News

Soaring construction costs and tight money have forced the developers of the two David Brower Center projects to alter their plans, while forcing the city to up its direct subsidy of the project to $6.2 million. -more-

Foes of the new Landmarks Preservation Ordinance have the signatures they need to block the law from taking effect, said Laurie Bright, the man doing the counting. -more-

Spaceship Earth, that 175-ton sculpture that made an aborted effort to land in Berkeley, has died a premature death in Georgia, giving headline writers and bloggers everywhere endless occasions for schadenfreude. -more-

Dan Sicular, spokesperson for an unincorporated group of football fans calling themselves “Save Tightwad Hill!”, announced late Monday that attorney Susan Brandt Hawley has filed in California Superior Court in Alameda County on their behalf to require the UC Regents to comply with the California Environmental Quality Act by doing adequate study and mitigation of the proposed UC Berkeley Memorial Stadium expansion. Their petition charges that “substantial new seating approved on the east side of the stadium would restrict views and thereby substantially alter the use of the unique cultural landscape known as Tightwad Hill.” It says that the hill “is located 100 feet above the stadium and provides panoramic views of the football field” and that “generations of football fans since the mid-1920s” have gathered there to watch Cal Bear games. -more-

The City of Oakland put several of its many moods and faces on full display for the inauguration of its 48th mayor on Monday, with a rowdy City Council reorganization meeting that ended in spirited boos and catcalls from the audience, an onstage, interfaith, hand-holding prayer featuring representatives of many of the city’s widely diverse ethnic and religious communities, and ending with the usual and expected rousing and uplifting speech by the new mayor himself, Ron Dellums. -more-

Berkeley’s Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) weighed in on the side of the tree-in protesters at Memorial Stadium Thursday, urging the preservation of a grove threatened by university building plans. -more-

For the Berkeley Unified School District, 2006 was a very good year. -more-

The Berkeley Unified School District was back in session on Monday after winter break. Elementary, middle and Berkeley High School students started classes Monday. -more-

Second Derby Field Community Meeting -more-

The Zoning Adjustments Board returns to session on Thursday to hear requests by Verizon Wireless and Nextel Communications for use permits to construct a new wireless telecommunications facility that will host eighteen cell phone antennas and related equipment atop the UC Storage building at 2721 Shattuck Ave. -more-

A Few Prominent Businesses Abandoned Berkeley in 2006 -more-

Planning Commissioners will vote Wednesday on a last, crucial legal step to transform what was once the site of one of Berkeley’s more notorious brothels into a 15-unit condo complex. -more-

Donning gas masks to protest against emissions from Pacific Steel Casting, risking arrest to save the People’s Park free box, organizing the city’s first ever international food festival and cooking up civic participation through a website were some of the ways in which Berkeleyans took control in 2006. -more-

Pole to head -more-

From just the smell of their breath or the look on their faces, Karl Smith could tell which of his students at Dejean Middle School in West Contra Costa County were doing poorly in school. -more-

Froilan Chan-Liongco didn’t hear the explosion that incinerated his clothes and left him with second and third degree burns on the lower part of his body. As a welder at Romic Environmental Technologies’ hazardous waste recycling facility in East Palo Alto for 16 years, he’d seen his fair share of chemical fires at work, but this one caught him by surprise. -more-

Backers of a failed initiative to save Berkeley’s Landmarks Preservation Ordinance (LPO) will learn next week if they can block a rival ordinance—at least until voters have their say. -more-

Four die-hard protesters, shaken but not stirred, ended 2006 encamped among the branches of a grove of grand old trees threatened by the city’s biggest developer. -more-

Berkeley developers clocked up big wins in 2006, defeating a ballot measure designed to save Berkeley’s Landmark Preser-vation Ordinance and winning approval of projects destined to change the city’s face. -more-

Enhanced fire and police protection, housing development, safeguards for creeks and an advisory measure to impeach President George Walker Bush are among the accomplishments City Councilmembers cite for 2006. -more-

While several local long-term labor disputes ended happily for workers in 2006—Berkeley Honda, Alta Bates/Summit and Claremont Resort & Spa employees signed contracts after protracted struggles—workers at the Shattuck Cinema, Doubletree Hotel, UC Berkeley and the Woodfin Suite Hotel will continue to fight for better pay, benefits and working conditions in 2007. -more-

2006 was not the year that California or Berkeley checked the power the purse has to skew elections. -more-

2006 was not a good year for Berkeley cops or for those who monitor them. -more-

One of the four tree-sitters protesting the planned demolition of a grove of Coastal Live Oaks at the UC Berkeley Campus landed in new accommodations Wednesday—City Jail. -more-

For some East Bay developers, 2006 was the year of the environmentalist. -more-

Richmond Mayor-elect Gayle McLaughlin, the upset winner in a three-way race, becomes the nation’s first Green Party mayor in a city with a population greater than 100,000 in ceremonies Tuesday night. -more-

One of the biggest East Bay political stories of 2006—the proposed sale of the Oakland Unified School District downtown properties—was reported first in the Berkeley Daily Planet. -more-

The four-college Peralta Community College District began the year in the last stages of construction of the newly-named Berkeley City College, with controversy over its last series of construction bonds, and with plans to present a new set of facilities bonds. The year ended with Berkeley City College built, occupied, and with controversy swirling over district bond measures. -more-

A month ago, proponents and opponents of a nearly eight-year dispute over playing field construction at East Campus met and came to an agreement on a single plan: the Curvy Derby plan. -more-

Grounds for arrest -more-

Apartment fires—one caused by a forgotten pan, the other by a forgotten cigarette—ruined the holiday plans of several Berkeley residents, reports Berkeley Fire Marshal Gil Dong. -more-

It was a crushingly hot summer day in Chicago. The kind of day that Chicagoans believe only they are privy to. The kind of day where the sidewalks exhale hot air, steps are uncertain, thinking woozy. -more-