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A BERKELEY CITIZEN'S DIARY: Something Fishy At the Marina
It’s hard to know what District 2 Councilmember Taplin had in mind for the Council Facilities, Infrastructure, Transportation, Environment and Sustainability Committee (FITES) for the 2 pm meeting on Wednesday March 19, 2025 with the agenda item 2. Discussion Item: Waterfront Specific Plan Update: Cesar Chavez Park Next Steps. There were no matching documents and Taplin who is a member of the committee didn’t attend the meeting, but passed on a request that the item be placed on the next agenda.
The City Council vision to gentrify the Marina has been at odds with the Marina users since the proposal for a ferry floated out of the Berkeley City Council on May 8, 2018. I remember that evening well as that was the night at 2 hours 2 minutes into the special meeting Sophie Hahn talked about wanting a visionary plan and related her earliest memories of the marina riding in a taxi to the heliport and getting on a helicopter with her family to fly to SFO. She mentioned that of those many trips by helicopter one of them even made it into a picture in the San Francisco Chronicle.
The proposal from former Mayor Arreguin came with the promise that the expansion of WETA (Water Emergency Transportation Authority) ferry services would pay for the pier (closed in 2015 due to safety concerns) and Berkeley wouldn’t have to pay for anything except for well this portion of the pier that wasn’t part of the ferry service and upgrades on the land side.
I’ve always felt there was something fishy about the pier and ferry projections and that certainly fit the picture at the Parks, Recreation and Waterfront Commission on March 12, 2025.
Liza McNulty Capital Improvement Manager presented the TDM (Transportation Demand Management) Vehicle Trip and Parking Reduction Methodology to the commission with emphasis on the 18,000 data points of parking utilization at the Marina used in the analysis. She went through photos, charts and graphs showing how parking could be increased with striping the lots and parking enforcement. She told the commission and public attendees the highest parking utilization was in June on a Saturday at 2 pm. She implied in her presentation that the times of highest utilization were used in the analysis. And she went through an exercise on how parking enforcement could entice Marina users to find other methods of transportation to the Marina.
All these gyrations came to a happy ending with sufficient available parking for a ferry and recreational users of the Marina.
For anyone who had not read the report in the packet (note the packet was as usual not posted until sometime deep into the weekend), this all sounded perfectly wonderful.
hen we heard from the public. One of the public attendees Gordon Stout pointed out that the report specifically stated (on page 22) only 10 am and 8 pm parking counts were used and these were averaged. Peak utilization hours 2 pm and 4 pm were specifically excluded. The history of vehicle parking counts at 10 am and 8 pm were to monitor for overnight parking by homeless persons sleeping in vehicles.
The entire happy ending of the 129 page parking study and report in the March 12 Parks, Recreation and Waterfront Commission agenda is based on the hours of low utilization to push forward how a ferry for commuters will not impact Marina recreation users.
There are no estimates in the report how much it will cost to monitor and ticket parking lot users.
It should be remembered that the Marina is a place where lower income families can currently go for free and ferry users as self-identified in previous WETA surveys using existing ferry services are majority high-income earners.
Much of the early evening public comment to the commission revolved around the sudden closure of the heavily used East Dock due to deterioration. As pointed out in the letter from Noah Marcel Sudarsky (included in the packet) the City answer is always the same, structural issues, no money to fix it and better and bigger projects are coming through future developments.
This gives the appearance that the City deliberately fails to maintain infrastructure to justify some future project to which the public would otherwise object.
The new Commission chair Abshez pushed through a request to Council to direct the City Manager to create the Cesar Chavez Park Vision. This is after the Marina plan renamed as the Waterfront Specific Plan with a City investment of around $1.5 million on “main” consultants Hargreaves Jones (six subconsultants listed) to create a waterfront plan. That plan fell flat months ago.
The discussion prior to the vote circled around who would make up this task force or committee that would create the vision for Cesar Chavez Park and would these visioning meetings be public. These questions were never satisfactorily answered.
The measure passed with one abstention.
I always feel uneasy about these task forces/committees. They always seem to come under the pretense of being public and transparent while being the opposite.
Here is the link to the Parks, Recreation and Waterfront Commission Agenda Packet:
