Features

Planning Commissioners will vote Wednesday on a last, crucial legal step to transform what was once the site of one of Berkeley’s more notorious brothels into a 15-unit condo complex. 

The new building is clad in copper that reflected sunlight with blinding intensity on Monday afternoon, though oxidation should eventually turn it a duller turquoise green. 

From 1977 to 2001, 2628 Telegraph Ave. was the home of the Golden Gypsy Massage Parlor, where clients were treated to more than simple back rubs. 

Then Berkeley Police received two letters, one from a client who was frustrated he couldn’t get a real rubdown and a second from the wife of another client—reportedly from a well-known Berkeley family—who had hired a private eye to catch her philandering spouse en flagrante delicto. 

Detectives investigated, leading to a July 30, 2001 raid that ended with 20 arrests and the seizure of $273,000 in cash from the parlor and the home of the couple who owned it. The Zoning Adjustments Board voted five months later to shutter the place as a public nuisance. 

Two years later, ZAB approved use permits to allow construction of a four-story building at the site, located at the corner of Telegraph and Carleton Street, and the construction is nearly complete. 

Planning Commission approval of a condominium map is a necessary step before units can be sold. 

One-bedroom units are currently listed to start in ”the high $300,000s,” with two-bedroom units starting in “the mid-$400,000s,” according to the project website, 2628telegraph.com. 

One item commissioners won’t have to deal with is dogs, and the ongoing dispute over the Milo Foundation’s adoption facilities in the Solano Avenue neighborhood. 

Commissioners will also consider a staff report on the impact of the Association of Bay Area Government’s upcoming Housing Needs Assessment, a crucial document used in determining the city’s obligation to build more new housing. 

The other major item that is up for action is a set of zoning ordinance amendments designed to speed up and simplify the process of enforcing permit violations and making public nuisance declarations against properties. 

The meeting is scheduled for 7 p.m. in the North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst Ave. and Martin Luther King Jr. Way.