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Mayor Tom Bates chastised UC Berkeley on Tuesday over recent revelations that it has set January deadlines for architects to submit qualifications to renovate Memorial Stadium and build a new academic building for its business and law schools. 

In a public address before the City Council meeting, the mayor questioned why the projects weren’t detailed in the university’s final Long Range Development Plan (LRDP), released last week. 

“Come on,” Bates said. “To be fair they have to tell us what their projects are going to be and how much they are going to cost.” 

Bates’ speech came a day after the council voted 6-0 (Olds, Maio and Anderson were not present) to sue the university if it refused to address the city’s concerns over the plan. Designed to guide university development through 2020, the plan projects 2.2 million square feet of new academic and administrative space, but only identifies one project—the 100,000-square-foot Tien Center For East Asian Studies. 

At its regular meeting, the council declined to discuss the university’s plan further. In other matters, it postponed a vote on an appeal of the nine-story Seagate Building, approved by the Zoning Adjustment Board, and denied an appeal to a condominium project the ZAB approved for the corner of Martin Luther King Jr. and Dwight ways. 

City officials fear UC Berkeley’s long range plan would give it free rein to build on city streets without environmental review and make residents pay for the increased demand on municipal services. They have demanded that the university either describe planned developments or agree to subject major projects to strict environmental review.  

News of the university’s proposals to rebuild Memorial Stadium, a $120 million project which it hopes to begin after the 2005 football season ends in November, and to construct a building at the southeast edge of campus, estimated to cost between $100 and $200 million, affirmed city suspicions that university officials were withholding details about future development from the long range plan. 

In a letter to Regents’ Chair Gerald Parsky urging him to postpone a vote on the plan, Bates wrote, “After five years of developing a ‘master plan, preliminary programming and design studies,’ and with football season ending in less than 11 months, I find it hard to believe that the university cannot be more transparent and forthcoming...”  

Twenty-two state legislators, at the urging of Assemblywoman Loni Hancock (D-Berkeley), have signed a letter also urging Parsky to hold over the vote to certify the plan’s environmental impact report scheduled for Jan. 20—two weeks after UC Berkeley released the 1,300 word document. 

In addition to the new administration space, the university’s plan projects 2,600 new dorm beds and up to 2,300 new parking spaces. 

Seagate Building 

Although the majority of councilmembers expressed support for the project, the council voted 7-2 (Olds and Wozniak, no) to hold over the appeal to the Seagate Building one week at the request of Councilmember Dona Spring. 

Spring feared that the city was offering too many concessions to the developer Darrell de Tienne. She questioned why city staff had allowed him to build a nine-story building on a street zoned for five stories and to designate less desirable units for low income tenants. 

“This sets a bad precedent for future developers to claim economic necessity,” she said. 

The Seagate building planned for Center Street between Shattuck Avenue and Milvia Street would contain 149 apartments, theater space leased to the Berkeley Repertory Theater, retail space and 160 underground parking spaces on three subterranean levels. 

To help de Tienne maximize profit, the Zoning Adjustment Board approved concentrating the 23 low income units, required under Berkeley housing law, on floors two through seven and in locations that were smaller, had poorer views, and less light exposure and less access to open space. Low income units were also disproportionately one-bedroom apartments. 

Responding to concerns about tenant equity, Housing Director Steve Barton told the council that the project is billed as a luxury building. “These are going to be the nicest [affordable] units in Berkeley,” he said. 

The building’s height remained a point of contention. To allow the building to rise nine stories, the city granted Seagate two extra floors as a bonus for including arts space and a 25 percent bonus as part of a state law requiring a additional space for including affordable units in the project. 

In calculating the 25 percent bonus for affordable housing, city officials included the two extra floors granted for the arts space, thereby giving the developer 25 percent of seven floors instead of five floors. City Attorney Manuela Albuquerque said that since the developer hadn’t needed a separate permit for the arts space, the two additional floors given for the cultural use counted as part of the base project. 

However, the city’s zoning ordinance does require that theaters receive a use permit. 

“[The staff] clearly didn’t want to do a use permit for the theater because it would have made it a five story building,” said Gene Poschman, a former planning commissioner, who worked on the appeal of the project. 

Poschman calculated that for the 12,067 square feet of ground floor theater space, de Tienne received 53,543 square feet in bonus space. “That’s a hell of a deal,” he said. 

In other maters, the council voted to oppose the establishment of the Low Lake Rancheria-Koi Nation Casino proposed to rise near the Oakland Airport. The federal Bureau of Indian Affairs will have the final say over the casino proposal. 

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