelter and we’re going to make it happen?” 

Rumors have swirled around city hall that Mayor Tom Bates wants to transform the frontage along Gilman Street west of San Pablo into a shopping district to snag Target shoppers, and neither an animal shelter nor a bus storage yard could generate the potential revenues of retail shops. 

Bates, however, said in an interview with the Daily Planet Friday that his only commercial designs on Gilman were at the Sixth Street corner, and that an animal shelter occupying the back acre off the street front “would be great”.  

“There’s not a lot of commercial opportunities on Gilman,” Bates said. “But if you have a vacant lot, I’d like to explore the revenue opportunities.” 

School Board member John Selawsky said the board was “absolutely open to a property exchange,” but added a deal must come quickly. “We can’t sit on this for another three years,” he said, noting that the district pays roughly $450,000 to rent space for its buses and other vehicles—and after completing other construction projects, it’s ready to proceed with the bus depot. 

The city can use its control of the permit process to make development difficult for the school district, but Bates said that if a swap isn’t engineered by February, “it would be unfair not to let the district go ahead with the property.” 

Further complicating any swap, the site is zoned for Multi Use Light Industrial (MULI), which allows an animal shelter but precludes retail shops. 

A proposal by David Stoloff, Bates’ appointee to the planning commission, to consider rezoning the street caused an uproar and was pulled, with Bates’ backing, before the Planning Commission met two weeks ago.  

“Gilman should absolutely stay MULI,” said Planning Commission Chair Zelda Bronstein. “If we want to maintain art space, we have to maintain the MULI district.” 

Meanwhile, as the search for a new animal shelter continues, Hynes warned that the longer the delay the less the bond would be worth if there is any inflation. 

Posner, though, insisted she would continue hold out for the right site. “Every project needs standards, otherwise we get mediocrity,” she said. “My role is to carry this to the gold standard.”