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Berkeley’s Landmarks Preservation Commission came away with more questions than answers at the end of reviewing the environmental impact report for Wareham Development’s proposal to tear down the historic Copra Warehouse at 740 Heinz St. and construct a new four-story laboratory building.  

The report says that the demolition would have a significant impact on the city’s cultural resources and quality of life, the latter because of the traffic and noise it would cause. It will come up for public review and comment at the Zoning Adjustments Board meeting today (Thursday, May 14). The comment period ends on June 8, 2009. 

Wareham Development, which owns a large number of properties in West Berkeley, including the 1.4-acre Durkee property, where the proposed project is located, plans to build a 72-foot-high biotechnology laboratory including about 82,000 square feet for research and development, 10,000 square feet of storage and a 49-stall underground garage. 

The proposed project would demolish the existing vacant warehouse but retain its north and south brick facades, which the majority of the members on the landmarks commission said they did not view as preservation of an important element. 

Vice Chair Gary Parsons said that “retaining” would not be the correct way of characterizing what Wareham was doing to the facades because they would be changing their look entirely by constructing new windows. 

“The building will not be the same building any more,” Parsons told the Planet after the meeting.  

Commissioner Austene Hall contended that it was “not very green” to demolish a building, reminding the audience about all the energy that went into constructing it. 

A letter to the landmarks commission from the Temescal Business Center on 7th and Heinz, whose tenants include Berkeley Mills, and the Berkeley Industrial Artswork Complex on Heinz criticized the project, explaining that the conversion of a 10,000-square-foot landmarked warehouse into a huge life science building was “not a legitimate adaptive reuse project” with any sense of integrity for preservation. 

“Nothing meaningful of the existing structure will be preserved in the lab that will tell any kind of story of the Copra Warehouse in the future,” the letter said. “The proposed transformation does not leave future generations with any sense of what came before. The future will only see a tall brick facade that is part of a large life science building.” 

Wareham’s officials have said in the past that it would be economically unfeasible for them to preserve the building, urging the city to open the way for biotech research facilities, which they said were being scooped up by Emeryville. 

Wareham’s proposed height for the new building will require variances from the Zoning Adjustments Board. The current zoning laws allow up to only 45 feet in that area.  

Commission Chair Steve Winkel said that the EIR, prepared by consultants LSA Associates, did not include enough historic information about the evolution of the site until it was landmarked in 1985 and what took place following that. 

Commissioner Carrie Olson pointed out that the landmark application was missing from the document. When the site was landmarked, she said, there were eight buildings on it, of which five had “disappeared overnight.” 

“Just because five buildings have been taken down, it does not justify the taking of more,” she said. 

Olson later told the Planet that she wanted to see the landmark application to understand the history of the landmarked site better. 

“I wasn’t on the commission in 1985, I didn’t know what happened,” she said. “There were eight buildings back then, and now it’s down to three. If this one goes, it will be down to two. It’s just pretty shocking.” 

Parsons echoed Olson, stressing that it was important to know the history of the previous demolitions and the conditions under which they occurred. 

“It’s a loss of over 50 percent,” he told the Planet. “How is it that landmarked buildings in Berkeley disappeared? No one on the landmarks commission can remember approving those demolitions.” 

Olson said the landmarks commission was responsible for coming up with a finding that would explain why the Copra Warehouse should be demolished. 

Parsons said the building’s demolition would change the context of the other two remaining buildings on the site, the Durkee Building and the Spice Warehouse. 

“These three are the last remaining ensemble on that site,” he said after the meeting. “If the warehouse goes, that will take away a big part of the group.”  

The Zoning Adjustments Board meeting tonight (Thursday, May 14), which will take up the EIR for public review and comment, will take place at the Maudelle Shirek Building (Old City Hall), 2134 Martin Luther King Jr. Way at 7 p.m.