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Tune-Up Masters Condominiums Top ZAB Agenda: By RICHARD BRENNEMAN

Tuesday October 26, 2004

Plans for the University Avenue Apartments, a five-story mixed use condominium and commercial project planned for 1698 University Ave., are scheduled to go to the Zoning Adjustments Board Thursday night. 

The project, planned by Pacific Bay Investments of Berkeley, would create a staggered building with a three-floor street frontage rising to five stories at the building’s center. 

Plans call for 25 condominium units, ground floor commercial rentals and a 32-space parking garage at the current site of a Tune-Up Masters franchise. 

Thursday’s 7 p.m. hearing in the second floor City Council chambers at Old City Hall, 2134 Martin Luther King Jr. Way, will consider a mitigated negative declaration which would authorize the project, provided developers minimize construction noise and clean up any possible toxic materials on the site. 

The project has drawn fire from members of PlanBerkeley.org, a collection of University Avenue-area residents who have criticized the size and mass of the project. Their web site includes relevant city documents on the project. 

Original plans called for apartments, but a revision calling for condominiums was filed in July, along with increased parking spaces as requested by neighbors. 

If ZAB members approve the project, all that remains is for the builder to receive the building permits, which normally would take an additional two months, said city Principal Planner Aaron Sage. 

The city has received extensive correspondence questioning the project, Sage said. 

Also on the agenda for Thursday’s ZAB meeting is a hearing on plans for the Ed Roberts Campus, a learning and advocacy center for the disabled to be constructed at the Ashby Avenue BART Station, 3075 Adeline St., and a proposal to open four carry-out food locations at 1511 Shattuck Ave. 

Another controversial project has landed on the city Planning Commission agenda for Wednesday night’s meeting, the tentative tract map for another condominium and retail project, this one already under construction by developer Avi Nevo at 1797 Shattuck Ave. 

The project landed before the Planning Commission because that body is charged with approving the tract maps that allow individual ownerships to be sold in condominium projects, said Janet Homrighausen, commission secretary. 

Opponents had tried to block the project, built at the site of a gas station that had leaked pollutants into the soil. 

The Planning Commission meeting begins at 7 p.m. Wednesday in the North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst Ave.