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The much-delayed, and often criticized, Southside Plan moved a step further to formal action on adoption on June 14, 2011, when the City Council heard a staff presentation and public testimony on the Plan during a special early evening Council workshop. 

“There is no action planned for this evening,” said Berkeley’s Planning Director Dan Marks, making one of his final presentations to the Council before retirement at the end of the month. “The goal of tonight’s meeting is to bring you back up to speed on what we did with the Southside plan and also what the zoning does for the southside, and also to review the next steps.” 

Marks said the Plan “continues to further development, transition development better from the campus to the rest of the community, promote higher densities closer to campus and lower densities moving into the rest of the community.” 

“We hope it enhances the business district although (it) may not go far enough as some would like and it protects some areas, having unique guidelines for the southside. It achieves a lot of what we wanted to achieve when we started this process in the 1990s…we did get there in the long run.” 

Marks complimented City staffer Beth Greene as a “terrific project manager” who had advanced staff work on the Plan after a several-year interlude with no City action. Planner Alex Amoroso also joined Marks and Greene at the staff table. 

After hearing public testimony, several Councilmembers offered their own comments and criticisms of the Plan. Incorporating language on affordable housing, re-thinking the lack of in-lieu fees for eliminating on-site parking from new development, and adjusting the zoning boundaries along Dwight Way were among the suggestions of Councilmembers. 

Mayor Tom Bates asked City staff to provide their responses to comments made by the public and Councilmembers before the Council takes up the Plan again in the fall. 

A familiar group of community members and representatives of organizations offered public hearing testimony before Council discussion. 

Retired planner John English who lives on Dwight Way and follows and comments on various City planning processes said he was “anxious to have the Southside Plan adopted relatively soon”, but urged the Council to resolve numerous “loose ends”, particularly “technical problems (that) do need to be addressed.” 

“I do want to say that the Southside Plan includes many good features, and yet these problems still need to be resolved. I hope they will be”, he concluded. 

Roland Peterson of the Telegraph Business Improvement District (TBID) asked for the “abolition of quotas” on business types in the district. He added Telegraph has a number of commercial vacancies “and we have had them for several years, especially since the major economic downturn. We believe that to help deal with the flexibility and the changes in the world economy, and the way people really live, that it’s time to eliminate the quotas.”  

“We have certainly asked the Planning Commission numerous times for this,” Peterson said. 

Jurgen Aust from the Dwight Hillside neighborhood association noted several omissions in the draft plan including lack of an open space element and added, transportation “is a major thing…we need the parking and transportation plans” for the Southside. 

Planning Commissioners Gene Poschman and Patti Dacey both spoke, renewed their criticisms of the Plan that had fallen on largely deaf ears at the Planning Commission. In contrast, they seemed to make some headway with a few members of the City Council. 

“I’ve handed out in writing what I want to put forth tonight”, Poschman said. He reminded the Council that the Chair of the Planning Commission asked the Commission to “hold your nose and please vote yes and send it to the Council.” 

“This is not a finished project in any way, shape or form”, Poschman said. He emphasized that the Planning Commission vote on the zoning regulations connected to the draft Plan was 5-2-2, with the fifth crucial vote coming from “a person who had never been on the Planning Commission”, a “one-night person” substituting for a regular Commissioner. 

Poschman reserved some of his most pungent criticism for the ‘car free housing’ component of the draft Plan. “I was shocked. Nobody is shocked any more. Car-free housing is a slogan. It’s not a program…there is no data that says if you make car-free housing that people don’t have cars. So Dan (Marks) has thrown away what he insisted on being in the Downtown Plan”, that is in-lieu fees for required parking which could run as high as $40,000 paid to the City for every required parking space not built. 

In the Southside Plan, Poschman emphasized, “there’s no reduced fee for parking because there’s no parking in this thing…It’s just an anomaly which just boggles the mind.” 

Calling the Plan, “antediluvian”, he added “there is no sustainability in here.” 

“There’s almost an incentive here for people not to build downtown and to build here and in other places in Berkeley.” “I’m with John English”, Poschman concluded, “I think it can be salvaged but there’s a lot of work to be done.” 

“This is a not quite ready for prime time plan”, said Planning Commissioner Patti Dacey, speaking next. “I feel like this is a plan to ensure that nothing is ever built downtown. (Southside is) right next to downtown….and we’re saying come build here, we’re going to have very few requirements, we don’t care about green, we don’t have particularly strong affordable housing, we’re not going to charge you for not having parking…you build a really big building here and there’s no requirements.” 

“So I sort of feel like Southside is Texas, living next to California”, Dacey added.  

“The driving interest was affordable housing” in the original work on the Plan, Dacey said. “The entire reason for density was affordable housing. And it was like the major issue of both the city and the citizens.”  

Now, after court decisions that have weakened the power of cities to require affordable housing, “they kept the density, and they stripped out the affordable housing” from the draft Plan, she said. 

I spoke next, focusing on open space issues. I said that the Southside had no permanent public open space or municipal recreation facilities and no plans for any, despite the fact that more than ten percent of Berkeley residents live in the neighborhood. 

I encouraged the Council to add a public open space element to the Plan and plan in the long term for the acquisition and development of park space, just as the City did in past decades with various other municipal parks including Civic Center Park and Willard Park. 

Local developer Evan McDonald spoke next, saying his firm—which has a big housing development pending in the Southside—generally liked the Plan but had “just two modifications that we’re proposing you make.” 

The first “is the elimination of the density limitations in the CT and RSMU zoning areas for group living accommodation projects.” He said, for example, a project on a 10,000 square foot lot could only have 29 people living in it and that the zoning board should regulate density instead in proposed projects “and deny them if they don’t like it. Limitations aren’t needed.” 

He also asked for what he characterized as an “administrative correction” which would allow a developer to entirely eliminate setbacks of buildings and side yards in the RSMU zoning area without asking for a variance. 

After the public testimony was finished, Mayor Bates asked Dan Marks to respond to the public comments.  

“In terms of the technical comments made by several people we can come back with revisions’, Marks said 

“In terms of the broad comments made, having an open space element, revising the transportation plan, coming back with revised significant revisions to this project we do not have the resources to engage further with this project at any time soon.” 

“We understand that it is not as complete as some people would like”, Marks said “but it’s an incremental improvement, a good step in the right direction.” 

Councilmembers then individually commented on the Plan. 

“The transportation plan, is an important element but I don’t know that I agree with which staff has said about that”, Bates said. “I don’t know where you get more open space in that area”, he added.  

“I’m personally prepared to say, even though I don’t like it, I’m willing to live with not having a more updated transportation plan or open space plan.” 

In terms of “comments about the density, housing and stuff…we need to look at that.” 

Councilmember Gordon Wozniak said the Southside “is an appropriate area for more density.” “This is a perfect place for car-free housing”, he said because “the vast majority” of students “don’t use cars, they use other means of transportation.” 

“Car free housing is a very green thing, and I think we want to encourage that.” 

The Southside is “where you want density,” Wosniack said. However, he said, he thought the R-3 zoning area should stop at Dwight Way rather than extending out of it. “There’s all kind of conflict in the areas, particularly between Derby and Dwight Way, with the mini dorms creeping up, where people put in tremendous numbers of people in small spaces.”  

“Creating more housing north of Dwight Way is a good thing for the neighborhoods to the south of that, in my opinion.” 

‘It’s also good for the students because they will be able to live closer to where they’re going to class. And it will relieve the pressure happening now, where we’re getting these mini-dorms with 2 or 30 people to a single family dwelling, coming out into the neighborhoods and actually causing lots of problems.” 

Councilmember Jesse Arreguin presented the Council with a list of policies from previous drafts of the Southside Plan that had been “deleted over the course of the process or significantly modified.” 

He said he wanted a Plan adopted, but said there were “serious concerns that have been raised by Mr. Poschman and Mr. English that need to be addressed”, particularly having a policy on affordable housing. 

Arreguin said he supported a car free housing zone, but “we may want to consider applying in the Southside” in lieu fees for parking. 

He said the Plan should have “policies that encourage the university to prioritize its land for the development of housing for students. The university as we know is not doing that good a job providing housing for the students…” 

He also supported modifying the zoning boundary along Dwight Way, limiting higher densities to land parcels that front on Dwight. 

Councilmember Kriss Worthington delivered extended remarks, saying, “in response to the hundreds of students who make up the majority of people who live in this neighborhood, there was substantial language put into the Plan emphasizing the prioritization of student housing in the Southside”, but those policies and affordable housing policies are no longer in the draft. 

“How much more clear do students have to be about what they want in their neighborhood?” he asked. 

“We certainly need affordable housing language. We need student housing, we need affordable student housing but we also need general student housing.” 

Councilmember Susan Wengraf criticized some of the graphics in the draft plan, saying the zoning map “is almost impossible to read…It doesn’t help us up here who are trying to deal with the zoning changes.” 

She also wondered how group living accommodations could be created with the proposed requirement of 90 square feet of open space per resident, and said “I think we need to have a uniform affordable housing policy that applies to every area of the city. I don’t think we can separate one area from the city from another and make special provisions that don’t apply to everybody.” 

Mayor Tom Bates agreed with Wengraf that there should be uniform affordable housing policies city wide, and also asked City staff to compare Downtown Plan policies with Southside Plan policies and explain the differences. 

Councilmembers Darryl Moore, Max Anderson, and Linda Maio didn’t offer comments during the Council discussion.