Public Comment

There's a battle underway between angry Berkeley residents and Berkeley's mayor and his followers on the city council and commissions, a battle playing out in many towns and cities these days as the 1% invest aggressively in real estate development. We are alarmed by the relentless pursuit of new developments, since Berkeley is already one of the most densely-populated US cities of its size, and we now have a surfeit of $3,000-$5,000 per-month rentals with long-vacant commercial space on their ground floors. Berkeley's most crucial need in 2015 is for affordable housing, both for low income and middle income residents, in inclusionary residential buildings built to rigorous water-saving and energy efficiency standards. New York City now requires 30% affordable units in all new developments, to ensure that low-income housing is available in all parts of the city. This is a requirement most Berkeleyans would doubtless support, as a way to sustain our culturally, economically, racially diverse population. Many kids who grew up in Berkeley cannot afford to live here as adults, nor can minimum wage workers who service those who can afford the new market-rate and "luxury" housing.  

Berkeley's Mayor and city council majority apparently believe in the discredited trickle down theory: if you build market-rate and luxury housing, somehow that will open up affordable housing. This theory has been disproved most recently by the luxury condo rush in San Francisco, where the consequence of providing many new units of $4,000 to $5,000-a-month rentals has been the increased rental rates of many previously affordable units. We don't want to repeat this failed experiment in Berkeley; we want our mayor and city council to serve the needs and values of Berkeley residents, not the profit drive of developers. Given our city's reputation for forward thinking, one would expect our city government to be working for both affordable housing and cutting edge water and energy conservation and greenhouse gas reduction, but no serious efficiency requirements are being placed on developers anxious to get buildings up before California requires zero net energy in residential building in 2020, just four-and a-half years from now.  

We are particularly outraged over the 2211 Harold Way project: a Los Angeles developer proposes to demolish the very popular and successful Shattuck Cinemas in downtown Berkeley to make way for a greatly out-of-scale 18-story high-rise three times the height of our handsome and heavily-used Main Library just across the street. In addition to blocking the natural light into the library's many north windows, this huge building would also tower over the landmarked Shattuck Hotel and the handsome adjacent Walter Ratcliff-designed former Elks Club and Armstrong College buildings, as well as the Post Office and YMCA. It is totally out of scale with its very historic immediate context.  

The sloppy EIR for this huge building fails to address the impact of its construction and 302 units on the 3000-student population of Berkeley High School, its teachers, and staff, as its location within the school zone requires. Its construction over 3 years or more would hinder access to downtown Berkeley, close sidewalks, remove parking spaces, intensify the already-congested traffic in downtown, and create noise and pollution during its construction that would disturb library users across the street and doubtless exceed levels permitted within a school zone. If completed, it would add significant density to the downtown population without providing any units of the inclusionary affordable housing so urgently needed downtown and throughout Berkeley.  

And there are questions about the geological stability of its site—Strawberry Creek once ran through this landmarked block of Shattuck/Kittredge/Harold Way/Allston. The major earthquake we've been promised on the Hayward Fault could cause unconsolidated material in the former streambed to liquify. The current project plan places basement level theater spaces beneath part of the landmarked 1910 Shattuck Hotel. Massive excavation on this block would threaten the Shattuck Hotel foundation and could have disastrous consequences to that treasured building and to the functioning of our downtown area even before the predicted major earthquake. 

This high-rise project would harm the downtown economy during its years of construction, especially if three other major projects—a hotel/condo high-rise on the Bank of America site, the reconstruction of nearby BART Plaza, and a demolition and doubling in size of the Center Street Garage to 8 stories—are approved. Turning downtown into a construction zone for years would do great economic damage to many businesses and would harm the broader community, depriving us of the Shattuck Cinemas and the Habitot Childrens' Museum, both thriving cultural resources. The ten-screen Shattuck Cinemas are a major contributor to the vibrancy of our downtown, drawing film lovers from all over the East Bay and northern California. Due to the programming of films we prize, from popular to obscure, attendance over recent years has steadily increased, up 25% since 2008. The Shattuck Cinemas and their 25 employees play a critical role in the economic health of Berkeley's downtown since their patrons also patronize the downtown restaurants. The economic success of our local businesses contributes to our city's character and serves the needs of the residents and visitors who patronize them. Our heavily-used downtown Ace Hardware, the Missing Link Bicycle Shop, and the Berkeley Vacuum and Sewing Machine Center are also now under threat of demolition to be replaced by new market-rate housing projects. 

We need to assess the costs to our community of the many new construction sites already underway—the increased water use as well as water waste during construction, the greatly increased burden on aging infrastructure and on fire, police, and emergency services, the many additional cars to be expected when the buildings are finished (most provide few garage spaces).  

In addition, we strongly object to the blocking of the historic view of the Golden Gate from Campanile Way on the UC Berkeley campus. The campus is the heart of our city and its cultural and economic engine. It is one of the great public universities in the world. It is unacceptable for the city to permit a private developer to plan a building so large and out of scale with its architectural context as to disrupt the landscape design of our University of California campus, sited to uplift all who view the San Francisco Bay from Campanile Way. 

Berkeley has prided itself on the cultural, racial, and economic diversity of our residents, on the richness of our cultural resources, on respect for and protection of our beautiful natural environment, on respect for the historical fabric of our city, on our great university and the depth and breadth of the learning, research, and innovation it cultivates. To sustain these values, we need to ensure the inclusion of all economic strata—we want our community to continue to support and nourish artists and craftsmen as well as scientists and innovators and we need our elected representatives to commit now to addressing the changes in planning and behavior necessary to slow climate change. To allow for-profit speculative developers to shape the future of our city based not on our needs and values but on profits they hope to realize is not an acceptable form of city planning.