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Starting this summer Marin Avenue is scheduled to slim down for its 21,000 daily motorists. 

The City Council Tuesday voted 8-1 (Olds, no) to approve a hotly contested plan, known as a “road diet,” to reduce traffic lanes on the major North Berkeley thoroughfare in hopes of slowing down cars and improving safety for pedestrians and cyclists. 

The city plans to reduce the lanes along the avenue in July. 

In other matters, the council approved funding for three affordable housing projects and ordered the Zoning Adjustment Board to conduct a new public hearing on a proposed five-story condo complex. 

The vote on Marin came one week after 42 residents split on whether Berkeley should join Albany in scaling back the avenue from four lanes of oncoming vehicle traffic to two lanes, with two bike lanes and a center turning lane. Only a couple of plan backers and detractors were in attendance Tuesday for the council vote. 

Berkeley’s share of the project is estimated at $35,000, which the city hopes to fund through state and regional grants, said Peter Hillier, assistant city manager for transportation. Restoring the street to its current configuration after a one-year trial period would cost an additional $35,000 and, if deemed necessary, would likely come from the city’s coffers, Hillier added. 

Although the council passed the plan by a strong majority, several councilmembers expressed concerns that despite a transit study showing limited traffic impacts, Marin might bottleneck during rush hour.  

“It’s a very crude model,” said Councilmember Gordon Wozniak. He feared that reducing the avenue’s vehicle capacity would send many commuters dashing through neighboring streets and leave Berkeley powerless to remedy the situation until the year trial period ended. 

“A year is a lifetime if you’re sitting on Marin for an extra half hour,” chimed in Betty Olds, who represents a swath of the Berkeley hills for whose residents Marin is the quickest route to I-80. 

As a condition for approval the council asked that city traffic engineers prepare a report three months after the re-striping project is completed and add Gilman Street and the San Fernando/Thousand Oaks corridor to a list of nine streets slated for before and after transit studies. Additionally, Mayor Tom Bates wrote a letter requesting that Albany officials consider scrapping the project quickly if it backs up traffic. 

Albany residents along Marin have lobbied for seven years to re-stripe the avenue, and the Albany City Council was set to go ahead with the project independent of Berkeley. 

The project will encompass 12 blocks in Albany from Cornell Avenue to Tulare Avenue and an additional four-and-a-half blocks in Berkeley ending at The Alameda where Marin shrinks to one lane in each direction.  

The specter of Albany going ahead with the project, leaving the four Berkeley blocks sandwiched between two narrower sections of Marin appeared to sway several councilmembers. 

“It just seems to me that trying to keep it consistent would be reason enough to do it,” said Linda Maio, fearing that otherwise motorists would see the Berkeley section with four lanes of traffic as a cue to make up for lost time. 

“In many ways it would be more dangerous not to go ahead with this,” said Councilmember Laurie Capitelli, who lives four blocks from Marin and found himself wrestling between the arguments of avenue residents concerned about safety and their neighbors who fear motorists will now commute down their streets instead. 

“It’s a rare opportunity to piss off 10,000 people if you vote yes and 10,000 people if you vote no,” he said. 

Condo Development 

The council voted unanimously to send back to the Zoning Adjustment Board (ZAB) a five-story condo project at University Avenue and McGee Street after an appeal showed that the project violated a state housing law. 

The ZAB had approved the project with a 25 percent density bonus in return for the project’s inclusion of four condos priced at 120 percent of the area’s median income. However, an appeal by project opponent Robin Kibby showed that a 2003 state law allows the 25 percent bonus only for condos priced below 80 percent of AMI.  

The ZAB now must either compel the developer to offer the affordable units at the lower price or find that the developer has economic necessity to proceed with the current design. Losing the bonus would cost the building three condos. 

The project, long opposed by several neighbors for being too big and bulky, has already been to the Design Review Commission seven times and the ZAB three times. In response to concerns, the developer has shrunk the project from 31,500 square feet to 28,300 square feet, reduced the number of units from 43 rentals to 25 condos and doubled the number of parking spaces from 16 to 32.  

Councilmember Dona Spring urged the council to ask the ZAB to consider shaving off an extra 800 square feet from the south end of the building, where there is no setback from the sidewalk, and requiring pedestrian improvements at the site as a condition of the use permit. Councilmembers Kriss Worthington and Max Anderson backed Spring’s motion, but couldn’t muster a majority. 

Affordable Housing 

The council voted to fund $6 million for three affordable housing projects totaling 231 apartments. The projects—Ashby Lofts, University Avenue Senior Housing and Oxford Plaza—will nearly double the number of new affordable housing units constructed in Berkeley since 1999. However to pay its share of the construction costs, the council agreed to tap its housing trust fund for the next three years and, if additional funds don’t materialize and the federal government cuts back on housing grants, commit $500,000 from the city’s general fund reserve. 

All three projects must first compete for state grants and win city permits before beginning construction. 

The council voted unanimously for Satellite Senior Homes and Ashby Lofts and approved Oxford Plaza 8-1 with Olds casting the lone dissenting vote.