Features

BUSD Surpluses Sixth Street Property

By Riya Bhattacharjee
Tuesday April 01, 2008

The Berkeley Board of Education voted unanimously on Wednesday to declare the district’s Sixth Street property to be surplus.  

The Berkeley Unified School District lent the City of Berkeley the site at 2031 Sixth St. in exchange for use of the Old City Hall Building at 2134 Martin Luther King Jr. Way under a 20-year lease agreement that expires in 2009.  

The city then sublet the Sixth Street property to LifeLong’s West Berkeley Family Practice Center, which provides low-cost medical services to the uninsured and the sick. 

For the health center to remain at the Sixth Street site, the school district had to decide that the facility was not suitable for K-12 education. 

More than 50 seniors, parents and community members turned up at a recent public hearing on surplussing the property to support LifeLong’s existence at its current site. 

The school board’s Sixth Street Surplus Committee recommended to the board that the district work with the city to sell or lease the property for less than “fair market value.”  

Berkeley Unified is currently moving ahead with plans to relocate its administrative offices to West Campus, which is scheduled to take place over the next year.