Public Comment

Compared to adjacent communities, Berkeley is in many ways an attractive city to live in or to visit. But our city is very vulnerable to pressures brought by commercial real estate developers. A case in point is the pending application by Gordon Commercial for a use permit that includes a 5,000-square-foot restaurant and bar at Ashby just below College. If this application is granted, it will increase retail floor space in the four-block area surrounding College and Ashby by 11 percent, and quality of life in the neighborhood will decline for residents and visitor alike. 

The proposed development project violates Zoning Ordinance regulations. The developer is asking for approval of his application prior to stating in detail to which kinds of retail businesses he proposes to lease. This in effect cedes to the developer control over the character of these businesses and their impacts on the neighborhood—a concession that would be highly irregular in the history of the city’s application approvals. (Once a use permit is granted for a restaurant, for example, it is extremely difficult to revoke that permit, regardless of the restaurant’s policies, type of food served, etc.) Granting the developer this “blank check” to profit from his property as he pleases is not in keeping with Berkeley residents’ wish to assure the quality of life in their city.  

The Berkeley Zoning Ordinance allows a maximum of seven restaurants in the Elmwood District. The developer’s application exceeds this quota. As the Claremont Elmwood Neighborhood Association (CENA) has pointed out, this application also requests that additional official quotas be overridden and parking space waivers be given. The Berkeley Ordinance does stipulate that a quota can be overridden, but only on the condition that the intended use will not “Generate traffic and parking demand beyond the capacity of the commercial District or significantly increase impacts on adjacent residential neighborhoods.” The developer’s proposal for a large, full-scale restaurant/bar clearly fails to satisfy this requirement. 

The only access to the restaurant for trucks delivering food and supplies will be Ashby Avenue, which is already the most congested street in Berkeley. Traffic on both Ashby and College backs up for blocks, and parking—for Elmwood Theater goers as well as for shoppers—is difficult to find. Drivers roam residential side streets to locate an available space. Residents routinely find it difficult to park in the vicinity of their own homes. As might be expected, traffic accidents have taken a toll in this neighborhood. Making this situation worse will be detrimental to quality of life and health in the district. 

In addition to food delivery vehicles, workers as well as patrons of the restaurant/bar will exacerbate the traffic gridlock and parking problems. The neighborhood was not designed for, and cannot now be feasibly transformed to handle, the intense demands that developers propose to place upon it.  

The Berkeley Zoning Ordinance permits the serving of alcohol “only as incidental consumption with meals in food service establishments.” Violating this condition, the developer proposes to install a bar, where drinks can be purchased apart from—and notoriously not necessarily “incidental” to—a meal. The proposed bar will be open every day until late at night, which will increase drunkenness, rowdiness, and noise. Are these what the neighborhood needs? 

Are vacant storefronts in the Elmwood district a good reason for inviting in over-sized development projects? Elmwood commercial vacancies are in fact very few, and result from commercial landlords demanding higher rents than prospective store owners can afford to pay. I moved into the neighborhood in 1980 and remember a shoe repair shop and a tailor on College Avenue. Around the corner on Ashby was Burnafords, a fresh-produce store. But small, locally-owned businesses of this kind could not afford relentless rent increases. 

Commercial landlords tell city government, in effect: “If you do not let us do what we want with our properties, we will hold them vacant until we get our way.” This coercive strategy has been successful in the past because the owners have been able to hold out as long as it takes to get political support for their plans. And they can pay their way into City Hall by supporting pro-development ballot measures and political candidates who will return the favor and support them. 

A new large restaurant would increase fees and sales-tax revenue to the city, but at what price? Please consider: 

• Increasing the business activity and congestion at this intersection entails new city expenditures for maintaining the streets, handling sewage, etc. Increased revenues to the city will be diminished by these infrastructure costs. 

• Berkeley’s Planning Department is funded largely by developers’ fees, and (much more importantly) the planning profession is ideologically as well as economically linked to development interests. Notwithstanding the conscientious intentions of individual planners, this situation results in a conflict of interest that may favor inadvisable development projects and regard neighbors’ concerns merely as obstacles to be overcome. 

• Berkeley government exists to serve our community, not vice-versa. Yes, the city needs revenue in order to provide services, and city workers deserve to be adequately paid. But selling our community to developers is not the only or best solution to fiscal crisis. Budgetary reform and better planning are needed to make Berkeley government sustainable. 

The Elmwood remains a wonderful neighborhood—but unless Berkeleyans rally to its defense, much that is wonderful about it will be lost.  

Raymond Barglow is a member of the Wellstone Democratic Renewal Club.