Editorials

There's an uproar brewing in Berkeley's civic core

Becky O'Malley
Friday February 20, 2015 - 02:15:00 PM

Whole lotta shakin’ goin’ on about the future of downtown Berkeley. For those who have preferred to tune out (and that would include me, for years), here’s the Cliff Notes version (no connection to Clif Bar, which I think had a short period of being headquartered downtown, unless I’m thinking of PowerBar.)

Go way back, ten years ago. Start with the Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee (DAPAC), in this story from the December 6, 2005 Planet: Touring Downtown With DAPAC, by Richard Brenneman.

Money quote: “The plan is mandated by the settlement agreement of the city’s suit against UC Berkeley over the university’s Long Range Development Plan (LRDP) for 2020.”

Name to note: “…Matt Taecker, the planner hired specifically for the plan.”

Now: fast-forward to February 2015. In the “Real Estate” section of berkeleyside:com: Developer of downtown Berkeley hotel offers ‘tapered’ tower; hopes for quick design review, by Frances Dinkelspiel.

Name to note: “The plans that the developers are showing the Design Review Committee on Thursday, Feb. 19, are preliminary and will probably change with time, according to Matt Taecker, whose Taecker Planning and Design is helping with the entitlement process. The idea is to ask Design Review for early input, he said.”

In ten years, the guy’s gone from planner to fixer (or as they’re called in San Francisco, where it’s been a big industry for decades, “expediter”.) You get the idea. 

There's a similar case on another site, now proceeding in parallel. Mark Rhoades is the former City of Berkeley planning director who’s now shilling for the L.A. financier who wants to demolish the block which now houses, among other thriving businesses, the Habitot children’s museum and the Landmark Shattuck cinemas. The listed address is 2211 Harold Street, but it’s just about the whole block on Shattuck, and they’re looking for, what is it, 18 stories, most likely luxury apartments for the rich, perhaps to be condo-ized. 

That’s the new normal for Berkeley. First you plan it, then you exploit it. 

Here’s a super-short trajectory for how we were set up for the kill: the Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee (DAPAC) labored like an elephant and produced a draft plan after a number of years. The ruling city council majority in 2010 placed the original Measure R on the ballot: a touchy-feely contentless affirmation of values no one could disagree with, short on detail, which was subsequently used as justification for passing terminally vague downtown plan zoning which ignored the DAPAC recommendations for the most part. 

The labor of an elephant produced a mouse. 

Notably weak specification in the Downtown Plan as zoned by the council: some number (was it 3?) of super-tall buildings are now to be allowed downtown if they provide (undefined of course) “community benefits”. Uh-huh. 

Last fall a courageous group of citizens too intelligent for their own good put a wonkish initiative on the November ballot, what I called Measure R 2.0, which would have added teeth to the amorphous rhetoric in Measure R 1.0. 

From the Daily Cal: “No on R received about $245,000 in monetary contributions in comparison to Yes on R’s approximately $20,000 — roughly 14 times as much money.”  

Most of that money came from development interests: “No on R’s biggest contributions included $50,000 from the California Association of Realtors, $95,000 from the National Association of Realtors and $10,000 each from Berkeley development company Panoramic Interests and property owner and contractor Jay Lakireddy.” 

And this Measure R “only” lost three to one—a Quixotic victory, perhaps. 

Just now, belatedly, that smallish coterie of Berkeleyans who actually care about what happens to the city they live in is waking up to the idea that they wuz had. 

A friend, a smart friend, a civic-minded friend who used to write about international affairs for a major metropolitan newspaper, said to me: “I voted for the first Measure R and against the second one. I have nothing against a few tall buildings. But I didn’t know that THIS is what they meant. Where do I go to sign the petition?” 

Well, yes. I didn’t say I told you so, but I could have. 

His rude awakening was fostered by the efforts of a lively group of movie fans outraged at the idea that the ten screens of the Landmark theater, which often show unusual films not to be seen elsewhere, would be lost at least for the estimated 5 years of construction and perhaps forever. Under the name of Save the Berkeley Shattuck Cinemas, they’ve been leafleting theater patrons for several weeks, and are now expanding their reach to the Farmer’s Markets and other public places. They’ve gotten an impressive number of petition signatures, and are starting to attract the attention of others who are not moviegoers but who are appalled at the prospect of this behemoth taking over the Berkeley skyline. 

As my friend is quick to say, it’s not all tall buildings, it’s THIS tall building that repels many of them. The current downtown zoning allows for three tall buildings downtown, but doesn’t specify where or what they should be. And the appropriate location isn’t chosen by the planning process, but by the corporate person who happens to get a deal on a piece of property somewhere, anywhere, and then wants to make a huge profit by developing it to the max. 

Absent any other planning provisions, it’s the new Golden Rule: he who has the gold makes the rules. In the case of the Shattuck/Harold project, the guy with the gold is Joseph Penner, head of Hill Street Realty of Los Angeles. He bought the block in an estate sale for about $20 million, and he’s trying to turn that into much, much more. 

A limited internet search produces no evidence that Penner or his company has ever managed a development project from start to finish, let alone one of this magnitude. Curiously, the organization shows this project, as yet not even permitted, on its website as if it already existed. Evidently the privately-held real estate finance company is representing the “Residences at Berkeley Plaza” to investors as a done deal, already in the bag. 

Maybe he knows something we don’t know? 

It would be possible for expediter Rhoades to amass permits with the many variances an out-of-scale project like this would need on behalf of Hill Street, and then the company could sell the entitlements to an as-yet-unidentified third party. Or they could already be acting in behalf of some third party known to them, even for an overseas investor from Russia or China or the Middle East—a common transaction in desirable urban areas these days. 

One fear is that the project would proceed, with permits, as far as demolition, and then fall through, leaving a great big hole in the downtown fabric and a vacant though entitled lot for sale, perhaps for years. 

It’s an environmental joke, a green-washed disaster that would be out of date by the time it’s completed, if it ever is. 

The current state of discussion is whether or not either of these megaprojects would even provide the “community benefits” touted in both Measure R 1.0 and the downtown plan, but conveniently nowhere specified. The Zoning Adjustment Board is supposed to be grappling with what, if anything, this might mean, but has gotten roughly nowhere with the concept so far. 

I went to their lengthy meeting scheduled to consider the question, and was surprised to realize how many members of the ZAB work in the development industry on a daily basis. It will be difficult for people who make their living pleasing developers to make an unbiased assessment of what would benefit the people of Berkeley. 

Fortunately, it looks like a lot of people with some experience and no conflict of interest are jumping into the fray—three of their analyses are in our public comment section this week , several appeared there previously, and more are expected. Keep watching. There’s no question that Berkeley needs a lot of benefits at the moment. 

When I went to the ZAB meeting in the Maudelle Shirek Building (the beautiful historic old City Hall) I happened to climb the grand staircase next to former Berkeley Mayor Shirley Dean. She’s someone I never voted for (perhaps a mistake), but I respect her intelligence and her genuine devotion to Berkeley. 

It was the weekend after one of the big storms. When we looked down at the stairs, we saw that they were covered with flakes of paint—looking up we saw that the ceiling was disintegrating. 

“That’s a disgrace,” she said, and she’s right. The public commons, our civic inheritance, is being allowed to disintegrate before our eyes. 

A start would be to get involved with Save the Berkeley Shattuck Cinemas, but the problem is bigger than just stopping this one boondoggle. There are some big unanswered questions about Taecker's hotel too, and about other projects now seeking entitlements for downtown. The city's planning staff is working mostly for the developers, not for the citizenry. 

Somehow, we’ve got to figure out how to do better for Berkeley, and soon.