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Pedestrian tunnels, daylighted creeks, “green” construction, mass transit, a field trip to San Luis Obispo, street musicians, bus fumes and funding issues dominated the discussion last Wednesday night at the Planning Commission’s UC Hotel Task Force presentation. 

UC has proposed a massive hotel/conference center complex (with a museum complex possibly to follow) for most of the two block area between Shattuck Avenue and Oxford Street between University Avenue and Center Street. Called for in the city’s General Plan and activated at the request of the mayor and the City Council, the task force is charged with making recommendations to the council to both mitigate the project’s impact on the city and to enhance its positive effects. 

The one proposal that displayed significant support at Wednesday’s meeting was a plan to “daylight” Strawberry Creek for the one-block section of Center Street adjacent to the project. Another popular idea involved the creation of a pedestrian tunnel between the downtown BART station and the UC project. 

Task Force Chair and Commissioner Rob Wrenn suggested that the city might consider channeling some of the room occupancy taxes generated by the new hotel to finance stream daylighting and public art for the project. 

But Mayor Tom Bates, who floated between the task force meeting and a session of the Commission on the Status of Women also meeting in the North Berkeley Senior Center, dropped a wet blanket on the potentially costly proposals. 

“Let me remind you that we have a $10 million budget shortfall, and by the time all this is done, we could be facing a $20 million shortfall,” Bates said. 

Juliet Lamont of the Urban Creeks Council said “we are looking for outside funding for the creek because we can’t count on developer fees. It’s important to cobble together what you can from other sources.”  

Just how much revenue the complex might generate for city tax coffers remains an unknown quantity. The transient occupancy taxes paid by hotel guests will go directly into the city treasury—but university and state employees who stay there may be exempt from such tax. 

While many panelists said they hoped the new complex would help revitalize downtown Berkeley, task force member Bonnie Hughes said that “so far downtown Berkeley doesn’t have a good track record in attracting interesting businesses. There’s a kind of dream world we live in, in which interesting old shops driven out by high rents will come back and make things wonderful.” 

But Richard Register, president of Ecocity Builders and founder of Urban Ecology, said daylighting the creek could lead to a resurgence of the city core. He said a similar, city-funded daylighting project in San Luis Obispo had led to a resurgence of the town’s central business district. 

Register’s Ecocity Builders, in cooperation with Mayor Bates, Sarah McLaughlin, the City of San Luis Obispo, the Sierra Club, the Urban Creeks Council, and other organizations, have organized a May 20 overnight train trip to visit the San Luis Obispo creek daylighting and downtown renovation project. 

The next session of the task force, set for April 6, is the public’s last chance to offer suggestions. The meeting’s main focus, however, will be to hear recommendations from the business community. The final two sessions on April 13 and 27 will be devoted to finalizing the task force’s recommendations. 

“Members of the public can submit recommendations, but we will only be discussing those which at least one member of the task force thinks have merit,” said chair Rob Wrenn. 

While most of the proposals will be directed at Carpenter & Company, the project developer selected by the university, Wrenn said other recommendations might be submitted to BART, AC Transit, the university and other organizations.›