Features

Briefly Noted

Richard Brenneman
Friday June 18, 2004

Council to Discuss Hotel Task Force Report 

The UC Hotel Task Force report, a document hammered out by a Planning Commission subcommittee and a panel of representatives of community interest groups, heads to the Berkeley City Council next Tuesday. 

Votes of the planning and transportation commissions have already endorsed forwarding the document to the university and its developer, and City Manager Phil Kamlarz has concurred. 

The final say is up to the council. 

The university plans a massive hotel, convention center and museums complex for the two-square block downtown Berkeley site between Shattuck Avenue and Oxford Street and between Center Street and University Avenue. 

The city Landmarks Preservation Commission voted last week to landmark two buildings in the project site. 

 

Nobelist Takes The Reins at LBNL 

UC Regents Thursday picked Stanford physics professor Steven Chu to run the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The appointment was approved by U.S. Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham. 

UC President Robert C. Dynes said Chu will take over from outgoing director Charles V. Shank on August 1. 

Chu is no stranger to the Berkeley campus, where he earned his doctorate. But it was at Stanford where he won his Nobel Prize, shared with two other physicists, for developing ways to cool and trap atoms with lasers.  

The new LBNL head chaired the Stanford Physics Department from 1990 to 1993 and again from 1999 to 2003. 

 

Residents Face Parking Permit Re-Up Time 

While Residential Preferential Parking Permits (RPPs) are to Berkeley parking ticket dispensers like garlic to a vampire, the current crop is fading fast. 

To avoid those ever-present uniformed folk in their ubiquitous motorized tricycles, it’s time to buy a fresh RPP. Those who wait beyond July 6 will soon find crops of green envelopes sprouting beneath their windshield wipers. 

Existing RPP-holders should’ve received renewal forms, but for anyone who hasn’t, a trip to the city Customer Service Center at 1947 Center St. is in order. 

For more information, call 981-7200 or see www.cityofberkeley.info/finance/residentialparking.html. 

 

Clif Bar Founder Hands Over Helm 

Gary Erickson, founder and CEO of Berkeley’s Clif Bar Inc. has resigned as CEO, handing the helm to Sheryl O’Loughlin, who joined the firm in 1998 as brand executive vice president. 

Erickson, 46, founded the energy and nutritional food firm in 1992. He said he will devote his new free time to new product development, package design, and spreading the corporate story. 

He and his spouse Kathleen Crawford will also focus more on the firm’s corporate philanthropy. 

 

—Richard Brenneman