Features

The Zoning Adjustment Board ruled Thursday that the cottage resting atop a weathering plywood shell that dominates the corner of Shattuck Avenue and Emerson Street, known as the “flying cottage,” now complies with city zoning laws.  

The vote of 6-1-1 (S prague, no; Judd abstain) means that property owner Christina Sun won’t need to go through the lengthy processes of seeking a use permit for a project that most of her neighbors oppose. 

The victory doesn’t, however, guarantee that the building will be co mpleted. 

Now that ZAB has ruled that Sun’s proposal adheres to zoning rules, the battle shifts to aesthetics. Sun still needs to win approval from city staff on the building’s appearance. 

If staff approves the design, opponents could appeal the ruling t o the city’s Design Review Commission. If the DRC backs the plan, neighbors could appeal the decision to ZAB, then to the City Council, and from there to Alameda County Superior Court. 

“We’re going to keep fighting this,” said Les Shipnuck, who lives nea r the building. “We don’t want it in our neighborhood. There’s not a chance that this could ever be built in North Berkeley.” 

Sun’s latest plan calls for building two floors of residential units above a retail shop and turning the back yard into a two ca r parking lot. The proposed structure would tower over nearby homes. However city zoning laws permit three story houses with commercial frontages along the southern section of Shattuck. 

Neighbors have fought the building since 2003 when they say that Sun, without informing them, raised up her one-story cottage above two stories of plywood. Upon discovering that Sun illegally planned to make the building a boarding house, neighbors succeeded in stopping development by persuading ZAB to declare it “a nuisa nce.” 

Sun’s architect, Andus Brandt, has since retooled the project to meet city codes, while neighbors have pointed out deficiencies every step of the way. 

Most recently neighborhood leader Robert Lauriston successfully showed that a recent building re design was illegal because it included tenant storage space on the first floor. Such storage space is considered a residential use, which is not allowed on the ground floor of buildings that have residential units above ground-floor commercial space. 

Lau riston’s finding left Brandt in a fix. He couldn’t simply fold the space into the proposed ground floor shop because the extra square footage would have triggered a city requirement for an additional parking space. Sun can’t fit another space in her backy ard and refuses to add one on the ground floor. 

At 1142 square feet, the ground floor commercial space is just eight square feet shy of requiring an extra parking space should Sun open a restaurant on the ground floor, and 108 square feet shy of the requ irement for a standard retail shop. 

In an alteration presented to ZAB Thursday, Brandt proposed reconfiguring the ground floor to include a 120-square-foot garbage recycling and garden storage room, a 92-square-foot storage room for the owner and an unus ually large utility room. 

Under city zoning rules, Senior Planner Debbie Sanderson said, those uses don’t count as commercial or residential space, so the new design conforms to zoning rules, but doesn’t trigger the extra parking space. 

Neighborhood rep resentatives said they smelled a rat. 

“It’s a very creative design. The utility room is the size of my office,” said Rena Rickles, the attorney representing the neighbors. Besides challenging the building in design review, Rickles said neighbors were als o considering filing suit over whether the building is permitted to have any parking in the back yard. 

According to city zoning law, parking spaces are not allowed in “rear yards.” However, Sanderson has maintained that the prohibition was actually a dra fting error in the code. Historically, she has maintained, the city has permitted parking in rear yards, and couldn’t all of a sudden change course in Sun’s case. 

Accepting staff’s interpretation, ZAB concluded that the latest design complied with city z oning requirements. 

“The real issue is it’s ugly, it’s big, but unfortunately that’s not what we’re voting for,” said temporary ZAB Commissioner George Beier, sitting in for Dean Metzger. “I don’t like it, but I can’t find anything wrong with it.” 

s