Features

Another major player will drop a piece on the Laney land development chessboard this week when representatives of the Bay Area Rapid Transit District make a presentation to the Peralta Community College Trustees on plans to develop BART’s Lake Merritt Station. 

The presentation by BART Director Carol Ward Allen, Alameda County Planning Manager Val Menotti, and Property Development Real Estate Manager Jeffrey Ordway will take place at the Peralta Trustees’ regular board meeting today (Tuesday). 7 p.m., at the Peralta Administration Building, 333 East Eighth St., in Oakland. 

BART’s immediate plans are to increase pedestrian and bicycle access to the Lake Merritt station, and to provide security improvements. 

But more long-range goals, as outlined in its November 2004 Lake Merritt Bart Station Access Plan (available at www.bart.gov/about/planning/alameda.asp) are to take a look at the station’s parking situation, and a possible demolition of the BART administrative headquarters building replacing it with a transit village. 

With one of the two Lake Merritt BART parking lots sitting directly across Fallon Street from the entrance to Laney College, and with the BART headquarters only two blocks away from Madison, any changes to those two properties would have immediate impact on the community college. 

One such impact might be on the controversial plans of Oakland developer Alan Dones for commercial development on the Laney faculty and staff parking lot across East 8th Street from the college. Last year, the outgoing Peralta Trustee Board authorized Peralta Chancellor Elihu Harris to enter into a contract with Dones to prepare a plan for the property, but Harris has yet to execute such a contract. Earlier this month, Dones told a meeting of Laney faculty, staff, and students that he was exploring putting a multi-story parking structure at the college tennis court site where the new art annex is scheduled to be built. With BART including a future goal of “share parking facilities off BART property” in its Lake Merritt Plan, some sort of coordinated parking development by Dones, Laney, and BART may be a possibility.›