.The View from Berkeley

In the fight over density in downtown, both sides are claiming to be "more green" than the other.

The Berkeley City Council has cleared the way for developers to
build more, taller buildings in the center of the city. But some
traditional opponents of big development, who helped draft an earlier
of version of the downtown plan, are gearing up to derail the council’s
decision, gathering signatures to put a referendum on the 2010
ballot.

Calling themselves “Alliance for a Green and Livable Downtown,” the
opponents of the plan adopted by the city council last week have
roughly one month to gather about 5,500 signatures — 10 percent
of the number of votes in Berkeley’s 2008 mayor’s race. The opponents
are starting the process of recruiting volunteers and have a web site
— GreenDowntownBerkeley.org.
Council members Kriss Worthington and Jesse Arreguín, who voted
against the council majority’s plan for downtown, have already
indicated that they support the referendum.

In their drive to overturn the downtown plan, opponents will be
going up against local smart growth and environmental groups as well as
Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates. “We hope there is not a referendum, but if
there is we’ll fight it vigorously,” Bates said.

The group supporting the referendum is motivated in part by what is
in the plan, but even more so by anger at how the process for creating
it unfolded. The first draft of Berkeley’s new downtown plan was
crafted during two years of meetings and negotiations by a 21-member
commission put together by the city council in 2005. The majority of
this group agreed on a much denser downtown with a handful of towers,
but they also sought to make developers pay extra for the right to
build in the city’s center. “We had required green infrastructure
improvements,” explained Patti Dacey, who participated in drafting both
versions of the downtown plan, but is a fierce advocate for the
original. “New Parks, green storm water, new green roofs, and fees to
support it. Transit improvements and pedestrian improvements with fees
to support them. … Really good protection of historic resources and
landmarks. Mandatory green building standards way beyond just LEED
standards. Zero waste. Aggressive water conservation. Solar
Panels.”

But developers complained that the strict requirements would have
made it too costly to build downtown, and smart-growth advocates warned
that Berkeley needed to encourage a denser urban core to help slow
suburban sprawl and address global warming. Eventually, the more
developer-friendly city planning commission significantly revised the
plan, and removed most of the original requirements. The head of the
revision process, Berkeley Planning Commission Chairman David Stoloff,
said the commission created the new downtown plan to be a guide for
development instead of a roadblock.

Under the city’s plan, downtown runs along Shattuck Avenue between
Dwight Way and Hearst Avenue, west of the UC Berkeley campus and east
of Martin Luther King Jr. Way. City Planner Matt Taecker said the
original commission thought that Berkeley should have a “mid-rise”
downtown consisting of mostly 65-foot- to 85-foot-tall buildings with a
few “100- to 120-foot-tall buildings, roughly nine to eleven stories.”
Those who controlled the revision, on the other hand, preferred more
120- and 180-foot tall buildings.

But supporters of the original plan were upset about more than just
the change in building heights. They were also frustrated that the
planning commission had removed the green-building standards and other
“public benefits” requirements. In a letter to the council and the
mayor, the Sierra Club complained about the changes: “It eliminates any
requirements for green building and site design, open space, transit
improvements, and affordable housing in exchange for increased
density.”

Last week, as the four-year-long process was reaching a conclusion
and momentum was building for a signature drive to oppose the plan,
there was a whirlwind of negotiations to reconcile the two camps. The
negotiations resulted in some compromises including more protections
for existing neighborhoods, but Dacey indicated that it was too little
too late, or rather too much too quickly, characterizing the
last-minute talks as “chaotic.”

In the final version of the plan approved by the council, the new
tall buildings come in three sizes: small, medium, and large. An
unlimited number of “small” 65-foot- to 85-foot-tall buildings could be
built throughout most of the downtown. The plan also allows for
construction of six new mid-rise buildings, four at 120 feet tall and
two at 100 feet. Finally, two high-rises, 180- to 225-foot-tall
structures — probably hotels — can be built in the roughly
eight blocks closest to Downtown Berkeley BART.

Under direction from the city council and the mayor, Berkeley
planning staff also restored some of the “public benefits”
requirements. According to Dan Marks, head of Planning in Berkeley, any
new building over 85 feet will have to be constructed using green
standards, provide for open space, include affordable housing, and
implement strategies to reduce automobile use.

Despite the compromises, opponents of the final plan like Dacey have
expressed cynicism and mistrust that developers of tall buildings will
be held to such a high standard. To make her point, Dacey reminded the
city council that one of the downtown’s newer, bigger structures, the
Gaia Building, was allowed to exceed height limits by promising
“cultural uses” (like a bookstore) that in the end never
materialized.

Meanwhile, the 800-million-pound gorilla in the room is the
University of California, which plans to grow and expand by up to 2.2
million square feet in the next ten years. Some portion of that growth
will be “off campus” in the traditional sense, with at least two of its
own 120-foot-tall buildings expected in downtown under the plan that
the city council adopted. UC officials have indicated to the city that
they intend to abide by Berkeley’s new downtown zoning, but under state
law the UC regents don’t have to abide by anything City Hall puts in
front of them.

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