Features

Landmarks Hearing Targets Ed Roberts Center Impact By RICHARD BRENNEMAN

Friday January 07, 2005

Already approved for construction by the city Zoning Adjustments Board, the proposed Ed Roberts Center for the disabled faces one more regulatory hurdle. 

The Berkeley Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) has scheduled a Monday night hearing to consider the center’s potential impacts on nearby South Berkeley historic buildings. 

The hearing begins at 7:30 p.m. in the North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst Ave. 

The hearing is mandated under federal law which requires that all projects built with federal funds must take into account any historic structures and architecture within their “area of potential impact.” 

That area is bounded by Martin Luther King Jr. Way on the west, Shattuck Avenue on the east, Ashby Avenue on the north, and Woolsey Street on the South. 

The area contains three potential candidates for the National Register of Historic Places: the recently landmarked Webb Building at 1985 Ashby, Luke’s Nickelodeon Building at 3192 Adeline, and the Hill & Durgin Funeral Home at 3031-3051 Adeline.  

The city Housing Department intends to commit $6 million in federal Section 108 loan program funds to the Ed Roberts Center project. 

The State Office of Historic Preservation identifies historical impacts for the federal government. 

On Oct. 3, 2003, Senior Planner Tim Stroshane of the city Housing Department notified the agency that the center would have no impact on historic structures. 

A letter from the state agency written 19 days later challenging Stroshane’s contention met with no response. Last Nov. 17, California Historic Preservation Officer Milford Wayne Donaldson wrote city Planning Director Dan Marks a letter sharply criticizing the city for failing to respond to the letter sent 13 months earlier. 

“We are concerned about the length of time that has passed since we provided the city with our comments. We are also concerned by the questions raised by the public regarding the city’s planning and environmental review efforts,” Donaldson wrote. 

Critics of the center have faulted its architecture rather than its purpose, raising concerns that its starkly modern facade will contrast too sharply with nearby buildings built a century ago. 

Others have questioned the project’s impact on a neighborhood where parking is a problem, in part caused by the Ashby BART station. 

Design proponents have repeatedly argued that the open, glass-walled front along Adeline Street is a necessary social statement, the antithesis of the blank and small-windowed walls behind which the disabled were institutionalized in times past. 

The structure’s curvilinear front is capped by a skylight that resembles a low-rise steamship smokestack built above an open curved wheelchair ramp leading to the second floor. 

Other proponents have charged that neighbors’ concerns are merely masks for NIMBYism—a charge that critics such as Prince Street activist Eric Cleary strongly deny. 

Meanwhile, Stroshane has issued a call to the public for information, photos and personal recollections about the neighborhood. 

Submissions may be made via e-mail at tstroshane@ci.berkeley.ca.us. 

For more information on Monday’s hearing, call LPC Secretary Giselle Sorensen at 981-7419.