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It's not really a hotel and the hippy part is weak, but there's a sense in which Ken Sarachan's plans for an ambitious redevelopment of the Berkeley Inn burned-out site at Telegraph and Haste is best understood as a hippy hotel. The barren site has served as a sullen reminder of the bygone hippy era for more than twenty-five years. 

Work on the neo-hippy hotel could begin as early as "eighteen months" from now, according to a veteran observer in city government. Plans to develop the site have stalled in the past. 

By e-mail Kriss Worthington, district 7 councilman, writes that "After the Planning Department gets a complete application they will make a recommendation to the ZAB [Zoning Adjustment Board]. It usually takes months if not years. I am trying to fix the whole zoning process." 

This may be why Sarachan says the future of his project rests with "Kriss." 

According to Dave Fogarty, a city economic planner, plans to re-open Raleigh's and Intermezzo as temporary structures are "moving forward," after recent delays. 

A plan to extend parking on Telegraph is in the works. The plan is not connected to the hippy hotel. 

The neo-hippy hotel, 74 units of “mostly gracious" one bedrooms,” is hardly hippy, and hardly hotel. The Berkeley Inn was a true hippy hotel, with a slew of roach motel residents and guests, including roaches. 

The notorious Black Flag insecticide—Roach Motel—advertised: "the roaches check in, but they don't check out." Berkeley Inn guests got out but the roaches were toast—as advertised. 

Call the project Ken's Kastle, a mix of whimsy and functionalism, which will have etched-in-stone winding steps leading to a roof-top garden, where public events like book sales, fairs, and wine tastings will serve fun. 

According to Sarachan, movies could be projected from the Kastle's roof onto the side of the soon-to-open adjacent Anna Head dormitory. Anything for fun. 

Although Sarachan is a savvy businessman who owns at least four Teley student-oriented businesses, including Rasputin's Music at Telegraph and Durant, he likes to mix business with pleasure. Playful touches enhance everything he does. 

In the hippy ethos, playful invariably led.  

The Teley kingpin is one of a dwindling club of colorful Teley businessmen who want Teley to continue as an avenue of wacky ways, as it was in days of yore. 

But as Telegraph property owners brace for a marketing shoot-out with the university's planned 24-hour Lower Sproul Plaza business mall and food court, which aims to provide many of the products offered on Teley, Sarachan has become a one man solution to Telegraph's decline. 

That decline, according to Dave Fogarty, a city economic planner, began in the early 1990s , and has continued to dive. 

Fogarty, who is not speaking for the city manager's office, says that any upturn in profits on the avenue, which could be anticipated if Sarachan's dreams come true, could signal an upturn. 

In our November 29 Planet piece, "Killer Crane' Killing Our Past or Building Our Future?, " we anticipated better times for Telelegraph, even as we witnessed the rubble-izing of what we have called "Berkeley's Center," at Telegraph and Haste while Cody's still stood. 

Workers were tending the Cody building, owned by Sarachan, Wednesday. Asked if they were doing routine retrofitting; a worker called their work "remodeling," for a bookstore, but Fogarty and Sarachan dismissed that. 

Fearing, he said, rebuke from the ghost of Moe Moskowitz, deceased founder of Moe's books two doors down, Sarachan said he wouldn't tangle with the ghost by opening a bookstore near Moe's. Sarachan is not the only Teley ghost-watcher. We have written repeatedly of Teley ghosts, and have noticed other Teley businesses (eg. Pappy's, at the Blake’s-haunted site) responding. 

Sarachan was willing to risk a visit from the Moe ghost when he recently opened a twenty-five cent book, record, and video store, two doors South of Rasputin's. The Moe ghost is probably enjoying the treasures to be found there. 

At Tuesday's unveiling of Ken's Kastle, Sarachan told me there has been no interest by renters in the Cody site—zilch. 

Although Sarachan, who owns a fair-sized share of the avenue, is far from its major  

landlord, he is a one man business district, with plans to restore it to past glories. But first he had to rid the Berkeley Inn site of the rats for which he had been blamed. After investigating, Sarachan found the man who had been seeding the Berkeley Inn lot. 

The man agreed to stop feeding the rats, and according to Sarachan, the Berkeley Inn rats, who last starred on-line in a much-viewed video—are gone. 

But Sarachan's most ambitious plan to save the avenue is still in the planning stages. His plan—here unveiled—to expand parking validations in the city-owned parking lot just below Channing and Telegraph would go a long way to solve the Avenue's parking problems, he says. 

Parking, not street people, is the cause of Teley's decline, according to Sarachan, who noted that when he first arrived in Berkeley in the sixties Teley businesses were supported by numerous open-air parking lots. People's Park was a former parking spot for a few years, he recalls. 

Parking unavailability has killed off entire downtowns nation-wide. 

The Planet promises to keep up with Sarachan's parking plan, which must be sold to the city of Berkeley, as well as to the Planet, which is now watching Sarachan's one-businessman's efforts to save a storied street. 

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Ted Friedman continues his on-going business reporting from the surprising South-side where he has lived for 35 years.