Extra

Planners to Consider Housing, Urns, Condos

By Richard Brenneman
Friday September 04, 2009 - 04:26:00 PM

Berkeley planning commissioners face a full agenda when they return from their summer break Wednesday night. 

Major items on their plate for the 7 p.m. session include:  

• A report from UC Berkeley development staff on plans for the new undergraduate housing building slated for construction at the site of the Anna Head parking lot, a 1.25-acre site west of Bowditch Street between Channing Way and Haste Street north of People’s Park. The building will contain 200 beds in double-occupancy rooms in a sophomore residence hall and 224 beds in four-bedroom units for upper-division students. 

• Approval of a tract map that will allow conversion of five residential apartments at 2217-2219 California St. into condominiums. 

• Discussion of the proposed revision of the city's General Plan Housing Element chapter on constraints on development of new units, and 

• Revisions to the city’s columbarium ordinance that would extend the right to build enclosures for human ashes to non-profit groups other than religious groups, which are currently the only authorized organizations allowed to build structures to house what morticians have renamed “cremains.” 

The meeting will be held in the North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst Ave. 

The agenda and copies of the supporting documents are available online at http://www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/ContentDisplay.aspx?id=43480.