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Last Saturday the wrecking crew employed by Kenneth and Gregory Ent, owners of the Sequoia Apartments, began demolishing what remained of the mixed-use apartment building at the northwest corner of Haste and Telegraph,which was the subject of a fire on November 18 of still undetermined origin that left the building uninhabitable, and also necessitated the evacuation of the apartment building directly west on Haste. 

The crew left the first floor and clerestory windows on the Telegraph frontage intact, as their permit required, but when they began knocking down the entire Haste frontage, in violation of the permit condition requiring them to leave the entire first-floor façade intact, ex-building tenants monitoring the demolition phoned the city. Several city employees arrived rapidly and halted the demolition, but too late to save all but the easternmost 10 feet of the southern façade. 

When Berkeley Fire Marshal Bill Finch asked why they were exceeding their permit, the foreman said they had done it because they were confused. The fire marshal later in the day ruled it an accidental demolition. The city then changed the permit to make it appear that the excess demolition was actually originally permitted. 

Thus when I arrived at 4 pm on Saturday and asked the foreman, (first name Alfredo) why he had exceeded his permit, he wasn't technically misleading me when he told me that they had obtained a permit modification and were in full compliance. Maintaining the Haste frontage would have been much more problematic for the owner, because, unlike the stone Telegraph façade, it was composed of un-reinforced brick and would have needed careful buttressing.  

Berkeley City Councilmember Kriss Worthington, who represents the area, told the Planet that every day the street and sidewalk are blocked, the small businesses on Telegraph continue to suffer dramatically. He speculated that if the demolition crew had approached the site from the right direction, pedestrians would have less to fear. He said that Amoeba record store owner Marc Weinstein had suggested a metal canopy which would have shielded the sidewalk, but neither the city nor the building owner agreed to pay for that solution, 

The city has a long history of illegal excessive demolitions. The only one to my memory that has resulted in any penalty was on the lot holding what is now Futura, further up Telegraph at the southwest corner of Durant, which the owner tore down one Saturday 20 years ago (the city generally has poor response on weekends) without any permit, rather than continue fighting with the city over its preservation value, judging that the inevitable fine would be a reasonable price to pay to get his project underway.