Features

Planning commissioners voted Wednesday night to extend the comment period on the draft environmental impact report (DEIR) for Berkeley’s long-delayed Southside Plan. 

Their action followed complaints from south-of-campus residents who complained that the review failed to adequately address area changes in the years since the plan was first drafted. 

By the time the session had ended, commissioners had added a 45-day extension to the public comment period on the DEIR, which was prepared by LSA Associates, an Irvine-based consulting firm with offices in Berkeley. 

The Southside Plan has been slow in coming, crafted after more than 35 public meetings and drafting sessions between 1997 and 2003. 

Though the scoping session for the DEIR was conducted in November 2004, the report was only released this month—a point that raised concerns among some of the neighbors who attended Wednesday night’s hearing. 

The first speaker, retired planner and long-time Southside resident John English, opened with a plea to continue the hearing until the commission’s next meeting then immediately faulted the DEIR for failing to consider a significant range of development alternatives. 

English said he was also skeptical of the DEIR’s contention that the plan wouldn’t have any significant impacts on the neighborhood, which parallels the southern border of the main UC Berkeley campus and extends to the southern side of Dwight Way. 

English said he was also concerned that the document may not have adequately addressed the impacts of the state’s density bonus law, which allows developers to exceed local zoning limits if their projects offer affordable units for lower-income tenants or buyers. 

Michael Katz, an area resident who participated in the planning process, said he “would be very grateful” if language addressing major transportation changes stemming from the introduction of Bus Rapid Transit (BRT), dedicated bus lanes and changes of two existing streets from one-way to two-way were removed from the document. 

Katz, who is also active in Berkeleyans for Better Transportation Options, said he was especially concerned because BRT wasn’t on the table when the plan was drafted. 

BRT, a plan by AC Transit to create dedicated bus lanes along Telegraph Avenue as part of a transit scheme connecting Berkeley to San Leandro, has generated strong opposition from Telegraph Avenue merchants and residents of nearby neighborhoods, while drawing strong support from mass transit activists. 

Roland Peterson, speaking on behalf of the Telegraph Avenue Business Improvement District, said he was strongly opposed to plans to transform Bancroft Way and Durant Avenue into two-way streets, as he opposed BRT-related suggestions to close the upper end of Telegraph to car traffic. 

He called proposed mitigations to offset the impacts of transforming the one-way streets “utopian” and “divorced from reality.” 

“Keep the streets as they are currently configured,” he urged. 

Martha Jones, a veteran of 35 planning sessions, said she has lived on the Southside since 1947, the same year “some idiot in government decided to take these streets and change them to one-way streets.” 

Making them two-way streets again, she said, would ease traffic on congested neighborhood streets. 

“Please, let’s go back to when we all had brains,” she urged. 

“Superficial and negligent,” said Doris Willingham, who charged that the review didn’t adequately address the impacts of major development projects by UC Berkeley. 

Sharon Hudson said she was concerned that responsibility for the plan had been given to a newly hired planner, Elizabeth Greene. “It would be nice to be able to talk to somebody at the planning department who has been around for a while,” she said. 

It was Hudson who first raised the issue of extending the comment period. She said she was especially concerned about the potential impact of the density bonus on the plan’s projections of future growth. 

“Something’s really wrong here,” said Doug Buckwald, another area resident, who called the DEIR “a leftover piece of chaff, an obsolete document which should be discarded.” 

“I’m practically in tears,” said Janice Thomas, who lives on Panoramic Hill above the Southside Plan area. She cited a list of major changes that have come down since the plan was created, including those outlined in UC Berkeley’s Long Range Development Plan 2020 (LRDP) and the stadium-area Southeast Campus Integrated Projects (SCIP) as well as BRT. 

“At the very least, I hope you will ask for an extension of the public comment period,” she said. 

It was commissioner Susan Wengraf who moved to extend the comment period, receiving a second from Gene Poschman. 

City Planning and Development Director Dan Marks said the issue for the commission was whether or not the plan’s DEIR adequately evaluated its impacts, adding that discussion of the DEIR was not the same as discussing the plan itself. 

“How can we evaluate the EIR when things have happened since that didn’t exist in the plan?” asked Commission Chair James Samuels? 

But Marks said the DEIR did take into account the impacts of the new university projects, BRT and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s recently issued LRDP. 

“The EIR evaluated everything mentioned this evening,” he said, adding that one reason preparation took so long was because of the lengthy time AC Transit spent coming up with a BRT proposal. 

Commissioner Larry Gurley said he was concerned that the plan itself didn’t address subsequently changed conditions, but Judith Malamut, the LSA principal in charge of preparing the DEIR, said the document did take into account “all the individual developments since the plan was prepared.” 

Marks said commissioners had the option of deciding whether the DEIR was adequately prepared, and then if they chose to change the plan itself, “we will have to decide whether the EIR adequately addresses” the changes. 

In the end, commissioners voted unanimously to add 45 days to the public comment period. 

Marks said the planning department would make computer CD versions of the DEIR available for $5 or free for those who couldn’t afford them. 

The document is posted online along with the plan itself at www.cityofberkeley.info/ContentDisplay.aspx?id=420. 

Downtown Plan 

Because of the late hour, commissioners voted to delay deliberations on the proposed economic development section of the Downtown Area Plan, though planner Matt Taecker was given time to discuss how the staff had revised the document prepared by the citizen Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee (DAPAC). 

The new plan, mandated in a legal settlement between the city and UC Berkeley, defines the parameters of growth and change in an expanded downtown area. 

While Taecker said most of the changes were made to clarify language and eliminate redundancies, at least two DAPAC members who also serve on the Planning Commission were shaking their heads well before he finished.