“Hiding in Plain Sight,” Food, 7/1
It’s My Fav
Wow … I’ve been a patron of Mayflower since October 2007 when I
first moved to Berkeley. As is my usual custom upon moving to a new
city, I immediately began testing the various Chinese restaurants in
the area to find my fav. I take my Chinese food very seriously.
Now, when I walk into Mayflower, I don’t receive a menu, nor am I
asked what I want. Instead, I seat myself and the waitress simply
confirms that I’ll get the same dish that I’ve gotten each of the 50+
times I’ve come in before. Less than 5-7 minutes later, I have a
delicious plate of General Tso’s chicken (sans broccoli, egg roll,
soup, and salad, per my request).
Thank you for writing this glowing review of Mayflower. One of the
things I’ve come to appreciate after living in Berkeley is the notion
of supporting good restaurants. Your review should help Mayflower
solidify its presence for years to come.
Oh yeah, I shared the review with an old buddy of mine who’s in
journalism school at Missouri. His reply?
He quoted this excerpt: “Holes-in-the-wall are yours until you lose
them. Then you think you’ll never know another. Out there in the
universe they wink. To find one is a measure of belonging.”
Then he proceeded to ask me, “I wonder if this woman is married
yet?”Thanks!
Cedrick Andrews, Berkeley
Save the Sharks
We are absolutely appalled that you would give a good review to a
restaurant that serves shark fin. Perhaps you should check out how
shark fins are secured and the devastating effects on the sharks.
John MacNeil, Berkeley
“You’re Not an Environmentalist If You’re Also a NIMBY,” Feature,
7/1
Growth Okay with Rules
Those of us who live in or near these redevelopment zones are not
opposed to growth so much as growth without rules. There’s a
reason we voted for and have implemented such things as green building
standards and rent control — we believe they make Berkeley a
better place to live. It’s not development that we object to, but
rather developers’ attempts to use the language of smart growth to
exempt themselves from affordable housing requirements and
environmentally sound building processes (things developers have never
wanted in the first place). What’s the point of having laws and
codes if the rich and politically connected don’t have to follow
them?
Hugh Behn-Steinberg, Berkeley
We Need to Live Within Our
Resources
The choice isn’t between high-density housing and
anti-environmentalism — that’s a false choice and a very stupid
way to approach a very serious and complex problem.Decisions that
development agencies in Berkeley and Oakland make do not have binding
consequences for other municipalities. For example, if Oakland decided
to put up high-density housing (and of course reap the tax benefits)
that would not prevent the City of Napa from deciding to pave over
farmland for development (and also reap the tax benefits). Both cities
make their own decisions based on their own desire for tax
money. It’s an old game to pretend that what happens in the big
cities determines what happens in the countryside, but as anyone who
has lived in the countryside knows, small towns and counties desire
those same development dollars and have even fewer other tax sources.
So simply making cities less livable for their inhabitants does nothing
to protect the larger environment.
Making cities less livable also has other consequences. Cities like
Berkeley and Oakland were built to be diverse built environments, not
just streets of brutalist architecture warehousing inhabitants. Some
folks want to live without gardens in high-rise buildings, others do
not. In terms of quality of life, I’ve yet to see any data that says
living far above the street in a shoebox is more fulfilling than living
at street level on a tree-lined street. If you destroy the diversity of
the city (in the name of further tax revenue), people will leave. Where
will they go? To the homes being built around smaller towns that
destroy farmland. And how will further density improve the lives of
those that remain in the cities? Will more cars and less sunshine, more
people and less quiet, make city dwellers happier? Will further
destruction of old buildings in the name of density really improve the
health of the environment? Can city services and infrastructure support
more people? Already we are living atop 100-year-old plumbing. Wouldn’t
it be wise to consider whether we have the resources to support more
people before we cram them in and put ourselves further at risk?
And what about water? Certainly you can cram people into buildings,
but you can’t support endless growth with the available natural
resources. There is only so much water in California and it is already
too little. Simply ignoring natural boundaries to unlimited growth is
foolhardy and we already are living with the consequences of such
reckless behavior. A piece of land can only support a finite number of
people and the sooner we accept that the better. To point the finger at
city dwellers or folks in the countryside and say they are the problem
is absurd. The problem is that government at every level is beholden to
tax revenues based on continuous growth. It is an unsustainable system.
It is an illogical system and it is a broken system.It has become
popular to suggest that we can “grow our way out of our problems,” but
unfortunately that’s exactly the kind of thinking that has got us where
we are today. Instead, we need to look at the system resources as a
whole and live within those resources. In other words, we have to
recognize and honor the natural restrictions that exist in the natural
environment we hope to save. Ignoring those restrictions in favor of
unsustainable growth, whether in cities or countryside, is not
environmentalism.
Randall Potts, Oakland
The Mayor Is the Hijacker
I was astounded to read in your July 1 story on proposed high-rises
in downtown Berkeley that Mayor Tom Bates “says a small, vigilant, and
loud group of anti-growth activists have attempted to hijack the
process.” This statement is not accompanied by any facts, but provides
a framework for the rest of the story, which portrays Bates and his
supporters as paragons of enlightenment who want to build high-rises in
downtown because that is what (your reporter says) is better for the
environment. Apparently a small group of know-nothing activists are
attempting to thwart Mayor Bates’ plan.
That is false. It is the mayor who is attempting to hijack the
process.
Here are the facts: A group of 21 highly regarded citizens,
appointed by the city council, spent two years coming up with a plan
for greater density in downtown Berkeley. Consulting property owners,
developers, environmentalists, residents, the university,
preservationists, and land-use planning experts, they put together a
plan, referred to as DAPAC, that calls for greater density and heights,
but tied to specific public benefits. This plan was a compromise that
the group worked out in a series of intense, thoughtful meetings and
forwarded to the city. DAPAC is supported by the Sierra Club as an
environmentally sound plan for promoting density in the city, a fact
your story fails to mention. That is process. That is not
hijacking.
City planners then came up with a much denser blueprint, put
together in six months and based in part on a feasibility study your
story promotes heavily. (By the way, Mayor Bates indicated at a June 9
city council meeting that any criticism of the feasibility study as
outdated was irrelevant because his plan did not rely on it.) It is
this super dense plan — which calls for six twelve-story
buildings, four towers of eighteen stories PLUS two twenty-story hotel
towers, as well as eight-story buildings right up against residential
neighborhoods — that forms the basis upon which Bates wants to
reshape the downtown. The Bates plan also strips away any requirements
for green building, better transit, and open space. That is hijacking.
That is not process.
Most importantly, your story fails to mention that Bates’ plan
doesn’t actually require any of the high-rises to provide housing
units. Did the mayor mention that to your reporter? Perhaps not. Under
Bates’ plan, Berkeley could end up with a lot of tall office buildings,
which would completely negate the green agenda that spurs the density
argument. San Francisco, after all, has plenty of tall buildings, which
thousands of people commute to from the suburbs for work.
Your story states that developers can only make money on buildings
that are less than 75 feet or at least 180 feet tall because the cost
of steel in buildings over 75 feet requires much greater height to be
financially feasible. Hmmm. And yet, at this very moment, a nine-story
plus condo project is going up on Center Street in downtown Berkeley.
Yes, it’s steel construction. And yes, that project also offers the
kind of public benefits — like below-market housing and community
cultural space — that your story insists would kill development
before it even starts by making life just too damn hard for beleaguered
developers.
I find it curious that your story says Berkeley must allow buildings
of at least 180 feet if it actually wants developers to be motivated to
build anything, but then in the second half says that in Oakland a
75-foot height limit “keeps property values low, making land more
attractive for developers” and that anyway, 75-feet tall housing
achieves “plenty of density.” Which is it?
There is no discussion in your story of the kind of public space
that makes downtowns successful and livable AND ENVIRONMENTALLY SOUND
for all of us who live in this beautiful Bay Area.
As for the last two paragraphs of your story, an editorial
masquerading as a coda that demands that “liberal environmentalists …
do more than just eat organic, install solar panels, or buy a Prius,” I
would suggest that the sweeping stereotypes that both your reporter and
Mayor Bates indulge in are not conducive to thoughtful discussion of
the serious choices facing our community.
Shame on you!
Miranda Ewell, Berkeley
Don’t Forget the SROs
It’s so disappointing to see Robert Gammon, whose work I admire,
jump on the bandwagon representing a false choice between density and
sprawl. The article leaves out the systematic destruction of single
room occupancy (SRO) housing in both Oakland and Berkeley, as well as
anyexamination of “infill development” in the absence of a crucial but
missing ingredient; reliable, affordable transit.
The plans for density are nothing but developer giveaways from
legislators, both local and state, who know how to groom the money
forthe next election. If dense, affordable housing is an important
value, then it stands to reason that SRO housing in Berkeley and
Oakland wouldhave been refurbished rather than destroyed, since
rehabbing old buildings is much better for the environment.
The article falls in the usual trap of wringing its hands over the
equations which, through height or income requirements,
discouragedevelopers by cutting into their bottom line. Nowhere does it
consider the obvious; new, dense housing only creates a handfulof
“affordable” units, usually condos, for a lucky few, while wasting most
of the stucco on “luxury” condos marketed to people who only plan
ashort stay before starting a family somewhere where the kids can still
play. Where is the hand-wringing for low-income people doubled up
ingarages, attics, basements, priced out of Greenbelt Alliance’s
head-in-the-clouds dreams? Perhaps what’s “green” about the
densedevelopments to come is the people camping in tents in nearby
parks. Your next article ought to be an honest assessment of the
expensive,dense housing already built — who lives there and for
how long? Perhaps we’re honestly meeting community housing needs. But
perhaps ourcommunities are now functioning as dormitories for an
overload of short-term students and workers who need a bed when they
can’t make thecommute all the way back to Concord.
Carol Denney, Berkeley
High-Rises Are for Students, Not
Workers
After reading Robert Gammon’s article about development plans for
downtown Berkeley (and Oakland), I felt it was useless free publicity
for the perspectives of UC Berkeley, Tom Bates, and developers. The
high-rise condos planned for Berkeley’s city center will become
“extended” student housing, rather than housing for the average person,
and/or service worker.
Mayor Bates is manipulative with his statement. The “opposition” to
the vast development proposed by UC Berkeley (who has controlling power
of downtown development thanks to a closed-door agreement that Bates
and his council cronies supported) has never said “no growth.”
Worthington’s proposal, reflecting his usual thoroughness as well as
Green Party loyalties, would at least provide additional help to those
most often “shut out” of decent living choices.
I would add that I’m not affiliated with, not have I participated
in, any organized group regarding local issues. As a thirty-year
resident of Berkeley, the pattern of decision making is quite
clear.
Jim Mullins, Berkeley
Residents Support BRT
Robert Gammon’s article was almost right on. However, we are
compelled to disagree with his assertion of “strong opposition to BRT”
in reference to the Telegraph corridor. On the contrary, based on the
results of Measure KK (a recent ballot measure driven by the opponents
of BRT), one could make the opposite argument. The anti-BRT measure
failed not just in the city, but all along the Telegraph corridor as
well. Berkeley Transportation Commissioner Rob Wrenn compiled a
precinct-by-precinct analysis of the Measure KK results, which shows
that even along the Telegraph corridor, Measure KK failed miserably.
You can read Mr. Wrenn’s analysis at: FriendsofBRT.org
While there are opponents to BRT or much change along the Telegraph
corridor, Robert Gammon was correct in stating elsewhere in the article
that the opponents are “a small, but very vocal coalition of city
residents.” We hope that our elected officials keep this article
— and the results of Measure KK — in mind when asked to
make decisions about BRT in the future.
Joel Ramos, TransForm (Oakland)
What about Quality of Life?
As soon as I saw the headline, I said “Yes but ….” It’s a
good argument for Negative Population Growth. Nowhere in that
article is a discussion of the quality-of-life issue. The middle
class don’t want to give up their cars because they psychologically
need the alone time to decompress from the demands of work and the
demands of family, and no amount of intellectual understanding is going
to change that. Likewise, condoizing Telegraph doesn’t deal with the
issues of privacy loss of high-density living (listening to your
neighbors’ dramas and sex lives and music thru your walls) (which is
really why people who can afford to are willing to pay for
space). Not to mention the other reason people move: the
schools. (!) And what about pets? What about crime? What about
having a place to sit and enjoy the dry season weather without a bus
stopping for you? What about playgrounds? I realize that some
of these issues can be addressed by good design but I don’t think
plonking condos down on Telegraph Avenue is much of a plan. If
you’ve tried to walk around on Telegraph or even Shattuck, you know
there’s already about as much density as the sidewalks will
hold. And for Oakland, there’s the additional issue of lack of
grocery stores. But seriously, what are the psychological and
social consequences?
Gail Garrison, Berkeley
Offices Won’t Help Global Warming
Robert Gammon’s article failed to explain how the proposal for
extreme growth in downtown Berkeley will generate
new housing. The author asserted that urban housing was
needed to respond to global warming. Since most, if not all, of
the new dense growth proposed in downtown Berkeley is intended for
UC Berkeley office use, the development will likely increase
commuting, further aggravate Berkeley’s jobs-housing
imbalance, and be counterproductive in our fight against global
warming.
Wendy Alfsen, Berkeley
Development Is a Positive-Sum Game
Mike Pyatok may be correct that only small sections of downtown
Oakland should be rezoned for tall buildings, but his economics are
wrong. Development is a quintessential positive-sum game, not the
zero-sum game between developers and property owners that he describes.
The incentive to develop exists when surplus value in excess of
building costs can be created and divided between the developer and the
property owner. The fact that “property values usually increase when
land is rezoned for high-rises” is a clue that in most cases sufficient
surplus value has existed to enable both the developer and the property
owner to come out ahead.
If Pyatok is correct that tall buildings in most of Oakland will not
produce enough surplus value to justify the higher building costs,
development will be prevented precisely because property values will
not increase when the land is rezoned and therefore property owners
will lack the incentive to develop the property. That would be the
reason that the property will not be developed as intended, not an
imagined artificial increase in property values.
Conversely, increasing the current 65-foot height limit to 75 feet
in most places as Pyatok suggests would achieve increased density
precisely because it increases property values, giving property owners
an incentive to develop the property, not because it makes land more
attractive to developers by keeping property values low.
Robert Denham, Berkeley
A Ripple Effect of Growth
Re Robert Gammon’s one-sided, name-calling polemic, Berkeley and
Oakland developers have for years promoted denser and thus more
profitable housing projects by claiming that they would mitigate such
regional problems as traffic and air pollution. That might have been
true if those projects had offset development in places such as
Brentwood and Pleasanton, but suburban and exurban sprawl instead
continued apace with dense infill development.
The reality is a ripple effect of pervasive growth: Manhattanize San
Francisco > urbanize the suburbs > suburbanize farmland.
Hypocritical developers such as Pulte Homes have gone so far as to make
the anti-sprawl argument for their local infill projects while
simultaneously pushing the borders of exurban sprawl by building
housing tracts in Oakley and Mountain House.The population in the Bay
Area has already grown well beyond the level that can be sustained by
the available natural resources. For example, PG&E gets only 25
percent of its power from renewable sources; EBMUD has to impose
rationing in dry years and is seeking funding for a prototype
desalinization plant; Berkeley and other cities dump raw sewage into
the Bay and truck garbage long distances to landfill. Any further
development would exacerbate all these problems; we should impose a
moratorium on further development throughout the region until we solve
them.Gammon failed to mention that Erin Rhodes, the executive director
of the developers’ pseudo-environmentalist front organization Livable
Berkeley, is married to Mark Rhodes, a business partner of developer
Ali Kashani. Her claim that “the lack of new housing development over
the past few decades has made Berkeley almost entirely unaffordable” is
nonsense. Vacancy rates have increased from their historic lows during
in the dot-com era, and rents have dropped accordingly. As Berkeley
developers’ best friend Mayor Tom Bates brags in his bio on the city’s
web site, “in the last five years, the City has approved over 1,500 new
units of housing.” As noted in the City Council’s resolution approving
the Climate Action Plan, between 1999 and 2006 Berkeley built 1,234 new
housing units, which was 97 percent of the goal set by the extremely
pro-development Association of Bay Area Governments.
As for Rhodes’ claim that “housing in cities already is much greener
because people have shorter commutes,” Berkeley’s not a city, it’s a
suburb, and the same is true for most of Oakland. Most people I know
here lucky enough to have jobs commute to places like Newark and San
Mateo. Adding more housing to a bedroom community means more commute
miles, but so long as it also means more profits for developers, that’s
fine with Livable Berkeley.
Robert Lauriston, Berkeley
High Density, but Not High-Rises
Great article on NIMBYism. All communities should accommodate
their own local needs and not simply push them off. The good news is
there are few mysteries to effective planning for higher
density. Thus, no grounds for more studies; further
delay. Any of the finer, more livable cities of northern Europe
could be used as example; their policies simply adopted. The time
is now to catch up. Let’s do it quickly.
However, note that higher density development does not mean
high-rise construction. Urban sociologists know what happens when
structures exceed heights of 6-7 stories. First, such tall
structures place many surrounding buildings in permanent shade. As
access to direct sunlight is known to be critical for physical and
mental health (access required by law in Europe), such construction
here is simply unacceptable. Further, such structures tend to
damage social fabric. Guarded lobbies and gated garages tend to
create social separation and preempt casual street
interaction. Further, residents of high-rise structures tend to
lose perception and thus attachment to their own streets. Streets
in front of high-rises usually become un-loved, potentially dangerous
canyons. Simply put, at more human building scales of 6-7 stories
or less, the social fabric, so critical to maintaining comfortable and
safe neighborhoods, remains intact.
As Berlin’s retired chief city planner stated wryly during a
presentation at UCB several years ago: “We realized our
mistakes. No architecture should be allowed to underscore the
insignificance of man.”
Ray Perman, Piedmont
Who’s Behind “Smart Growth”?
We first heard of “Smart Growth” when Al Gore was campaigning in
2000. It was suggested then that suburban
cities should increase their share of density by reducing the size of
building sites, (lots had become an acre and more in size) and by
developing taller buildings in a more compact and concentrated town
center. They claimed the goal was to help preserve farmland and natural
open space. That made sense, didn’t it?!
Since then a different version of “Smart Growth” has crept into
Berkeley. As promoted by our Planning Department, the new goal
appears to require bulky buildings to stack the population in cramped
units, so that mass transit can reverse its declining ridership. The
mantras of the smart growth development in Berkeley became project
density and intensity, reduced parking, reduced open space and yards,
and the reuse of polluted former gas station sites.
There are several census tracts in West Berkeley that have been
designated as “most impoverished.”* Any census tract in which at least
20 percent of the population is at or below the poverty level, or the
area median income score is not more that 80 percent of the
metropolitan area median income, makes the tract a “targeted
growth accommodation area.” The current diversification of uses in
the West Berkeley area includes modest housing, craft workshops,
bakeries, caterers, artists, potters, etc. It has been noted that West
Berkeley has contributed to a more stable Berkeley economy than in
areas devoted to mostly high-tech industries. We see a massive
project next to the overpass near University Avenue and 6th Street that
will increase real estate values, forcing small industries and
low-income residents out, while increasing the city tax base.
Additionally, Smart Growth wants Transit Oriented Developments,
TODs, as we have seen erupting along University, Telegraph, and San
Pablo avenues. Waiting in the wings are “Transit Villages,”
located around BART stations and bus hubs. The “Smart” handbook,
funded by the Bank of America, recognizes that “due to fragmented land
ownership around most stations, and the inherent risks for potential
developers in taking on such sites, it is often necessary for local
redevelopment agencies to assist in the acquisition and assembling of
land through eminent domain.”
The Smart Growth promoters recommend TDRs (Transfer of Development
Rights) separating “development rights” from a physical property
allowing sale and transfer of its square foot units to another property
some distance away. The receiving lot is then allowed to build
beyond the maximum standards set by its original zoning ordinance
limits
Finally, on a more hopeful note, in Appendix E near the end of
the Smart Growth handbook there is a plan for a “Walkable
Neighborhood.” It says, buildings in such neighborhoods “need not
exceed three stories to accommodate compact development. Primary
buildings shall not exceed 35 feet, accessory buildings shall not
exceed 25 feet.” Minimum density in residential neighborhoods would
produce projects having an overall density of at least 5 units per
gross acre. Each multi-family unit shall have a patio, deck, or
balcony of at least 50 square feet, with a minimum clear dimension of 6
feet. For each unit, an additional 100 square feet of open space
shall be provided either as private open space in association with the
unit or as semi-private open space to be shared among
residents. This is a hopeful sign that not all planners are in
cahoots with the developers. For numerous aesthetic planning
considerations directed at quality growth, visit EnvisionUtah.org
Who is behind this how-to-do-it “Smart Growth” publication besides
the Bank of America? Developers of course, followed by Planning
Department teacher and students at UC Berkeley, Urban Studies students
at SF State University, the American Design Association, architects, a
former ABAG planner and the Urban Land Institute. *Smart
Growth in the San Francisco Bay Area: Effective Local Approaches,
published by the Urban Land Institute, June 2003
Martha Nicoloff, Co-author of the Neighborhood Preservation
Ordinance,former member Planning Commission and Zoning Adjustments
Board, Berkeley
Development for Whom?
Upon reading Robert Gammon’s story in the July 1 issue of the
East Bay Express, I was, once again, struck by the numerous
disconnects and misrepresentations that always arise when the
discussion about density in downtown Berkeley takes place (the place I
am most familiar with and thus limiting my comments to; I’m a 22-year
resident of the downtown Berkeley area, a three-time elected School
Board member, former Chair of the Community Environmental Advisory
Commission of the City of Berkeley, and endorsed in the past by both
the Green Party and the Sierra Club, as well as living in an entirely
carless and solar-electric household). I will start with several facts
that very few “journalists” or policy-makers ever discuss or address in
this ongoing discussion:
1) There are an inordinate number of vacant, and thus depressed,
storefronts/buildings in the downtown Berkeley area.
2) There are limited and less and less service-oriented businesses
in the downtown area in the 20-plus years I have lived, worked, and
shopped in downtown Berkeley (groceries, jewelers, clothes/shoe stores.
dentists, etc.).
3) Older rental housing has more and more been replaced by condos,
one-bedroom or studio-apartment complexes (suitable and in fact
marketed primarily to UC students) and other non-family housing
units.
4) Two major downtown Berkeley developments, the not-Gaia building
and the not-Fine Arts building, did not provide the cultural and public
amenities promised in their early approval. In fact, the not-Gaia
building has provided a community detriment, in the form of several
highly publicized parties/receptions that have resulted in underage
drinking and violent behavior. One large downtown development, Library
Gardens, provides student housing at rents approaching $3,000 per
month.
Leaving aside the extensive community-driven DAPAC process, which
resulted in recommendations for higher downtown density offset by real
community benefits, the as-yet unverified assertions that providing
studio and one-bedroom apartments and condos to students and young
single professionals prevents suburban sprawl (how is it even possible
that UC Berkeley students would consider living in Tracey or Brentwood
or wherever the so-called suburban sprawl is occurring?), and the large
giveaways to CORPORATE often out-of-town development interests, we are
unwittingly changing the demographics, the character, and the
livability of our downtown area with very little regard for
quality-of-life consequences. Berkeley City Councilmember Linda Maio
was quoted in a subsequent SF Chronicle article on the same
topic as saying “We all want the same things…,” implying that if all
of us wish hard enough we will somehow get what we want. This is not
only disingenuous, but suggests the majority of our councilmembers do
not want, or are incapable of, the hard work, analysis, research, and
full discussion and debate that would ensure a downtown that is vibrant
and livable for residents and developers alike. I guess that is
something I can only wish for.
John T. Selawsky, Berkeley School Board, Berkeley
Corrections
In our July 8 feature “What is Killing the East Bay’s Soul Food
Restaurants?” we erroneously printed some uncharitable comments about
the former owner of Declancy’s Welcome Table restaurant without
confirming the information. Restaurateur Tami Rabb takes issue with a
consultant’s characterization of her as lacking “business sense,”
noting that she also serves as a manager at a Ross Dress For Less
store. And she denies the assertion that she and her family briefly
moved into her restaurant as she was attempting to keep its doors open.
Finally, she invites readers to visit her new restaurant, A Taste of
581, at 581 5th St., in downtown Oakland.
In the same story, we also reported that the Caribbean restaurant
Ital Calabash had closed. Although the restaurant’s former Oakland
location is indeed closed, new proprietor Ross Daniel reports that the
restaurant’s Berkeley location remains open despite its out-of-service
phone.
