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Oxford St. development must consider the creek 

(Congregaton Beth El wants to develop the land at 1301 Oxford St. The project will be discussed at the Zoning Adjustments Board meeting on Thursday, 7 p.m., 2134 Martin Luther King Jr. Way.) 

By Horst and Eva Bansner 

Is a Creek Not a Creek… if Congregation Beth El prefers a surface parking lot and a bus transfer station? 

Berkeley has adopted policy recognizing the values of natural creeks in the Municipal Code: “Streams and their riparian environment should be held as an important public asset in an increasingly endangered environment that provides an unusual urban ecological habitat with recreational and aesthetic value...it is in the interest of the city to encourage the removal of culverts and channels, prevent channel ripping, and to restore natural watercourses whenever safely possible... Restoration means the unearthing of a culverted stream or natural watercourse and the design of a new open channel to re-create the original stream channel and environment.” 

This policy must apply to Codornices Creek if anywhere. Berkeley has only one creek close to being open from the Bay through hills with steel-head trout already returning to its lower reaches: Codornices Creek.  

There is only natural feature visible from the Bay on the earliest photos of North Berkeley: a line of riparian trees along Codornices Creek that formed the backdrop for the white house landmark.  

Berkeley also has a public precedent on this same site. In 1992 a Chinese Christian Church sought a permit to add classrooms. Approval was predicated on leaving the creek corridor as open space, keeping the driveway and parking away from the unstable creek banks and respecting the historic development footprint of “The Farm” (Napoleon Bonaparte Byrne) landmark. Local architect Bill Coburn designed a school element for the Chinese Christian Church of the East Bay that respected those public interests. 

Yet now there is a Beth El development proposal that would envelop “The Farm” site with 35,000 square feet of building, a parking lot over the creek corridor and a drive tearing through the live oak woodland being brazened through normal review processes, dynamiting the Landmarks Preservation Commission along the way.  

On Jan. 25 staff Vivian Kahn told Zoning Adjustments Board members that – as staff did not record the findings and considerations of the Board in granting the 1992 permit on the same site – precedent was irrelevant. The current owners have more friends and everything Berkeley planners and engineers knew about the public interest in restoring creeks is forgotten.  

The part of Codornices Creek threatened is the most beautiful of all, selected by Napoleon Bonaparte Byrne for “The Farm” in 1856. A plan for a street beside the creek corridor was turned back by community sensitivities; Berryman path was built instead.  

Even after a second arson destroyed the farmhouse, the Landmarks Commission reaffirmed the landmark designation of the site. Care of the creek corridor was undertaken by community gardeners, as long as they were allowed on the site. The plan submitted is blind to the neighborhood context of the (R1-H) district that has consciously preserved natural features in its development pattern.  

This plan shows a building above the height limit flowing from street to street with one continuous eaveline. The blockbuster mocks the creek corridor now there that is to be truncated to make way for surface parking.  

The Design Review Committee had the temerity to recommend that the mass be broken up on January 31; staff responded, “we’re only looking for conditions of approval.” The oak woodland that borders Berryman Path and connects to Live Oak Park is to be sliced, smaller plants bulldozed and larger trees killed more slowly with soil compaction; four “protected” old live oaks are to be moved and other are to provide a canopy for the drive and parking until root compaction kills them.  

The Environmental Impact Reports suggests that City staff will figure out how to preserve these trees after project approval. Six-foot and higher sound walls along Spruce Street and Berryman Path shutting out views of a creek corridor are indicated on the plans or EIR, with a gated private roadway and parking lot replacing the community gardens.  

Over 2,400 people who have signed petitions to protect the creek corridor can visualize the impact. How can redesign be unthinkable?  

Codornices Creek is the most open creek in Berkeley, passing through Codornices and Live Oak Parks, along St Mary’s High School, through backyards of several neighborhoods and by the new Harrison fields on the Berkeley-Albany border. When development proposals come in along such a creek, creek restoration needs to be included in the plans as at Eighth Street and at Albany Village. We will not have saved the Bay until we systematically restore natural waterways feeding it.  

A creek is a creek, regardless of this year’s “ownership.” State bond funding for creek restoration announces the public interest and the financial feasibility clearly. There are obviously alternatives that would respect the creek. To limit pollution going into the creek, the Regional Water Quality Control Board said the driveway and parking should be as far away from the creek as possible.  

A drive along the south side of the lot, furthest from the Creek, would allow access to more sufficient and less obtrusive parking under the building. It would provide access to Spruce Street at an intersection where other traffic obliquely entering Spruce can at least be seen.  

It would interfere least with the bus stop and pedestrian access. It would avoid spewing traffic noise in the creek corridor, protected from a roadway all these years. Staff response to the Design Review Committee questions on soundwalls Wednesday January 31: We’ll build it; then we’ll test it; then we’ll do something if we have to.”  

Still there are no story poles to indicate the height and sprawl of the building and still no stakes for the drive and parking lot so that decision makers would have some idea of what they are being asked to approve. How could Berkeley countenance a plan to pave an irreplaceable creek corridor so that kids can be assembled in buses and driven off to nature somewhere else? This is good education?  

Horst & Eva Bansner are members of the Live Oak Codornices Creek Neighborhood Association