Features

Berkeley planning commissioners will get their first chance Wednesday to ponder rezoning West Berkeley to attract car dealerships. 

The proposal, pushed by Mayor Tom Bates to keep car dealerships and their hefty sales tax revenues from fleeing the city, has been strongly opposed by some West Berkeley business owners and artisans. 

While no action will result from Wednesday’s discussion, commissioners will receive a city staff report on the proposal and hold a preliminary discussion on their suggestions. 

The panel will also hold a hearing on another controversial West Berkeley project, the proposed second store and warehouse for the Berkeley Bowl. 

The same activists who are opposing Mayor Bates’s proposal to bring car sellers onto their turf have blasted the supermarket project as both a source of additional traffic on highly traveled Ashby Avenue and as the latest commercial intrusion on land zoned for manufacturing and light industrial uses. 

The commission will open the 7 p.m. meeting in the North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst Ave., to public comments as part of the public review process for the project’s Draft Environmental Impact Report. For a look at the Berkeley Bowl environmental document, see www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/planning/landuse/Heinz/DEIR/default.htm. 

ZAB considers new condominium and retail project 

On Thursday, the Zoning Adjustments Board will face a ful agenda, with the largest single project being the proposed two-building, five-story condominium and retail project at the northwest corner of University Avenue and Martin Luther King Jr. Way. 

Developers Hudson McDonald, LLC have proposed 186 condominiums and 4,000 square feet of ground-floor commercial space plus 71 parking slots in a basement garage for the site now occupied by a mini-mall whose tenants include Kragen Auto Parts. 

City staff is recommending that unless the developers redesign the project, ZAB should turn thumbs down. 

ZAB already gave the project a highly unfavorable review on April 28, panning the design by Kirk Peterson, whose most notable Berkeley buildings were Patrick Kennedy’s Gaia and Bachenheimer buildings. 

Hudson and McDonald teamed with Kennedy on many of his projects before setting out on their own, and the Kragen project was Kennedy’s originally. 

As currently proposed, plans call for a five-story project with the bulk of its mass along MLK. 

Neighbors along Berkeley Way to the north have raised strenuous objections, pointing to the building’s shadow effects on their own homes and to the parked cars it could bring to their already crowded street. 

Kennedy’s Panoramic Interests first applied for a permit in September 2002, and the document was deemed complete last Dec. 9 after clearances from the Landmarks Preservation Commission. 

The city’s Design Review Committee panned the project, faulting its massive appearance from the street, a lack of open space, and relatively limited commercial space. 

In April, ZAB members indicated they weren’t inclined to grant the eight zoning variances required and declared that the project abused the state density bonus ordinance, which allows larger-than-standard structures for projects that offer affordable housing. 

Members also said the project didn’t include enough parking. 

The city staff report prepared for Thursday’s meeting lists nine grounds for denial, including one that holds the project “would be detrimental to the health, safety, peace, morals, comfort or general welfare of people who live or work nearby and that it would also be detrimental to adjacent property owners.” 

The report, by Senior Planner Steve Ross, calls for a redesign either to four floors or adding a fifth floor stepped back from the fourth along Berkeley Way, more setbacks along Berkeley Way, an increase to 156 parking spaces, increased commercial floor area and larger courtyards and open space.›