Development dollars played a powerful but ultimately doomed role in the election to represent a City Council district targeted for the lion’s share of housing and commercial development over the coming two decades. -more-

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Whole Foods Market, the national natural food supermarket chain that represents itself as supporting local communities, found itself under attack Wednesday when a large group of East Bay residents gathered outside its Emeryville headquarters vociferously protesting the company’s decision not to renew the lease of Ashby Flowers, a family-owned business that rents a small building in the corner of the parking lot at the company’s 3000 Telegraph Ave. location in Berkeley. In an interview with the Planet at his company’s regional headquarters Wednesday, Whole Foods Regional President David Lannon said that the company was not renewing the lease since it had plans to open a coffee shop or juice bar there. -more-

In what may prove to be a simple solution following a thoroughly confusing debate, the Berkeley City Council moved to solve what it had originally thought was its University Avenue fast-food moratorium problem by voting Tuesday night to allow “quick service” restaurants on University between Oxford Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Way, but to continue the prohibition of “carryout service” restaurants in that same area. -more-

An enthusiastic Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates wants the AC Transit bus district to dramatically step up its timetable for development, approval, and implementation of the district’s Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system, telling members of the BRT Policy Steering Committee last week that the proposed 2015 end-of-construction date is not nearly soon enough. -more-

The revamped Shattuck Hotel, as expected, drew crowds of people to downtown Berkeley Wednesday, long before its grand opening in April, but all of them were eagerly waiting all morning not to catch a glimpse of the hotel’s swanky interiors but to land a job there. -more-

In the springtime the thoughts of the average aging English major are apt to turn to the poetry studied in youth. Often, this is poetry read in high school, not college, because it was the pleasure of reading in high school, where we had plenty of time to ponder, that deluded many of us into thinking that four more years of literature would be the best way to spend our ever more precious time. A great deal of the poetry about spring is actually about death, ever a popular topic for adolescents. -more-