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With a Target store moving in next door, a resort hotel envisioned a few blocks further north and transbay ferry service beckoning at its shore, Gilman Street—part of Berkeley’s industrial core—is emerging as ground zero in the city’s planning wars. 

“There are turf battles everywhere,” said Linda Perry, a supporter of putting a ferry terminal near the mouth of Gilman and an organizer of a Saturday workshop, sponsored by Berkeley Design Advocates on the future of Gilman from San Pablo Avenue to the waterfront. 

The chief tug-of-war pits development advocates who see Gilman as a burgeoning commercial and residential center against manufacturers, who fear that new development would raise property values and force them out of Berkeley. The current West Berkeley Plan favors industry, but the BDA argues that by precluding retail and housing development, the plan depresses property values and potentially costs the city valuable sales tax money, which Albany is positioned to capture.  

“Gilman is an area with a lot of potential for the city,” said JWC Design President, Jay Claiborne. He added that the confluence of development in Albany and the potential for a ferry terminal spurred him and others at Berkeley Design Advocates—a trade group of local architects, planners and urban designers—to take a fresh look at developing Gilman. “Some areas are really deteriorating,” he said. “There are a lot of empty sites that don’t look viable for manufacturing activities.” 

The city’s Office of Economic Development didn’t send a representative to the meeting nor did it not return phone calls requesting information on vacancy rates or the business climate in West Berkeley. 

Saturday’s workshop on Gilman was the BDA’s third over the past several months. Claiborne said that “after hearing from numerous sources that the street had limited retail opportunities,” the BDA has focused more on housing to create a base for future retail development in the area.  

The concept presented Saturday calls for putting housing alongside quiet industries like graphic designers between Sixth Street and San Pablo Avenue, where residents would have easy access to mass transit. The section of Gilman west of Sixth Street would be reserved for industries with loud machinery or frequent truck pickups that wouldn’t fit in a residential neighborhood. 

To make their concepts a reality, the BDA wants to revisit the 11-year-old West Berkeley Plan, up for review in 2005. Their suggestions, said Planning Director Dan Marks, would essentially change the focus of the plan along Gilman, from Harrison Street to Camelia Street, from preserving manufacturing jobs to providing housing. He added that city staff had no opinion on such a change, which would ultimately be determined by the City Council. 

Though the brainstorming session, known as a Charrette, had no binding authority, Claiborne said he hoped to bring the group’s ideas before the city’s Planning Commission and work with those involved in formulating the current West Berkeley plan. 

Some planning commissioners in attendance Saturday were hostile to tinkering with the plan that took years to hammer out. John Curl argued that West Berkeley was not blighted and that the meeting was solely motivated by “developers wanting to develop something.” Planning Commission Chair Zelda Bronstein warned that a change would be a “body blow” to the West Berkeley Plan. 

Manufacturers said that inconsistent enforcement of zoning regulations has allowed retailers onto Gilman and sent rents spiraling. Two years ago Urban Ore, an industrial re-use business, lost its lease at Gilman and Sixth streets when the property owner demanded a rent hike from $7,500 to $18,000.  

That property, now owned by the Berkeley Unified School District, is pivotal to the debate over Gilman. Mayor Tom Bates told the Planet in November that he was working to find a different home for the school district, because the Sixth Street property was located on one of Gilman’s few budding commercial centers. 

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

The district, however, failed to close a deal on a property at Eighth and Carleton streets and with rental expenses for their current bus lots totaling $450,000, it plans to push ahead with the Gilman project, said Lew Jones, the district’s director of facilities and maintenance.  

Concepts offered by DBA designers sparked heated debate among the roughly 30 people in attendance. 

Responding to Landscape Architect Karen Burkes’ vision of a ferry terminal, hotel and light rail system on the Gilman waterfront, the Sierra Club’s Norman LaForce minced few words. “We will sink any ferry boat that tries to get into Gilman.”  

Environmentalists want to locate the future ferry terminal—approved in a ballot measure last week, at a yet-to-be-determined site in Berkeley or Albany—at the Berkeley Marina, away from the Eastshore State Park which they worked decades to secure. They are currently fighting a hotel and entertainment center, planned by the Magna Entertainment Corporation, set to rise just east of the park and blocks from Gilman at Golden Gate Fields racetrack. 

Few West Berkeley residents attended the meeting, but most who were present favored a modest amount of new development. “Right now all we have are vacant lots, abandoned buildings and graffiti. How is that better than development?” said Alvin Jackson and Randal DeLuchi, who moved into the neighborhood eight years ago. “It’s gentrifying and everyone loves it. This plan would be our dream,” they said. 

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