Features

Planners Tackle Landmarks Law; Highrise, Additions, Flying House at ZAB By RICHARD BRENNEMAN

Tuesday April 26, 2005

Planning commissioners will tackle the city’s Landmarks Preservation Ordinance Wednesday night, while the Zoning Adjustments Board will handle a controversial pop-up and by-right additions after they get their first look at a major new proposal for University Avenue. 

The planning commission is considering additions to the landmarks ordinance and accompanying city zoning codes in a meeting that begins at 7 p.m. in the North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst Ave. 

If past meetings of the commission and its landmarks ordinance revisions subcommittee offer any clues, Wednesday’s meeting could grow heated. 

ZAB’s meeting Thursday kicks off at 6 p.m., an hour earlier than normal, to accommodate a preview of plans for a pair of five-story buildings with 186 units along Martin Luther King Jr. Way between University Avenue and Berkeley Way. 

The structure would be built at the site of an existing strip mall which houses Kragen Auto Parts and a Pet Food Express store. That structure would be demolished to make way for former Panoramic Interests developers Christopher Hudson and Evan McDonald to build a structure that has been drawing fire from neighbors. 

The city staff has granted HudsonMcDonald LLC the right to build 48 “bonus units” on top of the baseline total of what they define as a baseline of 135, creating a structure neighbors say has too little parking and too much shadow for their tastes. 

ZAB will also consider the thorny issue of by-right additions—the up to 500 square feet of additional space a homeowner can add to a previously unexpanded dwelling without required a city administrative use permit—and their impacts when they address a proposed addition to a home at 1737 Grant St. 

Neighbors appealed a proposed addition, and board must decide if and how it wants to handle the cumulative impacts of the addition combined with a previous by-right addition. 

Also on the ZAB agenda is the controversial “Flying Cottage” at 3045 Shattuck Ave., to which the owner says she added another story-plus after her then-contractor told her she could do it by right. 

Neighbors protested the structural inflation to city officials, who ordered a halt. Revised plans failed to clear the city’s Design Review Committee, and it’s up to ZAB to decide Thursday if the house remains a nuisance.