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West Berkeley, the proposed nine-story Seagate Building and the need for more performance and exhibition space dominated audience concerns Saturday when Civic Arts Commissioners called for public comments on its proposals for the Cultural Element of the city’s General Plan. 

The commission will ponder adoption of suggestions from Saturday’s session at their next regular session from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Wednesday at the North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst Ave. Once adopted by the commissioners, the plan goes to the City Council in May or June. The council is expected to adopt a final version to be incorporated into the city’s General Plan. 

Two councilmembers, Mim Hawley and Linda Maio, took it all in from the audience. 

First to comment Saturday was West Berkeley woodworker John Curl. “The city ordinances are written in a Kafkaesque way, and just getting them in line with the West Berkeley Plan will go a long way toward helping the arts in Berkeley.” 

Curl also requested reactivation of the city’s West Berkeley Building Acquisition Fund to help groups of artists and artisans buy buildings funded by mitigation payments paid by developers who have eliminated industrial uses in the area. In addition, he called for a change in city zoning laws to allow for a change in building use from industrial and manufacturing to arts and crafts. 

Bob Brockl of the Nexus Gallery and Collective called for city recognition of West Berkeley as both an arts and a historic district, while deploring the city’s use of $100,000 in mitigation funds from the Durkee Building renovation allocated for affordable artists’ space to fund Urban Ore. Brockl called Urban Ore “a nice place, but certainly not an arts and crafts use.” 

He also called for the city to create an inventory of arts and cultural spaces in Berkeley, “the locations, square footage, and the number of people involved in them. You should start by figuring out what you have and where it is and go from there.” 

Austene Hall lamented the commission’s endorsement of the Seagate Building, a controversial nine-story edifice which busted the city’s downtown five-story height limit by qualifying for “density bonuses” by offering low-income apartments and two theatrical venues totaling 11,000 square feet. 

“Seagate should have been required to provide 40,000 square feet of cultural density space, 10,000 for each of the four lots they’re building on,” Hall said. 

Arts Commission chair David Snippen told Hall that plans for the projects had been worked out in conjunction with the city planning director and the city’s Office of Economic Development in compliance with the General Plan. 

“The language is unclear,” Hall responded. “Look at the Gaia Building,” another height-busting downtown project that relied on a combination of low income apartments and a ground floor reserved for a nonprofit bookstore that went bankrupt before the building opened. “Now they’re putting in a restaurant,” Hall said. “That’s art space?” 

Snippen responded that he has “already been talking to city staff about the cultural density bonus.” 

An impassioned performance artist George Coates declared that the Seagate project had been “rammed down the city’s throat in secret” after 32 months of negotiations, resulting in “a valuable treasure downtown” being handed to one group—the Berkeley Repertory theatrical troupe—when “artists in West Berkeley, North Berkeley, and South Berkeley would like to have a place downtown where they can sing for their supper.” 

“Unfortunately, the language of the density bonus isn’t in place yet,” Snippen replied. “We have met with the city on creating language for enforcement, but nothing has been adopted by the City Council.” 

Snippen said that because the council hasn’t given final approval on the Seagate project, “we’re trying to work within the framework of regulations and ordinances in place now. We’re with you, George.” 

“I’d like to suggest one possible mitigation,” Hall interjected. “Seagate owns the Wells Fargo tower and the annex behind it, which is hard to rent. It might be worth looking into converting that into arts space.” 

“Don’t forget the historic and artistic importance of our buildings,” said Wendy Markel, vice president of the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association (BAHA). “We want to bring your attention to the West Berkeley Plan, which calls for identifying, maintaining, and preserving historical places. We recommend creating an Arts and Crafts Historic District in West Berkeley.” 

“I’d like to see something here like the Palo Alto Arts Center,” said artist and art teacher Bob Horning. “How about [city arts funding] of about $25 [per capita]?” 

“In Berkeley [per capita arts funding is] $1.65,” said Commissioner Bonnie Hughes. 

“Berkeley’s certainly at the low end of the scale in terms of supporting the arts,” said Snippen, “and $25 came up as a suggested figure during our discussions.” 

“In San Francisco, it’s $15, and it’s certainly reasonable for us to come within $10 of what Stanford’s city does,” said Mary Anne Merker, the city staff member assigned to work with the commission. 

“One of the things we see in this plan is that the terms haven’t been defined,” Hughes said. “What do we mean by ‘arts’? By ‘culture’? It seems to refer mainly to visual arts, and almost everybody here (in the audience) is a visual artist.” 

Artist Archana Horsting proposed amending the city requirement that builders install public visual art in new buildings to allow them to contribute the equivalent cash to a city grant program that could fund non-visual arts like music and theater. 

“The ordinance specifies visual arts,” Snippen said. 

“And here I am, a visual artist, calling for funds for the other arts,” Horsting responded. 

Merker picked up on Hughes’s question of definitions. “The word ‘culture’ is very slippery, and I’d like to see it excised from this document and replace by ‘arts’. . .because a restaurant could be considered ‘cultural’.” 

“We wrestled with this,” said commissioner Sherry Smith, “but the general plan calls for a ‘cultural’ plan.” 

“The devil is in the details,” said Brockl, who said the plan “is so nonspecific that it becomes kind of meaningless and pious.”  

“We’re trying to promote the arts, to set a basis for policy and eventually have real funding to support the arts at a far greater rate,” Snippen said. “We want a mechanism for what’s happening when and where. That’s the sort of information you have to find now by looking at telephone poles” [or from the Daily Planet’s Calendar page—editor.] “But we have to define who’s going to do it.” 

“Right now there’s a dearth of rehearsal space [for performing artists],” said another audience member. “It doesn’t have to be in a prime real estate area, just clean and wheelchair accessible.” 

“We want affordable cultural space with workshop space for artists,” said commissioner Jos Sances. “One of the main points of the plan is that people want space where they can make and do art—and there’s a definite need for affordable work space in West Berkeley.” 

“There are two separate issues,” said Hughes. “One is building new space, and the second is preserving the space that already exists.” 

Lisa Bullwinkle, organizer of the Solano Stroll, said she would like to see city funding for the arts administered through a grants program “administered by people with some artistic sense like the Civic Arts Commission, and not as a pork barrel program to be administered by the City Council.” 

“We have extracted that promise from the city council,” Snippen said. 

“Then it should be spelled out in the plan,” Bullwinkle replied. 

“We need to be sure we’re going to have some structural part in city government to pursue the objectives of the plan, Snippen said. “We’ve designed one based on what’s in place in the City and County of San Francisco.”n