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That baker’s dozen plus one of 16-story “point towers” sprouting like mushrooms after a spring rain in downtown Berkeley? Forget about it. 

Confronted with strong resistance from a majority of highly vocal members of the Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee (DAPAC), city Planning and Development Director Dan Marks said he’d scale down the proposal.  

“Fourteen point towers is a non-starter,” he told DAPAC after breaking for a caucus with Planning Manager Mark Rhoades and city Housing Director Steve Barton. “I’ve always thought it was a non-starter. So forget that.”  

Matt Taecker, the city planner hired to help draft the new downtown plan, had proposed the towers as a means to accommodate a large share of the new housing density that regional government says the city must be willing to take in order to qualify for a crucial range of state and federal funds. 

“I still don’t understand the 14 towers,” said committee member Patti Dacey early in Wednesday’s meeting. 

Marks said the basis was to accommodate up to 3,000 new residents within walking distance of the downtown BART station. 

The presence of three heavy rail stations in the city is the primary reason the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) has required the city to make plans to accommodate more growth than many other East Bay communities. 

ABAG is a coalition of regional governments created as one of several similar agencies around the state to develop joint plans and policies. 

While Marks and other members of city staff have insisted the towers have only been suggested for the purposes of modeling transportation alternatives for the new plan DAPAC must have ready in November, committee members have been skeptical. “I’ve got severe problems with all aspects of this,” said Gene Poschman, a Planning Commission representative to the committee. 

“There’s going to be a lot of people who really don’t like that idea” of the forest of towers, said Juliet Lamont, an environmentalist and one of Mayor Tom Bates’s two appointees to DAPAC. “What about spreading the density throughout downtown?” 

Lamont suggested using a model that assumed five-story buildings throughout the planning area, but Marks said that assumption was behind the so-called “baseline” model that assumed 1,800 new residents rather than the 3,000 of the “high intensity” point tower version. 

“What about six or seven stories?” Lamont responded.  

“If point towers are a non-starter for this group, now is the time to say it,” said Marks. “That would preclude it from any future analysis.” 

The planning director said the only way to reach the 3,000 figure would be by including the towers: “If you said eight, 10 or 12 stories—something less than sixteen—we would have to come back to you with a new analysis.” 

While DAPAC member Victoria Eisen said she didn’t have a problem with the high figures for use in creating a range to bracket an analysis, Linda Jewell said, “I personally can’t support anything that would offer that many point towers downtown ... that would really change the character of the place.” 

“The group could say there could be a maximum of, say, six in the next 20 years,” said Marks. 

Mim Hawley asked if the staff could identify 14 potential sites, and the committee could then say as a matter of policy that no more than three or four would be built. 

Several members asked what would happen if the city simply opted not to lay plans to allow for the growth that ABAG said the polity needed to accommodate. 

The agency’s draft projections call for Berkeley to absorb 2,714 new units by 2014, while the new downtown plan’s scope is longer. City staff have said one reason for concentrating new development downtown is strong neighborhood opposition that such projects have encountered in other parts of the city. 

Dacey said she didn’t think building the proposed point towers would impact development along the city’s major transportation corridors. “If a person has a piece of land along a corridor, they’re going to build as big as they can regardless if there are point towers downtown,” she explained. Poschman agreed. 

Rob Wrenn, an environmentalist and transportation commissioner, said staff had misplaced their emphasis by weighting the model toward towers without considering whether or not tall structures were greener than possible alternatives. 

Lisa Stephens noted that two of the tower sites were located within two blocks of her home “and I would be opposed. Anywhere we put them, somebody will be impacted and they’ll be opposed.” 

While not objecting to increased density in the city center, Stephens said she would prefer a seven-story limit throughout rather than a concentration on towers. 

While staff members said the towers offered a way of creating density in a way that would fit the economic realities of construction, members asked to hear more from building professionals, including a Pacific Gas and Electric efficiency expert who had spoken at an earlier meeting. 

Marks said staff would present a panel of architects at an upcoming meeting to address the questions. 

Jenny Wenk was one of the few speakers who favored the towers, saying that by the time they were built, the infants soon to be born to mothers taking pre-natal classes at the Berkeley Y would be able to vote. Because the full impacts would be so far in the future, she said, why not call the high intensity model “the science fiction plan?” 

“Or The Blade Runner plan,” fired back Dacey, referring to the dystopian science fiction film. 

Wendy Alfsen raised another issue: If BART was ABAG’s primary reason for boosting the city’s quota, why not locate more density around the North Berkeley BART station, and around Ashby BART? 

Winston Burton said he didn’t object to towers if they led to more housing for low-income residents and families, “though 14-, 15-, 16-stories seems like overkill.” 

“The assumption is that the only way to get height is to give something back,” Marks said. Possibilities might be low-cost housing in the buildings or finding finances elsewhere through payments of in-lieu fees to the city’s housing trust fund. Other mitigations might be creating parks, open space and streetscape improvements. 

“Fourteen is too high,” Burton added. 

It was then that Marks broke off the discussion and held his caucus with fellow staff members. He returned minutes later to announce that staff would come back to an upcoming meeting with a scaled-down high-intensity model. 

Photograph by Richard Brenneman 

Wendy Alfsen reacts viscerally to the thought of high-rise “point towers” proposed for dowtown Berkeley and city Planning Manager Mark Rhoades listens during discussions at Wednesday night’s meeting of the Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee.