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An Activist's Diary, Week Ending 3/14
Just how to tell you what is happening with so much colliding in one week is at best a messy story and it’s going to come to you out of order.
Huge Commercial Project at Aquatic Park Moves Forward
Berkeley Commons at 600 Addison is a commercial project proposal for property bounded by Bancroft, Addison, Aquatic Park and the railroad tracks. The plan is to clear the land of the existing structures and construct two buildings for a Research and Development “campus” with lots of glass, a great view of the Bay, 1300 – 1600 expected employees and fully utilized parking structures for 924 cars. According to the proposal, the project is to be landscaped to blend into the park.
There has been some pushback from the public for the developer to consider sea level rise, add more native plants, save more trees and most of all use bird safe glass since the project is in the bird migratory path and attached to Aquatic Park where there are lots of birds.
Bolivar Drive, which is city property within the park, would be used for an employee shuttle, and would be paved for the length of the project. Members of the public have asked for the shuttle to be taken off Bolivar Drive and for other cars to be kept out of the park.
The developer failed to get the blessing of the Parks and Waterfront Commission on February 10th and so was back for a 2nd attempt on March 10th. The Parks Commission had a list of desired conditions put together and presented by Commissioner Erin Diehm, three of which were accepted by developer, followed by the full commission’s unanimous vote: 1) Bird safe glass on the west facing walls and wrapped around at the corners, 2) nighttime dark skies and 3) protection of the redwoods at the northwest corner.
But a kicker was learned Friday after the meeting: The developer presented old plans to the Parks Commission on March 10th, not the revision that was turned into city staffer Anne Burns on March 5th to be presented to the Design Review Commission this coming week, March 18th. https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Planning_and_Development/Zoning_Adjustment_Board/600_Addison_-_ZP2019-0215.aspx
The new plans have major design changes and raise the buildings to be 14 feet above current sea level. This certainly is a good idea, however everyone seems to be ignoring information that sea level rise, at the current predictions of 7 ½ to 10 ½ feet by 2100, will bring rising groundwater with it. This location is looking more and more like a problem, but with the City addicted to the developer money which supports the City of Berkeley Planning Department thhis big project will probably sail through. https://www.usgs.gov/centers/pcmsc/science/cosmos-groundwater?qt-science_center_objects=0#qt-science_center_objects
Harold Way: will it rise again?
It is groundwater that was the final link in sinking the 2211 Harold Way project, which brings us to an email I received Friday. CA Student Living Berkeley, an affiliate of CA Ventures, is reported to have paid $20 million for the property at 2060 Allston Way (the 2211 Harold Way site).
CA does not stand for California, or at least not until now. CA Ventures https://www.ca-ventures.com/real-estate/student,based in Chicago, Illinois, is a REIT (Real Estate Investment Trust) which owns and develops property worldwide including student housing and senior housing. One more REIT in town.
You might say REITs love deregulation. Deregulation, often marketed as zoning reform, paves the investors’ and speculators’ dreams and lines their pockets. Each time zoning “reform” relaxes rules about what can be built at any particular location, the value of the land upzoned increases. In Patrick M. Condon’s book Sick City: Disease, Race, Inequality and Urban Land, page 12 he writes, “…the smartest people in the development game are the land speculators, men and women who make a handy living out of hunting up land that might soon be ‘improved’ by the provision of a new highway, a new transit station or a change in allowable land use…” [emphasis added]
CaliforniaYIMBY( an advocacy group financed by real estate interests and big tech) is the other group that clings to deregulation. It suggests that if just enough housing is built the cost of buying a condo or renting that little unit or room will go down. It doesn’t.
The underlying girders keeping those rents high and going up are the REITs (Real Estate Investment Trusts) that hold the property. In times like these, when smaller entities and families can’t hold on to apartment buildings or family homes, it is a buying opportunity for REITs, especially in conjunction with deregulation.
Upzoning plus over the counter and by-right approval and more are in the works.
Monday afternoon was the City Council Agenda and Rules Committee. After the mishap at the March 1st Land Use Committee, District 8 Councilmember Lori Droste announced on March 4th that she was going to confer privately with the Mayor on how to move Quadplex Zoning forward. Quadplex Zoning reform centers on ministerial (administrative, over-the-counter) approval of quadplexes, triplexes and duplexes basically anywhere in Berkeley with a few very narrow exceptions. Ministerial approval means no public input, no public hearings, no design review of proposed buildings.
Mayor Arreguin’s answer kicked off the meeting:
“The item [quadplex zoning] will be submitted in a substantially different form…the concept of exploring…four units is not going away, but repackaged as a broader referral around how to achieve compliance with our new RHNA requirements…so that item will be brought back at a future point…reframed as a much more comprehensive referral…and Councilmember Droste indicated that she does intend to move this conversation forward. When the item is resubmitted, I will be calling a special meeting of the Council most likely on March 25th, to have a discussion at Council and to take public testimony.”
RHNA is the Regional Housing Needs Assessment. Since 1969 California has required that all local governments plan to meet the housing needs of the community by income category: very low income, low income, moderate income and above moderate (AKA market rate). The amount of housing, the number of units required to be added in Berkeley, is established by ABAG (Association of Bay Area Governments), of which Arreguin has been President.
There is no punishment for not meeting the requirements of RHNA and certainly there is no punishment for not building the number of extremely low income, very low or low income housing units assigned to Berkeley, but these numbers are used to justify deregulation and quickly roll off the tongues of the mayor and councilmembers now pushing the deregulation resolutions, ordinances and referrals.
The punishment is as always borne by the poor who end up on the street, those who double and triple up in space to meet the rent and those who live farther and farther away from work. And then there is the ever expanding of construction of fancy priced/market rate apartments to contend with.
Berkeley is saturated with a glut of market rate apartments, and more are coming.
With five hands in the pot already (Arreguin, Taplin, Droste, Bartlett, Kesarwani) whatever is cooked up for that March 25th special Council meeting, looks ready to pass. Councilmember Wengraf seemed to have found her voice Monday, as she asked for the process to be slowed down and work sessions to be scheduled before action meetings. My guess is the flood of calls and emails are having an impact.
There is a way to stop this cycle, but that requires serious affordable housing requirements for development on upzoned land, and that is not what we are getting. It also requires a Council that hasn’t drunk the deregulation koolaid. The Droste Quadplex Zoning Resolution is especially pernicious: It’s deregulation with no affordable housing requirement.
Terry Taplin’s Affordable Housing Overlay proposal which is on the Land Use Committee agenda again for March 18th sounds great at first glance, but it is a far stretch from the Cambridge, MA ordinance it references. The Cambridge ordinance carries with it the requirement that 80% of the units built under the expanded zoning rules must be for households whose income is no more than 80% of the area median income (AMI). https://www.cambridgema.gov/-/media/Files/CDD/Housing/Overlay/adoptedahoordinance.pdf Cambridge also has specific design guidelines, and requires project , not ministerial, approval. https://www.cambridgema.gov/-/media/Files/CDD/Housing/Overlay/zngamend_aho_designguidelines_20200728v2.pdf
Where have all the referrals gone?
The last piece out of the Agenda Committee meeting which took place on Monday are pages 260 – 338 of the meeting packet, which contain the spread sheet of the 509 referrals sent to the City Manager for action. The date of the referrals is not given in the 78 page list.
Some people call referrals to the Manager the graveyard, and that is an apt name for the birds that are still waiting for the Bird Safety ordinance. That measure sits on the list and at the Planning Commission with no action.
Public Safety ReImagining ReImagined
The last meeting to be covered (though not the last meeting of the week attended) is the Reimagining Public Safety Task Force. https://www.cityofberkeley.info/RIPST.aspx
There are 17 members of the task force, and they arrived at the Thursday, March 11th meeting ready for work, only to find the work was really proceeding without them. As the presentations to the task force from the consultants and Deputy City Manager David White proceeded, Dan Lindheim (former Oakland City Manager and Berkeley resident) was the first to say that the role of the Task Force seems unclear, and that it seems like the work gets done and only then the Task Force is called in for input.
David White responded to Lindheim’s questions that [work] is “not in the purview of the task force.” Near the end of the meeting, Edward Opton called the Task Force “public relations window dressing.”
The consultants, the National Institute of Criminal Justice Reform (NICJR), complained about the budget ($270,000) not being enough. They said the work would start with a survey and they were waiting for approval of the survey questions by the City Manager, which led to another round from the Task Force, asking why there would be a public survey which they didn’t even see.
Boona Cheema, the Task Force Vice Chair, asked if at least the Vice Chair and Chair Mizell could be included in the meetings with the consultants, but that was met with a noncommittal answer from David White—a “we’ll see” which sounded more like a no. https://www.cityofberkeley.info/RIPST.aspx
Last Words
Well maybe that wasn’t the last committee meeting covered. There was the budget meeting. The presentation charts included a $35,000,000 budget deficit. The mid-year budget status is on this coming Tuesday’s Council work session agenda. It is probably worth watching.
Further Assignments
If you have any interest in housing and why rents are so out of whack with what people can afford to pay, the book Sick City Disease, Race, Inequality and Urban Land by Patrick M. Condon, 2021 is invaluable. It’s not very long, only 125 pages of actual reading and free as an e-book from the author. You can, of course, buy a printed bound version from Amazon.
Sick City Disease, Race, Inequality and Urban Land by Patrick M. Condon, All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Any part of this book may be reproduced without author permission with credit to the author. (125 pages actual reading - 166 pages total including bibliography, index, etc.)
Any trouble with the free download link, search used: sick cities disease, race, inequality and urban land free download, look for uploads-ssl.webflow.com,
The author intended to have the free download with only the bound printed book to be sold.
Professor Condon also has a 37 minute YouTube talk explaining density and sick cities which was recorded at an online meeting of Livable California:
. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24vf2c9AIwQ
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Enough for one sitting. I’ll leave the book I finished for another day, The Devil You Know A Black Power Manifesto by Charles M. Blow, 2021
