Open Letter to the Berkeley City Council (Public Comment)
Proposed Level of Community Benefits for Large-Scale Downtown Buildings
The Wellstone Democratic Renewal Club is concerned that the significant community benefits to be provided by developers of large developments in the downtown, as proposed by Mayor Bates and Councilmember Capitelli for consideration at the Council’s May 26 meeting, are inadequate and require unacceptable tradeoffs between needed labor practices and affordable housing.
We appreciate the efforts of the council to allow community input into setting a City standard for significant community benefits, rather than allowing developers to offer these on a case-by-case basis.
However, we believe that a pro forma economic analysis should be performed for each proposed large project that exceeds usual heights. Each project will impact the community differently and each will garner different amounts of profit from the City-granted planning permission to build above current height limits. For example, the project at Harold Way will impact valuable cultural resources; this impact should be mitigated before application of the community benefits formula. The economic analysis accompanying the Downtown Plan indicates that a project at the corner of Shattuck and Allston (across the street from the proposed Harold Way project) could feasibly support $33,000 in community benefits per unit – nearly $10 million -- in addition to 20% affordable housing. -more-