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Segment 1

Hello, everyone.
Good evening, folks.
Thank you so much.
I got a wave, too.
Hello.
Nice to see you all.
Thank you so much for being here.
I'm going to call this meeting to order.
We are calling to order the special meeting of the Berkeley City Council.
Today is Thursday, November 6th, 2025.
And I'm going to start us off with the roll.
Okay.
Council member Kesarwani, currently absent.
Council member Taplin, present.
Council member Bartlett, present.
Tregub, present.
O'Keefe, here.
Blackaby, here.
Lunaparra, here.
Humbert, here.
And Mayor Ishii, here.
Okay, quorum is present.
All right, so we are going to start us off with the corridor zoning update presentation.
I'm going to ask folks to please keep their conversations outside if you're going to have them.
We want to make sure we can hear the presentation and everyone's comments.
And I just first want to, of course, express my appreciation for all the folks that are here, the business leaders, local residents, and community for coming out this evening.
Staff has been working really hard to get to this point, and we're all looking forward to hearing the presentation this night.
I just want to make sure that it's clear to everyone before we begin that this is not an action item, so we're not going to be taking any vote this evening.
This is a presentation similar to the one that's been had already at the 3 commercial areas over the past few months.
After the staff presentation, council members will have an opportunity to ask staff questions, then we're going to have public comment, and then after that, we'll move on to council comments and discussion.
So I just want to make sure folks know what to expect this evening.
And I am going to pass it off to our team over here.
Thanks so much.
Thank you mayor.
Good evening.
Council members.
I'm Jordan Klein.
I'm director of planning and development.
I'm joined at the staff table by Justin Horner from our policy team and Chris from associates, which is assisting the city on this project.
So, we're really pleased to be here this evening to present to you on 2 projects, starting with the corridor zoning update that.
As the mayor noted, we've been working on for a while.
Both of these project implement programs of our housing element, and they're part of the city's strategy for facilitating sustainable and equitable housing development.
And expanding housing choices and opportunities for people at all income levels in Berkeley.
I'm going to make a few points and then turn it over to Tara for the presentation.
First, I also wanted to make it clear that we're not yet advancing any plans or zoning amendments for adoption this evening.
But for for each of these projects, we're at a point where it would be very helpful to get input from council and the community about the work we've completed so far.
For corridors, the alternatives that we're presenting to this evening.
As again, the mayor noted are the same as what was presented to community members at our most recent workshops.
So, if any community members who were at those workshops, they see this and they're thinking, hey, nothing has changed since we saw this 2 months ago, please know that that's by design and a product of our work schedule.
We're intentionally moving this forward gradually and deliberately rather than rushing change.
Folks, please keep your comments to yourself for both projects.
We're presenting this evening.
We're seeking your feedback on objective design standards.
So, for corridors, we have a few specific simple design standards that we'll ask you about.
And we'll also be asking you whether you'd like to see even more detailed objective design standards incorporated into the regulations that we ultimately advance for adoption.
And then for San Pablo, we have those detailed already in the public draft of the plan that was published last week.
And we'd love to get your feedback on specific standards or broadly, whether you think it's too much, not enough, or just right.
I want to acknowledge that throughout our community engagement on this project, and especially over the past few weeks, as this work session has approached, we've heard from many community members who are concerned about the health and well-being of the many small businesses that define the character of these corridors.
We know from research, experience, and direct observation that zoning changes corridors gradually over the course of decades, not overnight.
And Berkeley has policies and programs in place already that offer support and protection to small businesses to help ensure that they're able to continue to operate even when development happens.
But these fears are understandable, and I'm not discounting them by any means.
We've tasked our consultant team with conducting a survey of other potential policies and programs to support small businesses and mitigate potential displacement impacts.
Policies that other cities have in place already that Berkeley can consider adopting.
We'll present the results of that research to policymakers in early 2026, well in advance of sending any zoning amendments forward for adoption.
And I want the small business community to know that we're committed to engaging with them as this project advances.
Finally, although it's true that there's been a great deal of community outreach already about this project, I want to emphasize that there will still be more opportunities to gauge before anything is advanced to city council for adoption.
For each of the 2 projects we're discussing tonight, there will be at least 1 more community workshop info sessions and public hearings at planning commission.
And if there are any community members or groups that want to connect with us for focused engagement, we are more than happy to accommodate that.
I know both Utera and Robert Rivera, who's the project manager for the San Pablo specific plan, brought their business cards, and we encourage community members to connect with us.
So, with that introduction, I'm now going to turn it over to Utera for the presentation.
Thank you.
Oh, you're not sharing anymore.
Thank you.
I just want to make sure I noticed there are a lot of folks standing in the back.
If anyone needs a seat, there's reserved seating for folks that are disabled in the front.
So I just want to make sure.
And then there are also some seats I think over here.
If you have a seat next to you, if you could move in so that folks can access it from the aisles.
I just want to make sure that folks are safe.
Good evening, Mayor Ishii and council members.
My name is Utera Ramakrishnan.
I'm an associate planner with the land use planning division and the project manager for the corridors zoning update.
So, here's today's agenda.
We'll begin with the presentation summarizing the project alternatives and feedback received so far.
This will be followed by discussion questions.
Council will then deliberate and provide direction on the overall approach for each corridor.
All right.
So, this slide shows the overall project schedule with the star marking where we are today.
Now, over the past few months, we completed the existing conditions report and held workshop 1, which served as the official project kickoff.
Most recently, we completed workshop 2 in late summer with 3 in-person workshops to present zoning alternatives to the community and to gather feedback.
Planning commission also reviewed the draft alternatives.
From here, city council will provide feedback on preferred approach.
And our goal is to bring the updated zoning forward for adoption by summer 2026.
So, in terms of community outreach, we've completed 2 rounds of community workshops, a citywide virtual workshop in May, and 3 in-person corridor specific workshops in August, followed by a planning commission study session in September.
Additional engagement has included meetings with community organizations, 2 technical advisory committee sessions, meetings with property owners, and an online survey that closed on October 10.
And we know how much community members care about the health, well-being, and future of these 3 corridors, and we wanted to take the time to meet them in person.
Staff reached out to over 30 community organizations and business organizations, offering to attend their meetings to share an overview of the project and gather feedback.
So, the organizations that you see listed here invited city staff to present at their regularly scheduled meetings and provided inputs.
Jumping into project overview, so the corridor zoning update focuses on rezoning portions of Solano, North Shattuck, and College Avenue.
The need for rezoning was identified in the 2023 housing element, specifically under Program 27, which commits the city to expand housing opportunities in its highest resource and highest income neighborhoods.
The key goals are to expand housing capacity by encouraging new housing development through rezoning, to foster equity and inclusion by creating opportunities for new housing development in high resource areas, support local businesses by adding more customers, and promote sustainability by encouraging housing in amenity and transit rich areas.
Now, this slide here shows the zoning districts within the 3 corridors.
On Solano Avenue, we're focusing on parcels within the CSO district.
Along North Shattuck, we're studying the CNS district, while keeping the CC district as is.
For College Avenue, the plan area includes parcels south of Dwightway, but our analysis mainly focuses on the CE Elmwood district, since much of the corridor falls within the R2A, which was addressed through the middle housing rezoning project.
Now, Berkeley has seen the greatest concentration of new multifamily housing in downtown Southside along San Pablo, University, Telegraph Avenues, while Solano, North Shattuck, and College have seen very little high-density development.
Two exceptions are on North Shattuck, an eight-story project at Shattuck and Virginia, and a seven-story project at Shattuck and Francisco, now under construction.
On College Avenue, there's one completed project in the R3 zone and another under review at 2942 College Avenue, a two-story commercial building with two stories of home behind it.
Now, this slide shows how existing zoning on Solano, College, and North Shattuck compare to other mixed-use corridors in the city.
These three corridors currently have the lowest minimum height standards, and the goal of Program 27 is to bring these high-resource corridors in line with others, providing more opportunities for new housing.
So, here you can see how these corridors could move up the zoning ladder, better aligning with other mixed-use corridors citywide while maintaining a neighborhood scale.
Okay, so we'll now walk through three key elements of the alternatives report, maximum height, building form, and ground-flow land use.
Alright, so we developed two alternatives for each corridor.
So, Alternative 1, or the medium-density option, increases the base height by two stories on Solano and North Shattuck, where the streets are wider and by one story on College Avenue.
Alternative 2, the higher-density option, increases base height by one additional story beyond Alternative 1.
Now, this slide here shows how the state density bonus affects overall total height.
So, based on Berkeley's inclusionary housing ordinance and state density bonus laws, most projects are expected to seek a 50% bonus, which we have used in our analysis over here.
Now, developers have flexibility in how they apply the bonus, so actual project heights will vary depending on site conditions and design.
Now, with a 50% bonus on Solano, buildings could reach five to six stories under Alternative 1 and seven to eight stories under Alternative 2.
On North Shattuck, buildings could reach seven to eight stories under Alt 1 and eight to nine stories under Alt 2.
On College Avenue, where the street width is narrower, buildings could reach four to five stories under Alternative 1 and up to six stories under Alternative 2.
Projects that provide deeper affordability could qualify for a 100% bonus, allowing for greater heights.
Okay.
So, as you can see— Keep it down.
Let her finish her presentation.
There's a comment period.
You can speak then.
Go ahead.
Folks, come on.
This is their opportunity to speak.
Please.
Go ahead.
Thank you.
So, this slide compares the existing street sections of San Pablo Avenue with the three corridors in the study.
Updates about San Pablo will be presented to Council right after this presentation.
Now, San Pablo has the widest right-of-way at 105 feet, followed by North Shattuck at 94 feet, which offers relatively more flexibility for accommodating taller buildings.
The other two corridors are narrower, with Solano Avenue at 85 feet and College Avenue at approximately 60 feet in total right-of-way.
Now, in addition to overall heights, the report looks at building form and façade design.
So, Alternative 1 allows the building façade to extend to its full height, and it's the most efficient and cost-effective option.
Alternative 2 requires an upper floor step-back on façades facing the side streets.
And Alternative 3 requires upper floor step-backs on all street-facing façades, creating a more sculpted form and visual transition to adjacent neighborhoods.
So, the examples shown here are from San Pablo's Pacific Pan, which takes a prescriptive approach, and these images here are intended to spark a discussion.
We'd like your feedback on whether and how objective design standards should be included in the new zoning, and how detailed they should be.
So, a key question here is how to balance clear, predictable standards with flexibility for design innovation along these three corridors.
So, in addition to height and massing, we're studying where to require ground-floor retail and whether to allow ground-floor residential in certain locations.
So, on Solano Avenue, the first alternative would require retail or retail-ready space along the entire corridor.
The second alternative would focus retail near Ensenada Avenue, while allowing ground-floor residential west of that point.
So, similarly on College and North Shattuck, we're exploring options to target retail to active nodes, while allowing greater flexibility elsewhere to improve project feasibility.
Now, another concept under consideration is allowing residential-only buildings in select locations.
So, the first alternative would require retail on all street frontages, while the second, shown in yellow, would permit residential-only ground floors in certain areas where continuous retail may not be viable.
And here, you can see another alternative concept we're exploring.
This is more prominent on the other corridors than here in Elmwood, but we're looking at potentially allowing residential-only buildings in certain locations.
So, on the top is an alternative that would require retail on all street frontages, and below, an alternative that would allow residential-only on ground floors, where you see yellow.
Now, this section will summarize feedback received so far to our outreach efforts.
Sharing key takeaways from the Planning Commission Work Session in September, and these include ground-floor vitality.
So, commissioners emphasized that street-level experience matters most.
Storefronts should be active, transparent, welcoming to pedestrians.
They also stressed maintaining affordable, flexible spaces for small and legacy businesses to preserve neighborhood character and economic diversity.
Commissioners were less concerned about prescriptive, objective design standards above the ground floor, favoring flexibility to allow creative, context-sensitive design.
And there was an overall openness to taller buildings if they demonstrate high-quality design, appropriate neighborhood transitions, and contribute to a vibrant, walkable environment.
Now, as I previously mentioned, we published a survey at the end of August.
The survey opened for a little over a month, and we received a total of 1,644 responses.
Survey participants could answer questions about all three corridors or choose one corridor.
Now, we have about 1,200 people that responded to the demographic questions in the survey.
Here we see there's a shift in the respondents' demographics to the survey versus the in-person meetings.
For the survey, around 53% of the respondents are over the age of 55, compared to over 65 for the in-person meetings.
Now, okay, so for Solano Avenue, here we're comparing the workshop, the results that we received in the workshop from what we heard in the survey.
So, as you can see, we had about 120 participants in the Solano Avenue workshop and about 819 respondents who responded to the survey.
Now, for North Shattuck, we again see a similar pattern as we saw in Solano, a stronger support for updating the zoning in the survey compared to the in-person workshop.
On College Avenue, feedback was evenly divided in both the survey and the in-person workshops, while some participants supported rezoning to allow additional housing, an equally large group expressed a desire to keep the zoning as it is.
Now, across both the workshops and the community survey, we heard many consistent themes about the future of these three corridors.
Community members emphasized the importance of maintaining corridor vibrancy, keeping these areas active, walkable, and economically healthy, while continuing to support small and legacy businesses that define their character.
There's also strong recognition of the need to add housing at a range of affordability levels, especially in these high-resource locations.
Participants also highlighted the value of high-quality, context-sensitive design, including step-backs and transitions that fit certain needs.
At the same time, we also heard concerns about potential businesses, displacement, building height and scale, and parking and traffic impacts, particularly in the Elmwood and along Solano.
Some participants also expressed skepticism about whether or not they would be able to maintain the corridors if they were to continue to support small and legacy businesses that define their character.
Some participants also expressed skepticism about whether zoning changes will deliver meaningful affordability outcomes.
So, overall, the feedback reflects some interest in allowing change, paired with a strong desire to ensure it is carefully managed through thoughtful design and balanced outcomes that reflect each corridor's character and needs.
Now, this is all a very high-level overview of all the feedback that we received.
We had a number of great discussions with many community members.
We heard lots of concerns about how change will impact their communities.
Parking was a key issue that was continually brought up, along with the overall impact of new development.
We only have time to share a little today, but there's a larger report summarizing the feedback from the in-person meetings and survey on the project webpage.
Now, this slide highlights the difference between overall survey responses and responses from residents of each corridor regarding whether to update or retain the existing zoning.
So, overall, a slight majority of participants supported zoning updates along Solano Avenue and North Shattuck, as you can see in the top row, while College Avenue responses were more evenly split.
However, comparing these pie charts show that a slightly larger proportion of residents living on or near the corridors expressed stronger support for keeping the existing zoning.
We now come to the last section of the presentation.
So, before we jump into questions, I wanted to highlight next steps.
We heard from many community members about the importance of supporting retail and existing small businesses along the three corridors.
So, following this series of second workshop that we held in August, staff asked the consultant team to develop strategies to mitigate potential impacts on small businesses.
These findings will be presented to Planning Commission and City Council in the coming months.
Community members will also have another opportunity to share feedback at the third round of workshops early next year.
And to reiterate, all the ideas presented today are draft concepts, and we're looking for Council's input on the overall approach for each corridor.
So, with that, yeah, we're jumping into the questions per corridor.
So, starting with which base height option best adds housing while fitting corridor character? Second question, upper floor step backs.
Should we require none only on side streets or step backs on both streets? Ground floor uses.
Should retail be required corridor-wide or targeted to nodes with flexibility elsewhere? And lastly, should the project include more detailed objective design standards? So, that's the end of the presentation.
Thank you all.
Council can now ask questions and open for public comments.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Yes.
Okay.
So, I will start with questions from Council, please, starting with Council Member Toplin.
Thank you very much, Madam Mayor, and thank you all for the presentation and your work to date on this project.
And thanks, everyone, for being here.
Could we look at the slide again that shows where housing is concentrated throughout the city? Thank you.
Yeah, so we're seeing housing concentrated downtown, south side, Adeline, and San Pablo Avenue.
And I note that in the staff report, it states that Solano Avenue has the highest rate of homeownership in the city, and it has produced the least amount of housing.
And I'm wondering from your expertise why that is.
Thank you, Council Member, for that question.
Is it a problem? Yes, it is.
Thank you.
I think that we've noted that Solano Avenue is currently only zoned for two stories, and it's difficult for new housing projects to pencil at those heights.
Most of the construction that we've seen over the last 15 years in Berkeley ranges from four to eight stories, and it's difficult or impossible to hit those numbers with the existing zoning.
Thank you very much.
Can we revisit the slide with the demographic breakdown of the survey responses and the workshop participation? Thank you very much.
Here I'm curious as to why there is such a chasm between the renter versus owner participation and similarly why there is such a disparity between participants who identify as ethnically white versus Asian American, Hispanic, or Latino, Latinx.
Anybody? Yeah, that's a great question.
I think it's fair to say that homeowners tend to be more engaged in planning and zoning issues than renters.
I think it's something that is not atypical, and I think that also relates to race and ethnicity as well.
We see more white people engaged.
The age breakdown here, 18 to 54, is a pretty large block there, I'm realizing now, but if we saw that one broken down further, I suspect that we would see also the survey respondents are not representative of the Berkeley community by age as well.

Segment 2

So I think what you're identifying is that the respondents to this survey, the response sample is skewed.
It's not representative of the owner versus renter makeup of the Berkeley community, which I think is closer to a 50-50 split, right? Thank you very much.
And I just have like three more questions.
Can we see the slide that compares the survey response rate across the corridors? Regarding North Shattuck, at the time of the survey was UC Berkeley in session? It was.
Can you describe efforts to engage the campus community, including students who are living along that corridor? I understand that they're renters, and that's why I'm asking.
Thank you.
So we did reach out to student organizations.
There was email blasts, which were sent to multiple organizations in the city.
They were part of it as well.
We did not hear from them.
They, this organization, however, we also did share the survey, e-blast as well with them.
Another initiative that we're working on is our social media.
So we do see a lot of younger folks engaged through our Instagram for the project.
And I will note, if you allow me to interject here, we made a heroic effort to stand up an Instagram account for this project.
It's the first time we've done that for a planning project.
That's the first time we've used that channel.
So there was an attempt.
We don't have as many followers as we'd like.
With the new account, there's a ramp up.
But I will be frank.
Historically, we haven't had as much success as I would like, reaching the student population to the effect that their voices would be accurately represented in our surveys, at our meetings, et cetera.
Thank you very much.
I think this underscores the unrepresentative nature of the survey responses and workshop participants.
Although, the slide before us does seem to show that among those who did respond to the survey and participate, a majority do support one or several of the alternatives.
So my final question is regarding commercial retail.
Is there a working definition that defines the distinction between retail and retail-ready space? Thank you.
It can mean multiple things, and we would get into the details in the next phase.
The general purpose of having something retail-ready is that it has the proper plumbing.
If we want to emphasize food and beverage, it has the proper ventilation or easily adaptable to provide the proper ventilation.
And the purpose for that would be to get spaces that, even though there may not be retail tenants ready to move in, that at any time, that space can be easily converted without a very expensive renovation.
Thank you.
As a follow-up, if we were to adopt a version of this that would allow for the conversion of retail to residential, how feasible and possible would it be for someone to acquire what was once a commercial ground floor space and convert it for residential use? I don't know if I have a good answer to that.
We haven't really contemplated so much existing buildings being repurposed for ground floor residential.
We've been more thinking about, like, are there places along the corridor that if a project would redevelop, would it make sense for 100% residential building as opposed to a conversion? So I think I would need to think about that more if that's part of allowing a ground floor residential use that we may see conversions.
Thank you very much.
Those are all my questions.
Okay, thank you, Councilmember.
Oops.
Moving on to Councilmember O'Keefe.
Thanks.
First question, have you guys considered making, like, a TikTok account with some cool videos? So I think that would be really great.
I can see it.
That's my first question.
Seriously, this is a very important project to me as the Councilmember representing two of the three districts.
We, together, we get North Shattuck together, but this is near and dear to my heart.
So I wanted to acknowledge that.
So thanks for letting me go early.
My staff and I, we've gotten a lot of emails.
We have read all of them.
Thank you very much to the community for being so engaged on this.
What we've done is looked through the emails carefully and tried to pull out themes for things that people are concerned about or have questions about.
And so one main goal I have right now is to give voice to the concerns that have been expressed to my office.
And so I have ended up with quite a few questions.
I'm going to ask four of them right now.
I think other Councilmembers might be asking other ones that I want to ask.
So I'm just going to stick with four.
And then, Mayor, I have three more after, and I'll let everyone else go.
And then maybe if you feel like it, I could ask the other ones.
But I'm going to ask four right now.
Two are about the process and two are about the zoning itself.
Okay, so here we go.
Great presentation, by the way.
Thank you.
Really informative.
And it did already address this, but it's about community engagement.
And I'm wondering if you could speak a little more to the way that you engaged with small businesses.
You mentioned you reached out to a few groups, but I know there's a little more detail there.
If you could provide a little more detail on who you talk to and what methods you use to reach out.
Thank you, Councilmember.
Historically, from my experience, the most effective way to connect with small businesses is to partner with their member organizations, merchants associations, and business improvement districts in Berkeley.
And we have a lot of them, and they're well-run, effective organizations, right? And so the way we start by reaching out to those organizations, and so Uthara emailed the contacts for the merchants associations and business districts in these districts, as she mentioned, along with neighborhood associations, other organizations, and invited them to ask them to invite us to their meetings so that we can meet with them where they're at, right? And we have that opportunity with two out of the three organizations.
North Shattuck Association didn't initially respond, but now we are in touch with them, and we're scheduling a meeting for the first week of December.
And I want to acknowledge, when they first got the email, maybe they didn't know what it was, and I get it.
I miss emails too.
So there was that level of engagement.
We also walked the corridors to talk to business owners and to hand out flyers and to invite them to attend our workshops.
And many did.
I personally spoke with many business owners at the three workshops, and I saw a bunch of others there that I know that I didn't get to talk to, but I saw them talking to Justin, Uthara, or Chris, or other members of our project team.
So we definitely engaged.
I'm also hearing and seeing quotes that there was no effort to engage, and so that's a little disheartening, to be honest with you, because there was an effort.
But like I said in my opening comments, we are happy to engage more and make more of an effort, and I expect that will happen in the coming months.
Yeah, thank you for making that clear, because I think that's the right answer.
If someone didn't get the message yet to know that you're still absolutely willing to engage, I think that's important.
And of course, tonight is also a way to engage.
So thank you.
Next question.
Some people feel that this process has been rushed, and I know you had the timeline up there, but if you wanted to add any more detail about actually how long this has been.
What is the timeline and what's typical for this kind of process? Yeah, so I want to note that the germ of this project really came from the housing element, which itself was the subject to an over 2 year public process, right? That included many meetings, many referrals from the city council, a lot of input from council about what council wanted to see in the housing element.
And one of the number one priorities that the council expressed was to focus housing growth on the corridors that are well served by amenities and transit that enables more walkable communities.
And council itself with encouragement by the state through the law, identified affirmatively furthering fair housing as one of the key priorities of the housing element.
And so when we were talking about different strategies to affirmatively further fair housing, creating opportunities for housing in neighborhoods that have high rates of home ownership and that are higher income and that have not historically produced housing was a priority identified in the housing element.
And so that's that was that idea in itself was subject to multiple years of community process.
So we launched this project in the middle of 2024.
Is that right? Yeah, and and and we did our, you know, there was work that went into leading up to the public outreach that really began in earnest at the beginning of this calendar year.
And so I think that that's that's the kind of thing that we're looking for.
And as noted, we did.
There have been 2 phases so far there's at least one phase still to come.
And so I mean, I don't that doesn't feel rushed to me.
There are no plans or zoning amendments.
In front of you tonight for adoption, so it doesn't feel rushed to me, but I understand that some people feel differently.
Thank you, and you actually partially answered or maybe fully answered my next question, which was I was going to ask you to speak to the greater context of meeting our housing goals, but I think you explained that pretty well with the housing element and why we're doing this.
So so thank you for answering that.
My last question is, if you could speak to.
What you expect in terms of the production of low income housing, you mentioned the density bonus, which comes with that, but if you could speak in a little more detail to how you expect that to play out.
Sure, so the city Berkeley has a 20% inclusionary policy that that's not changing.
That's not impacted by this by this action.
So 20% of new units that 10, so half of that for low income households, the other half for very low income households.
What we've historically seen for most projects in Berkeley, most projects take advantage of the density bonus at 50%.
So they, they include between 10 and 15% of the units on site, usually all for very low income households.
Sorry, can you clarify that there's also a fee option? Yeah, I'm going to get to that.
Yeah, so they most projects take advantage of the density bonus, so they include 10 to 15% of the units on site.
And as and then they make up the remainder by paying the fee.
That's what we mostly see mixed compliance.
In theory, a project could fee out altogether and only pay the fee and not provide any on site units.
The good thing about getting the fees is that the city, our housing community services division has done a fantastic job at leveraging our affordable housing trust fund to attract outside funds from other sources.
And our nonprofit development partners, so we use those funds to fund 100% affordable projects all around the city.
But so that's when we get the fees, but when the benefit of the density bonus program and when people do the on site option is that we get units right away.
So I expect that any projects that would result from this policy change would comply with our inclusion and housing requirements.
So in one of those ways.
And have you run I know you have some projected number of units that might.
Be created under this, do you have a similarly projected number of affordable units that might be created? Assuming people.
Yeah, apparently 15% 15% of so if it's 1000, 15% of that.
Yeah.
And so and that's on site.
Yeah, and then plus additional fees to our affordable housing trust fund.
And it's hard to then translate how many how many other additional units.
So when we say 15%, that doesn't include the other units that would result from the fees.
Yeah, I appreciate that.
And although I do want to just, you know, it's not really editorializing time, but it's especially important to me, at least to have the affordable units be built on site because of the equity issues at play.
So I, I'm glad it's a glad you're expecting 15%.
Okay, those are by your time if you have one minute 45 seconds if you want to ask.
No, I think I want to, because I picked the four that I like the best and then other people are gonna ask other ones and then if we have time I'll come back.
So thank you very much I'll reserve the rest of my time sounds good.
Thank you so much.
Thank you and I know someone, there's some folks who are putting up signs, if you could just keep them down so everyone can see that would be great you can put them on the side if you want that's fine but just, just try not to block people's view.
Thank you.
All right, so we're going to go to Councilmember Jacob.
Thank you so much, Madam Mayor.
Thank you to staff for the presentation and the community engagement to date.
And thank you to the community for coming out.
As is my general policy and practice.
It is my intent to listen to the community and keep an open mind on this proposal.
And it is with that intent that I would like to ask the following questions.
I will do them in rapid fire, just to try to help us save a little bit of time.
Number one, what mechanisms exist, or are being contemplated to protect community serving uses, such as our small businesses.
How does that interplay with what protections can be legally allowed by the state constitution.
For example, unlike residential, we're not able to have commercial rent control but can you talk about the report mentioned a fund to support businesses in with relocation expenses.
Could be deemed possible around them coming back at a comparable rent, and so forth.
So that's question number one.
Question number two are what safeguards are being proposed to prevent style projects vacant lots and long term cold shelled buildings.
And how will the community be protected if market conditions shift.
I'm sorry, I didn't catch that one.
What safeguards are being proposed to prevent styled projects vacant lots and long term cold shelled buildings.
And how will the community be protected if market conditions shift.
Hopefully that will not count towards my time.
Third question is, you, you talked about the 50% density bonus, can you talk about the interplay, but we can you talk about for the 75%, or the 100% density bonus scenario.
What would be required of the developer.
And how does that impact, or could that impact the affordability mix.
My next question is, have they extend to which live, work, and flexible mixed use models, been fully been evaluated as tools to add housing, while also strengthening local business activity and street life.
And my last question, and I really appreciate the survey.
I was curious what the, if you could talk about the, the thinking that went into.
I noticed that there was a 36 year age gap in the first category, believe the 18 to 54.
And then the next one was, I think, nine years.
And I just wanted to understand the thinking behind it but also if there are going to be further surveys done.
Would consideration be given, or could it to other delineations around age, and or other factors.
Thank you.
All right, thank you.
Council member.
I think we'll, we'll team up on this, but.
So, the 1st question, what mechanisms exist, or are being contemplated to protect small businesses? How does that interplay with what protections could be legally allowed by the state constitution? And you mentioned a couple of things I want to talk about the existing protections 1st.
So, currently, when projects happen, there are conditions placed on development projects to require them to minimize impacts on the surrounding community from noise, dust, vibration.
They're also required to institute.
They're also required to submit a traffic control plan to ensure that the surrounding areas will still be accessible to people on all modes of transportation.
So, I think that that will be especially important and our transportation division works regularly to make sure those are adequate and that they're being enforced.
And so I think that'll be especially important when we see development happen on these corridors.
I also want to know that.
Well, let me, I want to, I want to talk about small business displacement.
So, generally, when development happens, it happens on vacant lots, lots that are that are underutilized.
That's that's what's typical, right? When a property has an active business tenant, it is producing revenue for the owner, and it's less likely to be developed.
So, I just want to note that now, I'm not saying that small business displacement doesn't happen.
Small business displacement doesn't happen because it does.
But it's rare.
It doesn't happen a lot.
Folks, please.
Hey, excuse me.
Please be respectful.
I'm just, I'm just speaking the facts for my experience.
Thank you.
As your staff member.
All right.
Hey, please.
Let him finish.
So, it does happen, right? When it happens, thankfully, we have a talented office of economic development, small but mighty, as they're also often been noted, right? And they work directly with small businesses to support them, whether that means connecting them with spaces, with commercial brokers, helping them come up with a plan.
We have financing resources.
We have the city.
Not all cities Berkeley size have their own revolving loan fund, but we do, and that helps small businesses cover capital costs related to new start, including costs related to moving.
It's an eligible expenditure for our RLF, right? So, we have some support programs in place.
As has been noted several times, what more could we want to know? What more could we be doing? And what other policy options could we be imposing that aren't preempted by state law? Right.
And I don't have the answer to that yet.
Thankfully, we have one of the most talented economic development planning firms in California that is working on this.
Strategic economics, a Berkeley-based firm, actually, is doing a survey.
They're looking at existing provisions of state law.
They're surveying other cities in California.
They're conducting case studies and looking into best practices.
They're going to be sending a report back to us that I'm hoping we will publish in January.
And as I noted up front, that is going to be shared with policymakers, certainly well in advance of advancing any zoning amendments for adoption.
So, I will have a better answer for you in a few months.
To answer some of your other questions, well, one, in the full survey report, we do have a deeper demographic breakdown.
So, 3% from the age of 18 to 24, 9.5% from 24 to 34, and then 19% from 35 to 44.
So, that's where that breakdown is.
We did ask that question and just simplified it for the presentation.
Speaking to the density bonus question, one, I would like to point out the density bonus is a moving target.
It is subject to the whims of Sacramento and the state, and it changes over time.
For a long period of time, the maximum bonus was about 35%.
Over the last 5, 10 years, I think even more so in the last 2 to 3 years, the density bonus keeps on moving up.
So, now there's the first stage that allows you to get to that 50% bonus.
There's a number of ways.
It's a big calculation.
But very simply, one of the easiest ways to get to the 50% bonus, as this slide shows, is by providing 15% of units at very low income.
And then there's a second round of bonus that, again, is a sliding scale.
But if you provide 30% total on-site, that 15% very low income, and then an additional 15% at moderate income, you would hit that 100% density bonus.
And then to your, I believe, your other question, yes, we will be looking in more detail at ground level.
We will be looking in more detail at ground floor standards, and we will be looking at, you know, the potentially of lived work.
You know, how, like, if we require, like, retail ready across the whole quarters, like, is there a way for them to be residential at times, commercial at times? Those are things that we'll look at in more detail in the next round.
Were there other questions that? I'm not sure if I fully answered your second question.
I talked about it a little bit, what safeguards to prevent stalled projects, and how will the community be protected if market conditions shift? You know, I want to note that, I acknowledge we have a couple of very visible stalled projects in downtown Berkeley, and it's frustrating.
It's frustrating for me, too.
I think that there are particular market conditions of the last few years, very high interest rates, increasing labor and construction costs, rents that have flattened, in part because of the new housing production in Berkeley, that have led to a couple of, particularly the high rise projects that are generally a higher cost per square foot of construction.
Those high rise projects that were entitled, and even one of them, even one that started construction being stalled.
We have these visible examples, but if you go further back, there aren't many more examples of that, and so it hasn't previously been identified as a priority by the city council for us to work on.
We have started talking to staff about it, and it's something I'm interested in working on, and would welcome a referral about it.
More soon.
Thank you.
Okay, I'm going to move us on to Council Member Humbert.
Thank you, Madam Mayor.
I was number three, so I figured I had a couple more.
Sorry, I'm moving, since you all are connected, your questions.
Yeah, that makes sense.
I signed up to ask some of the questions compiled by Council Member O'Keefe's staff, and then I have a couple of my own.
These, the ones compiled by Council Member O'Keefe's staff, were kind of summaries of areas of concern that we heard from many people who sent in emails.
Concern.
The concern is that we built enough units.
The question that flows from that is, some Berkeley residents are under the impression that we have built enough units, and indeed, over the last ten years, we've added thousands.
Can you speak to the idea that we have built enough? Thank you, Council Member.
We certainly should be proud, I think, of the housing production numbers we have here in town.
The main thing for the corridors, I should say, for the corridors project within the housing element, is that the corridors project is actually identified as part of the package of projects and policies that we have to affirmatively further fair housing.
So, the main intent behind the corridor project is to address.

Segment 3

The history of exclusionary zoning in our town, and to advance the city's strategic priority of racial and income equity in our city.
And so, although the upzoning will, hopefully, result in the construction of additional housing units, the project is not specifically targeted to meet our targets.
As you know, we've done upzoning in the South Side.
We've done upzoning in the Middle Housing Zoning Project.
We've approved zoning for the BART stations.
We're doing zoning in the San Pablo Avenue.
So there are many, many areas of the city that have been upzoned.
And this is not the first place that we've looked at to upzone, but it is one of the ones that's identified in the housing element to do so.
So it will contribute to the housing supply, but it's not just a housing production policy approach.
It has equity component as well.
Thank you, Mr.
Horner.
And I guess a little follow up question I would have is that there's a general impression that, you know, that there are a lot of vacant apartments out there.
But in fact, Berkeleyside recently published an article and they did an analysis of that.
And and correct me if I'm wrong.
They determined that, in fact, there's a very relatively low vacancy rate.
Is that correct? Yeah, that's correct.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So the data they were drawing on data related to the new vacancy tax that's in place.
So looking for long term vacancies.
And we found that there are very few long term vacancies in Berkeley.
I think that there's this perception because when people see, particularly on the new buildings that are big buildings, they see there's always that for rent sign up.
Right.
And that, I think, in part reflects housing mobility.
So there's if there are 87 units in a project, there are going to be at least one or 2 that are vacant at any given time.
And but just because there's that vacant for rent sign always stays up doesn't mean that there's a high number of vacancies.
No, I appreciate that.
And it's also important, is it not that that there is some level of vacancy to allow for mobility from people to move up from a cheaper apartment to a more expensive apartment or when we're only talking about rental? Obviously, that's that's correct.
I mean, some some economists, housing economists consider a 4 to 6 percent vacancy rate to be healthy.
Thank you.
Let me ask a couple more questions.
I guess one question that that came up repeatedly is how do you address the concern over the loss of parking in some of these new developments? And can you speak to the state law that now prohibits cities from establishing minimum parking requirements? So the city of Berkeley has already adopted policies that remove the minimum off street parking requirement for residential projects.
And in some areas is instituted parking maximums for certain residential projects.
State law has also preempted the city from establishing parking minimums along most commercial corridors in Berkeley because we're fortunate enough to have frequent transit service.
And so in areas with frequent transit service, the state preempts our ability to require off street parking minimums.
Yeah.
Thank you.
I appreciate that.
And then now some of my questions, you know, and these are just some things that I want all of us to keep in mind because this is a process.
But it's a process over which we have we don't have perfect control development standards that we might put in place with the inclusion of affordable housing and density bonuses.
They can be waived, right? Often.
Is that correct? That's correct.
The projects that qualify for the state density bonus can use waivers and concessions to concessions.
And can you talk just a little bit more about waivers and concessions and just in general terms? I realize it's complicated.
So, yeah, waivers are generally waivers of development standards that would preclude the project for existing physically from existing physically.
So that could include height setbacks, other physical requirements.
Concessions are if the developer asserts that a regulation would render a project economically infeasible, then they could avoid compliance with other regulations aside from physical developments.
So historically, concessions were used often to avoid compliance with parking minimums.
We no longer have parking minimums that are precluded by state law.
So it varies.
We see recently.
More recently, we've seen developers use concessions to avoid compliance with our public art and private development requirement.
Okay, thank you.
And something that I think council member touched upon, which is commercial rent control.
So a program if we sought to institute a program that required a right of return at the same rent that the tenant experienced prior to being displaced temporarily.
That's not permissible.
Is that correct? Under state law, we can't have commercial rent control.
Is that correct? Maybe I should be directing this to the city attorney.
That is my understanding as well.
Okay.
And in fact, I think it had to do with an attempt in the 80s by Berkeley to pass commercial rent control.
And the state came in and stomped on us.
And here's another issue.
And I'm thinking particularly of the Elmwood and I know also on Solano.
There are very small merchants that have, you know, that may not be terribly profitable.
You know, they're somewhat economically strapped.
And is there some way? And to the extent that they are displaced or their business is interrupted, there's a there's a high chance that that would be mortal for them.
That would be the end of their business.
Is there something we can do to really focus on protecting those sort of super vulnerable, vulnerable tenants? I'm thinking about that.
There are all these beautiful little shops and the Elmwood and, you know, knock on wood, they're rocking along.
But I don't think they're making millions.
Thank you, council member.
I mean, this gets to the work that we've asked for teaching economics to complete and that we're talking to our office of economic development about to think, try to answer that question as best we can.
Okay, thank you.
That's that's all I have.
Thank you, folks.
Please.
Thank you.
Thank you, Peter.
Sorry.
So anyway, we are going on to council member Bartlett.
Thank you so much.
I appreciate you and your flexibility.
First, thank you.
Thanks so much, Madam Mayor.
And thank you.
Wonderful team for your work again, as usual.
It's nice to be not in the hot seat this time.
It's been on out of line a lot of times.
So, that being said, forgive me, council member Humbert, going to talk about your district a little bit, which we share basically, you know.
So, I'm thinking about Oakland just recently up zoned College Avenue in the Rockridge area.
Right? I'm curious whether there any, I guess, any adverse effects from that so far.
So, I believe that College Avenue in Oakland had since the mid 70s in zoned for at 35 feet height, which is higher than Elmwood, the College Avenue in the Elmwood.
Currently, that's roughly what we're proposing in under all one.
Okay, right.
And I think it was November of 2023 that that that was changed from 35 feet to 55 feet, which is higher than what we're proposing for for the Elmwood.
My understanding, and we've recently been in touch with the city of local staff about this, is that there haven't yet been any projects proposed.
So, I'm not sure if that's something that we're going to be able to do in the near future, but I do think that admittedly, it's a down cycle right now and so that could change, but I do think it kind of goes to the point that change doesn't happen overnight happens over decades.
Okay, and can you put, can we put on the screen, the streets, the, the, the 3 quarter salon in North Shattuck in college so we can see because.
I don't know if that's the right.
So, I'm going to put the 3 quarter salon.
There we go.
I think the number 9 possibly the the the call.
The college Avenue section to be up zone appears to be.
Pretty small, right? These are these just a couple of blocks.
That's right.
Yeah.
And so I'm curious.
So why so small? The, you know, the north and south of college Avenue are zoned.
R2, which was just recently up zoned just went into effect.
On Saturday, so we're just following the contours of the existing zoning district.
Okay.
And is it true that.
Well, I guess, when Solano North Shattuck in college, do you have a rough estimate of number of units anticipated? Yes, can you repeat your question? You asking for each quarter? Yeah, this is how many apartments do they were projecting on each 1.
Yeah, so I will.
I will give the number for 1st.
All 1 and then all 2 for each each 1.
so for Solano under all 1.
You know, our estimate is, you know, if everything if a lot of the things go, maybe 400 to 550 units and then in all 2, it goes up to 450 to about 650 units North Shattuck.
Our estimate is for all 1 about 650 to 850 units and about 750 to 1000 under all 2 and then for college Avenue under all 1.
You know, we would expect maybe 50 to 80 units total and then under all 2, maybe 80 to 130 units.
Okay, pretty, pretty big discrepancy.
It's a it's a small area and the sites are very, very tough for redevelopment for sure.
Yeah.
Okay, and in terms of, you know, the North Shattuck area, I really, I see it reminds me of that on district a bit.
It's neighbors aren't so impacted by its larger larger footprint.
I'm wondering, and this goes back to the equity argument just to keep in mind and think about this in the last 50 years or so how many if, you know, how many low income units have been built in each of these areas? In each of the 3 corridors, if you don't know, you can get back to me later, or you can, you can guesstimate.
Yes, yes.
Yeah.
It hasn't been a project in college, hasn't it? So there hasn't been a project on college.
In 50 years on Solano.
Yeah, I certainly not.
I mean, we showed you the map of the last.
2010 or 15 years, but.
Gosh, I can't think of a project on Solano.
Prior to that, so on on North Shattuck, we have we have 2 projects in process now.
And I should say, we have we have 1 project in process for college with 4.
4 units 6.
So, yeah, not many and you asked the number of low income units.
I would expect that the.
I believe that the 2 projects are both density bonus projects.
Yeah.
And so each of them will have a handful of of, you know, they're not huge projects, but I imagine there's probably about.
Between 10 and 20 total low income units that are coming to North Shattuck.
Okay.
I think the answer is probably 0.
okay.
Let's write that down.
And last question.
And this is also very important, the, the, the retail aspect, right? So much of our efforts here are imagining ways to keep our local economy vibrant, walking in stores, buying services.
I know that college, I believe, has a retail formula and if it still does, it's gone, it's gone.
Are there any retail formulas in any of the quarters at this point? No, no, there was there were gradually.
Removed and kind of college was the last holdout, but then it was, it was eliminated within the last 5 or 10 years.
Okay.
And is it.
And my understanding is something wrong and probably city attorney here.
If, if there's any discretionary view, that's granted.
To a developer, then we can contract with them around the retail.
Retail set up that that that that come back to you, like, if we let, if we, if we use our discretion to grant them something, we can negotiate.
Some sort of a retail lease agreement, right? I feel like we've done this.
I would need to look into it.
In more detail, but what comes to mind is through a development agreement.
If that is a that that's a vehicle that could be used to accomplish what you're describing.
Okay.
I'll add to that, like, if if any project was more or more than 2 thirds residential, which just about any mixed use project would be, then there is no discretionary review.
Okay.
All right, that's it.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Okay.
So, just so it's 723, I'm just doing a time check for us.
So I've got 1, 2, 3, 3, more council members.
And then myself for questions I would like to get through our questions if we can and then what I really want to do, because I see there are some families with young children here.
I'd like to take their questions and then take our break and then we'll hear the rest of the public comment, but just because it is getting a little bit later.
So we are going to move on to council member Blackaby.
Thank you, Madam Mayor.
I just want to thank Jordan, Justin, and Chris for being here for all your work and for bringing this to us tonight.
Thank you.
Thank you.
We've heard a lot of discussion about small business, and I will say that as a council member, protecting small business, enhancing it, growing our local economy, it's always one of my top priorities.
I mean, maybe other than public safety and wildfire safety, which obviously have been big issues in D6, thinking about the future of our city, economic development in our city is hugely important to me.
So I take these concerns really seriously.
We need new housing, but we also need local jobs and economic development, and we need to make sure we maintain that balance.
So I just want to thank you for what I think up until this point has been a very careful, balanced approach.
You're trying to weigh those those interests, and they're not necessarily competing interests, but they are standalone interests that we need to sort of manage appropriately.
So one question for you is, how do we make sure as we continue this process that we continue to achieve that balance all the way through to the end, that we make sure that we're trying to do both? Do you have any thoughts about how can we do that in the process, and how can we make sure that whatever we end up with really reflects both those priorities? I can address that from the development standard standpoint.
I think where it is decided that we really want to concentrate retail, we want to really create development standards that ensures a largely continuous retail frontage and also to provide, you know, a higher density of businesses per block that adds vibrancy to the city.
But, you know, there is obviously a concern that, you know, as things become mixed users, things as lobby and other fire exits and needs, so we'll be working on developing objective development standards that really try to maximize active storefronts in the right locations.
Great, thank you.
Council Member Bartlett mentioned the Rockridge example.
I'm really interested.
I know we've talked about this a little bit in the past, but I'm interested in finding other case studies of places where we think this has been done well, and maybe other case studies where we think this has not been done well, so that we can sort of learn from that, and I wonder if you could suggest any of those here.
I mean, we're not, you know, we are pioneering some of these things for Berkeley, but we're also following other examples, and can we look to some of those for some learnings, and have you thought about that, how is that going to play into this process? I mean, San Francisco, I think, in a way, has been a pioneer in this, and they've, you know, they've worked through their mixed use zoning to make sure to get the appropriate size spaces, high floor to floor on the ground floor.
You know, they've also, you know, they've had a priority to restrict chain development in different areas, so I think, you know, they're an example as you, you know, you look at places like the Excelsior, or some of the outer neighborhoods that they've been able to bring in new development, and kind of add to the vibrancy of these communities, and so I think that's a really good example of where we're at right now.
I mean, related to that, they're actually, they currently are grappling with a lot of the same issues we are right now, and a rezoning project, they're obligated under their housing element to adopt a rezoning project by January 31st, so they're ahead of us, and they're looking at these small business protection issues specifically, so I think we'll have the benefit of being able to see what ultimately gets done, and I think that's a really good example of where we're at right now.
Being able to see what ultimately gets adopted in the city of San Francisco.
Great.
I just encourage, keep these front and center, at least if we've got other examples we can look to, and then also lift up kind of where we're trying to go, the vision of where we're trying to go, and maybe other people that have gotten to that place, so we have those other positive examples that people can respond to and say, this is what we're trying to do.
I find that helpful, so it's out of the language of just zoning standards and also to real pictures and real examples of people who've done this well.
One thing we haven't talked about as much tonight, and I saw it in the previous presentations, if you look at the rezoning plans, you look at the whole corridor, and as you draw it on the map, it looks like the whole thing is orange or the whole thing is yellow.
I know in previous conversations you've said, realistically, there's actually a small percentage of those areas that are really likely hospitable to development.
It's a handful of parcels in each case.
Could you share a little bit more of that with us, and why you think that's the case? I know you alluded to it earlier, but why do you think it's the case that we're not talking about a massive redesign of these areas, but sort of in spots? Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of different factors that go into whether a property owner decides to redevelop and the opportunity costs to add units.
So, I think, you know, when our team with Strategic Economics, one thing we realized really early on is, you know, development in these areas is difficult.
You have small parcels.
You have a lot of different ownership.
You have a lot of different owners.
And there's an economy of scale when you're looking at redevelopment, and you pretty much need to get close to that, like, 10,000 square foot site.
Now, I admit in Berkeley, especially on the south side, you're getting smaller parcels where you're looking at dense student housing.
But typically what we see is you need that larger site, and there aren't that many of them.
And then, you know, as Jordan alluded to earlier, there are a lot of businesses that are making money and paying good rent.
And so the opportunity costs to redevelop that, lose that rent, and then look longer term over making money on a residential project is difficult.
So, in the alternatives report, we have a more detailed analysis of, you know, how many, like, what percentage of units that, or what percentage of parcels that we think might redevelop.
But I think over all three quarters, it was, like, something like 42%.
And then, like, you know, it was a very small percentage along college and more on North Shattuck and Solano, where you do get some bigger parcels that are, you know, there are things like banks on, which, you know, we know we see.
We've seen a lot of change in the banking industry lately.
So, you know, those are sites that we, the types of sites that we identified as more likely.
One of the concerns I know, particularly when we talk about people, shop owners, and people who are concerned about small business is what happens if we redevelop areas, and now that land is more valuable, because land is more valuable, rents go up.
Like, that's kind of the, that's one of the economic arguments.
The part we haven't talked about quite as much is land values go up, rents go up, may go up over time at some point, right? But if we also build more housing and we spend, we send several hundred more people or families into these neighborhoods, and they're living in places where they can then shop and frequent these stores, there's also some economic benefit to the existing businesses, right? That has more walk-up traffic.
They have more people that are consuming the products.
Will you be able to model that? Like, help us think about, because there's sort of two different factors going on.
There's sort of a cost of land, cost of rent may go up, but then over time, you may have more businesses, more customers, more walk-up traffic.
How do those factors play out? Will we be able to model that in this economic process? I mean, that is very difficult to model, and I would say it's probably even more difficult in these three quarters to model that, like, effectively, because each of these quarters, they not only draw from the people that live, like, near them, but they're, all three of them are at least city draws, if not regional draws.
So, you know, it's really hard to model, like, the exact effect that that will have.
Now, more customers definitely can support more businesses.
So, you know, from that aspect, we do think that, you know, bringing more customers to each of these areas will support.
In each of the quarters, you know, we've seen businesses go out of business nicely.
Books Inc., for example, that's in my neighborhood, like, you know, that was a cherished part of the neighborhood.
And, you know, there's, you know, the retail industry is changing a lot, and so more people generally does mean more demand for services.
Great.
We've talked a lot about the housing, how much, how big, how dense.
We've talked about the impact on small businesses.
But what I really like, and I know we're talking about the San Pablo plan later, but there's a huge part of the San Pablo plan that's also talking about these public realm policies.
You know, like, how do we activate these public spaces? How do we make them more engaging? How do we make them places that are going to draw more people from the neighborhood and from across the city to, like, spend time in those places? Each of these three neighborhoods, these quarters that we're talking about, already do that and have the potential to do much more of that.
So my question for you is, how do we make sure in this process, we're also thinking about the street level activation, you know, creating more parklets, creating more places for people to spend time, for families.
Make them places that are desirable, and even more desirable when there are more people who are there, that make it even more desirable for businesses to be than they are now.
How do we bake that into this process? Because it feels like there's a lot more on that, that is not just about how do we zone and what's happening to businesses, but activating these spaces in a much more creative way that is a 25 to 50 year opportunity.
Yes, I think that's a really great question.
And while this project is really focused on public property, right, that is the scope of this work, as we start to look at objective design standards, and I think the Planning Commission gave very good and clear direction, that we can look at how do you provide that flexibility, but also the standards to ensure an active ground floor and one that's appropriate to the quarter.
So, for instance, if we allow ground floor residential, how do we think about a building setback that allows that privacy for a potential ground floor unit, or if it's a live work unit that is flexible to turn to retail? Like, how do you provide that space that you're creating a positive and pleasant environment? And then in the commercial areas, how do you think about, like, one, we have to balance that a lot of these projects will be small infill, where other projects are right up to the property line and the backup walk, but how do you provide that flexibility or maybe even provide standards for larger projects to require a ground floor setback that allows more space for outdoor dining, landscape, and other amenities? So those are all objective design standards that we look forward to digging into in the next phase.
Great.
My time is up.
I just hope we can continue to center that because that's really important to me in this process as well.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
Council Member Lunapara.
Thank you so much.
I first wanted to say thank you for your work in trying to get outreach to students for the survey.
Our office is also always happy to help if that's helpful.
It's really important that we do this outreach because students are an integral and permanent part of our city and our neighborhood.
I also wanted to say that, for the record, I think TikTok is actually not the best way to reach people in a small geographic area, but we are happy to help.
My first question is, in your experience, what is the most efficient way that a city in California can increase its total deed restriction?.

Segment 4

Restricted Affordable Units.
Gosh, you know, in Berkeley, we've had the luxury of Measure O, that's produced a huge amount of units.
That's been the most effective way to produce units in Berkeley over the last decade, for sure.
I really think that cities are in a place right now, with the state and federal budget and policy direction the way it is, where municipalities have an all-hands-on-deck approach.
Every strategy we can use, we need to use.
Historically, inclusionary has been an important part of that strategy for us.
When we see market rate development, we either get on-site units or we get a payment to our housing trust fund, which we can leverage for other outside funding.
That's the strategy, I would say, the most cost-effective strategy for the city of Berkeley, where our voters or our property owners and residents don't have to make upfront payment in order to get the units.
Thank you.
This kind of ties into a similar question, but I'm curious how our requirements to meet our RENA numbers affect this process or how that fits into the whole thing.
Justin's answer earlier about why we're doing this project, and you heard Chris go through the numbers of the units, we're not talking about huge numbers here.
I will say everything counts.
Right now, 89, 34, is that for the sixth cycle? I think that we permitted about 1,200 units over the first quarter, the first two years, so we're not on track.
Ultimately, the consequence of not hitting our RENA numbers means that we could have less discretion over future housing and permitting.
We're mandated to do what we can to hit that.
Even though we're not talking about huge numbers, this is definitely part of it.
It's why it's a program of the housing element, so I do think it matters.
Thank you.
This is a kind of separate question, but I'm curious about what you think about the idea of also rezoning the directly adjacent blocks around the commercial nodes to encourage kind of slowly stepping back into the neighborhood.
We've heard that from a couple groups, and I just want to ask to hear your opinion on it.
Yeah, that hasn't been part of the scope of this project, but it's certainly something that we can look at.
I mean, the way our zoning is set up now is that many commercial uses are allowed by right on the ground floor, right? If we're going to extend that commercial zoning into the residential districts, it could introduce some areas where it might be perceived as conflict, where there's kind of noise or other impacts that are generated by customer visits.
Another way we could look at it would be potentially further upzoning the residential uses along the edges of the commercial districts.
So that's not part of the scope of this project, but something we might consider in the future.
That makes sense.
They asked me to say also middle housing, which is certainly relevant here.
It just went into effect.
Great.
Thank you.
And the final question is kind of it's been touched on already, and it's kind of a direct response to some of the feedback that we've been hearing around the idea that upzoning can kind of, like, destroy a neighborhood that is currently beautiful because these neighborhoods are beautiful.
And as we've seen Rockridge upzoned in the past couple of years, I think it's still beautiful.
I also think that our neighborhoods that have new housing are also beautiful.
I guess my question is more specific around how you've seen the upzoning affect Rockridge, if you want to discuss it a little more.
Yeah, you know, I mentioned up front, I feel like our experience and our observation is that zoning changes neighborhoods gradually over the course of decades.
I would note that often reinvestment in a neighborhood is a positive thing.
Development often happens at underutilized and vacant single story commercial buildings that feel like blight in the neighborhood or an eyesore in the neighborhood.
And if it's older building stock, rather than be retenanted or invested in, it will sit vacant.
If the conditions are right, and if the regulatory conditions allow for it, it can be rezoned.
It could be redeveloped into a building that brings new residents, new spending power in the district, and new brand new commercial space.
And so that feels like actually contributing to the neighborhood, to the vitality of the district.
Great, thank you so much.
And thank you all for your hard work.
Thank you, Council Member Casarani.
Yes, thank you very much, Madam Mayor.
Thank you, Director Klein, and thank you to our team for your presentation.
I wanted to ask a question about height, because I know that, obviously, if there is a state density bonus that's used, there's a potential to exceed the base zoned height.
I also want to note, in asking this question, that we have seen a number of high rise proposals that have recently sought or received a land use entitlement in our downtown over the last decade.
And yet, none of those high rises have been built, I think because the financing is difficult.
Can you talk about the likelihood of development exceeding 8 stories under Alternative 2? And when you talk about that, can you explain how building materials and costs change once you exceed 8 stories? I can go first, and then Chris can jump in if you like.
Yeah, we noted on some of the slides that, particularly in Alternative 2, if a project did seek a 100% density bonus, then projects could go to 8, 9, 10, 11 stories in theory.
Folks, please.
In practice, as you've noted, it's very difficult for those projects to ever materialize.
The cost per square foot of construction goes up dramatically above.
And there's actually a big cutoff at 85 feet specifically, because above that height, the building code requires that you switch to steel-framed construction.
And it places other requirements related to life safety and fire suppression that dramatically increase the cost per square foot.
So we don't see, really, even in our downtown, the vast majority of the new projects citywide.
Even where we allow the highest heights citywide, projects tend to max out at 8 stories.
Okay, thank you.
I think we also saw that at the North Berkeley BART station, where the development team could have exceeded 8 stories with the density bonus, but chose not to.
And that is the highest height that we will have at that station.
The next question I had, I know Councilmember Bartlett had asked for the expected number of units for each corridor, and that's in the report.
Can you just explain the methodology around those numbers? Because I think, to Councilmember Blackabee's point, it doesn't assume that every single parcel that's up-zoned gets redeveloped, correct? Yeah, that is correct.
So, you know..
Let's see.
In general, we categorized each parcel across, like, 5 different levels, right? From the most likely, the higher redevelopment potential, to modest redevelopment potential, to, you know, historic buildings, you know, probably not going to go.
So we had this 5 levels.
And for the highest redevelopment potential, again, these are the larger sites, you know, like the bank sites.
Sites that are 9,000 square feet or more, generally, that have that potential for a larger project.
We assumed about 50% to 70% of those would redevelop.
And then for the modest redevelopment potential, we looked at more to 20% to 40%.
And then we also provided, like, a range of densities across that.
So, you know, it's a really broad look.
But that's, of those parcels that we looked at for high redevelopment potential, again, we assumed maybe 50% to 70% would go, and then 20% to 40% for the modest.
Okay, thank you.
I think that's important because, as Council Member Blackaby had noted, just because we are considering a rezoning of the length of the corridors, as shown on this slide, it does not mean that every single parcel will be transformed.
And, you know, do you have an expectation of over what time period we might see those estimated units get built? Yeah, I mean, in looking at this, we're looking kind of, like, longer term, like, you know, at least 10 years.
And, I mean, it really depends on market cycle, right? Like, there can be times where things are going, and there can also be times, like now, where, you know, with construction costs and interest rates, where there can be long down periods where no development happens.
So it's largely based on not only the microeconomics here in Berkeley, but also the national picture.
Okay, thank you very much.
Thank you.
I just have three questions.
I'm curious.
I know there's concern about this density bonus piece.
Can you tell us, has the city ever permitted a 100% density bonus project in Berkeley? Not building permits, no.
Okay, thank you.
At 100%.
Is it 100%? I think so.
Chris is telling me that the project on North Shattuck is a 100% density bonus, so I stand corrected.
Folks, please.
Okay, so one is what the answer is.
There may be more than one, but yes, like, there are.
So there's at least one, and I mean, I will note that, you know, again, the state density bonus law continues to change.
And the 50 and 100% bonuses have come in pretty recently.
I think as 2023, 2024 is when the state density bonus law changed quite a bit to allow higher density bonuses.
Thank you.
And can you explain the pros and cons and maybe the process briefly of doing a zoning overlay for specific opportunity sites? Versus upzoning a corridor in its entirety.
I mean, I think it's hard to.
I think it's hard for a city to decide what parcels they think are right for redevelopment.
And, you know, not give the property owner next to them the same opportunity as a site that you deem more likely to redevelop or that you want to redevelop.
We call that kind of spot zoning.
And so there's definitely an equity and equitable piece to it, to the property next to them.
Yeah, another way to put that is like, how do we how do we define the criteria for which sites get upzoned and which sites don't? And the other thing I would note is that's not how we've pursued zoning amendments in Berkeley.
That's not how we pursued the headline quarter plan.
It's not what's proposed for San Pablo Avenue.
Thank you.
And regarding the definition of ground floor retail, I know this has been touched on, but I just want to confirm.
Would that also include customer focuses like medical services, art studios, things like that? Yes.
Generally, when we say retail, we're using that as a proxy for a broad set of personal services as well, food and beverage services.
And actually, it is part of the scope of this project to consider the levels, the permitting levels required for those types of uses along each of these corridors.
That's great.
Thank you very much.
I appreciate it.
And thank you all very much also for the presentation and just the time.
I did see the Instagram.
And so I do, like I said, I want to allow for the public comment for some of the folks who have young children here.
I at least know there are two, I think.
Yeah.
So I'm going to let you all go and then we're going to take a 10 minute break.
Go ahead.
I know there's a lot of people.
Make your way through.
Thank you, Madam Mayor.
Council, my name is Alana Kinrich.
I am very privileged to have the resources to be an Elmwood homeowner.
I'm asking you to provide more opportunities for young families and lower income people to live in my neighborhood by maximizing allowed housing.
When I sat down in the front of this room tonight, I was told that I should sit in the back because breastfeeding my baby would be distracting.
Council member Taplin was just shouted at for daring to ask about renters, about students, about people who can't afford to spend hours in this room.
And anti-family and anti-renter sentiment feels very strong in this room tonight.
I come here before you as a representative of people with young children who are unable to come to a long City Council meeting at this time and who desperately need additional housing options in my neighborhood.
I hope you will ask staff to study the maximum amount of housing possible in the Elmwood.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Hello, council members.
My name is Theo Gordon.
I'm asking you and staff to study six stories throughout the corridors and include neighboring streets, especially those like Ashby.
There's gonna be lots of talk tonight about preserving the Elmwood as what it has been.
But I'm here as an Elmwood homeowner with 27 years left on my mortgage, which I think makes me a longtime resident to ask you to think about what the future can be.
And if includes little guys like this or only or only includes people who bought their homes before I and most of you were born.
Sorry, Mark.
During Halloween, I was at a gathering of five other Elmwood families with small babies.
Every other one of those families was living in their parents' backyard.
What's going to happen when those families move away because they can't afford to stay? What will our neighborhood be without kids for play dates or teachers in our schools or customers in our stores? If you want to preserve our neighborhood as a place with family where families can live, we desperately need more housing.
Homes are what give a neighborhood character, not obscure step down requirements or exclusionary height restrictions.
Please make a plan that builds the homes we need.
Thank you.
Hey, test.
Yeah, so I don't have anything prepared.
I probably should have.
But, yeah, I've been a Berkeley resident for about 15 years.
10 of those years, we lived in rent-controlled apartments in the North Shattuck neighborhood.
And for close to the last five, we've been fortunate enough to become homeowners closer to here in North Berkeley.
I strongly support building more housing, especially in these corridors.
I never thought that I would be able to be a long, you know, permanent homeowner in Berkeley.
And fortunately, we we have made it.
I'd love to continue to be able to afford my mortgage.
But, yeah, like I'd love for my other family to be able to afford to live out here.
I want my children to be able to live here as well.
So, yeah, that's it.
Thank you.
You can move the microphone, by the way.
Hi, my name is Rohini.
I have two kids not here at home.
They claim they don't have homework.
I find that unlikely.
I live in North Shattuck.
I would love to welcome other families with kids into my neighborhood to explore the businesses we have.
We have icons like Cheese Board, Chez Panisse, as you guys know.
We also have small businesses that I use all the time, like Image Beauty Salon and So Clean.
Kim and Image Beauty Salon and Eunice at So Clean, two Asian American women, completely blindsided.
No information about the upzoning process.
So please consider pausing before we go forward.
Upzoning, from what I can hear, it adds housing, but with a trickle-down assumption.
So add lots of luxury units, but only 10% affordable.
No talk about homeownership either.
None of these developments seem to have any aspect of condo development where people can buy in.
Please consider pausing.
Please consider just involving businesses.
Thank you.
Sorry, my intention was for folks who had children here.
I'd let you finish your comment, so that you could, you know, but I understand.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I hear what you're saying.
Yeah, yeah, no, it's okay.
You gave your comment.
All right, don't worry, don't worry about it.
Am I done? You're done, yeah.
All right, thanks.
Thank you.
Okay, so we're going to take our 10-minute break, and we will come back in 10 minutes.
Thank you.
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Okay, folks, please quiet down.
Oh, yeah, I know, we're going to do my school teacher thing.
If you can hear me, clap once.
If you can hear me, clap twice.
If you can hear me, clap three times.
Oh, we need to do that again.
If you can hear me, clap three times.
Okay, it works in the classroom, so here we are.
Okay.
All right, folks, please, please, please quiet down.
We're starting this meeting again.
Okay, so we're going to have public comment.
I'm sure many folks know, but in case you don't already know this about me, I am a real stickler for time.
So you will have one minute, not a little more, not a little less.
You'll have exactly a minute.
And if you would like to give your minute to somebody, you can do that.
It would be up to four minutes total.
That includes that person's minute and then three people that would be giving their time.
I would love if you could organize that beforehand just so you're not standing up there trying to figure out whose minute you're getting.
That would be great.
I know some folks are doing that already, and that will really help us move along.
I'm sure nobody wants to be here past midnight, so let's make this efficient.
Let's listen to everyone.
Let's be respectful.
And we're going to start with our first speaker.
Go ahead.
Folks, please quiet down because when they're speaking, I really want people to be respectful.
Folks in the back, I know there are people in line talking.
Thank you.
Hi, Mayor Ishii and council members.
My name is Nama Firestone, and I have been an architect, a low-income housing developer.
I really support high-density housing and buildings and low-income housing.
That's been my life pursuit.
But I think that something has gone really wrong here.
I'm seeing this pent-up frustration from people, and that's because we have not been given the chance to actually be part of the process of deciding how Berkeley will best implement high-density housing and developments.
All of us want Berkeley to thrive.
And the way this has been going on, it's kind of like, if you'll allow me to use a metaphor, it's kind of like saying to me, okay, what's for dinner? You're getting chicken.
And I would love to get dinner.
I want all of us to eat dinner, but I don't want chicken.
But not a single time.
Thank you.
Thanks for your time.
Thank you.
Madam Mayor, I'm going to have four minutes, and we've got three people.
So cards, one, just hold on.
One, two, and three, if you could hold up your cards.
One, two, and three.
Thank you.
I don't need to be in line.
It's okay.
Go ahead.
Excellent.
Yes, my name is Donald Simon.
I'm a construction attorney based downtown, and I live in Benvenue, right behind all the shops.
I'm one of the organizers of Save Berkeley Shops, and you see us in the crowd here today.
We're a coalition of businesses and residents who call these places home.
I'm also a real Yimby.
I have two apartments in my backyard, and so do all my neighbors throughout the Elmwood.
This isn't about if we have additional housing in these three neighborhoods.
We all support that.
The question is how.
These shopping districts are home to the most endangered business species in America today.
Small, locally owned, independent retail stores.
They survived COVID.
They're somehow surviving Amazon.
And now we want to put this on them, and the reason they're all here is because they are fearing for their future, and we are along here with them.
Other cities would give their eye teeth to have these amazing shopping districts that we have, but now it seems the city is just taking it for granted.
So the question is, must we really destroy these shopping districts, some of which are a century old, in order to achieve our housing objectives that we all want to see succeed? Because that's exactly what will happen.
If you signal approval for this, real estate speculators will swoop in.
They will secure rights to buy contiguous parcels, either through options, most likely so they can purchase in the future.
They'll wait for the market to turn, and then they'll consolidate the lots and develop them themselves or sell them to someone else who will.
And when that first huge project breaks ground, the noise and disruption is going to scare the customers away, and the rest of the businesses are going to suffer.
And so these businesses that are teetering are going to teeter-totter off.
That is how you kill shopping districts that have taken generations to become the sustainable retail ecosystems they are.

Segment 5

We've been told that this is only going to facilitate the development of a few target lots.
There's been a lot of talk about that.
That's just simply not credible to us.
If that was the objective, you could use spot zoning and variances under the law today.
Or you could make those more allowable under the law today.
Why, if it's just going to be a go-slow approach, and just a few target priority properties are going to get developed, why then are we going to change the zoning for the entire blocks? That just doesn't make sense.
More importantly, the developers are not asking for this at this point.
We have entitled projects that we've already talked about that are not getting built, that are eyesores and creating blight.
Exhibit A, Center Street, then go where I work out at the YMCA and look at the open hole in the ground.
There are a lot of ways to increase housing without destroying these shopping districts.
We saw surveys talking about what people's preferences were.
Those are rather dubious.
Why? Because there was no effort made to confirm that those people responding were actually Berkeley residents.
If you had an email address and you could get that URL, you could go on and you could be from Timbuktu.
But the biggest issue here is engagement.
If you're going to do something like this, the democratic approach would be to engage with us and explore the range of different options for how you could house into our neighborhood.
But instead, planning met only with developers.
And guess what? The single choice we've been presented, our chicken on the dinner menu, happens to be the project type that will earn the developers the maximum profit and put the most money in the planning department, which is 75% funded from fees that these developers and contractors pay.
At a minimum, we would expect that we would be told what's happening.
We've heard a little bit about outreach here today.
The fact of the matter is not a single letter went out to residents.
Not a single letter went out to all these businesses.
There was a..
I have four minutes.
Thank you.
You had four minutes.
That was four minutes.
But thank you for your comment.
Thank you.
Come on up.
Okay.
I'm Barbara.
Here is my wife, Christine.
I want to say I'm Brazilian.
I'm an immigrant.
And I left Brazil eight years ago to live here.
My dreams were just not..
I was afraid to live in Brazil and tell my family I'm a lesbian.
And without knowing any English, I just wrote my life up here, my history up.
And now, my wife and I, we are owners of a small business in Elmwood.
And for the first time, I feel really afraid not to succeed.
I feel afraid, like, just lost everything we are investing in.
Like, we just, like, kind of stop, like, growing our business because we don't know what's going to happen.
Because I don't think that's a good future for a small business.
And, like, people, like, who really loves Elmwood, like us, like, shouldn't be feeling like that.
Like, we should have more answers than, like, just questions.
Thank you.
Hi, my name is Christine.
We recently took over Berkeley Organic Market in Elmwood.
I, myself, am in, hopefully, the final stages of my PhD at Cal.
We likely will not be able to afford to live in the new units that are built in college.
I've been a renter in Berkeley since 2016.
I expect to be a renter forever in Berkeley.
And this project and all projects that don't include affordable condos won't change that.
That said, I do want to see more housing.
And I know that it's not the council's job to care about my particular small business.
That's my job.
But I know that the council does care, collectively, about the general health of the commercial districts that are being up-zoned.
And part of the whole vision is for people to live in their commercially and culturally vibrant areas that are walkable.
Can we get one more? Thank you.
Number four.
Go ahead.
I wish when we got to the meeting about the city planning came and told us that this would be good for small businesses because there would be more foot traffic.
And the thought seems to be that more density will help small businesses.
Keteris paribus, that would be true.
I wish it were true.
But all things do not stay the same.
Ground floor retail and new developments is a trap.
It is next to impossible for small owners to get in to those with the build-outs and collateral required.
And even the investment-backed chains have taken a while to move into some of the prime retail spaces right on Bancroft.
There's something going on there, and I really think that the city would be in everyone's interest to study that more.
So please, also, I'm glad to hear there's a consulting thing going on about small businesses, but you can also talk to me.
I'm free.
And I love to talk about this.
And I want to thank you all.
I want to thank you all for your time and service.
Thank you.
Next person.
Come up, come up, come up.
Hello, everybody.
Thank you for your time.
My name is Arian, and I'm a small business owner on North Shattuck.
I'm just looking at the whole situation here the most positive way.
But we recently have moved our location 30 seconds walking distance, and it hurt our business in the most dramatic way possible.
And this is whatever happens with whatever support that everybody would give us here, changing a location for small businesses hurts the business the most.
And if this happens again, we are not going to be able to survive, and we are going to lose our businesses.
We've been there for 30-plus years, and a bank used to own our property, and they kicked us out after 30 years without even letting us know that they're even planning on selling the building.
And changing a location for small businesses is the worst thing that could happen, and none of the businesses would survive if this happens.
Thank you.
We need 5, 6, and 7.
Excellent.
Good evening.
I missed 5, sorry.
5 is in the back.
Oh, in the back.
Thank you.
Thank you for the opportunity to speak and address council.
My name is David Salk.
I've owned and operated a Berkeley business, Focal Point, for 50 years.
I've served on the board of the Elmwood Merchants, was president for a number of years.
But most importantly and relevant, since 1990, I've been the president of the Elmwood Theater Foundation, which is a nonprofit that restored the theater after the fire in 1988.
We work closely with the city of Berkeley, from the mayor to the Office of Economic Development.
Jordan, thank you.
And created a viable project, Working Together.
And that's what I want to emphasize to you all tonight, is the Elmwood Theater is a statue to working together.
When I learned about the August meeting at St.
John's, I learned about it two days before.
I'm not saying that there wasn't some attempt to do reach out, but there clearly wasn't enough.
But more importantly, at the presentation in August, there was no mention by anyone about the fact that there were possibly other options, nor was there any mention about the idea that businesses were going to be displaced.
If these projects were going to get built, you can't build a five-story, six-story building on top of an existing business.
They get displaced.
They either move or they close.
And the idea that moving is going to be something that can be assisted with, with low-interest loans and mitigation, is just utter nonsense.
Those businesses will not, first of all, they will likely not find other places to move to.
And even if they do, the amount of debt they're going to incur in rehabbing the spaces and moving, forget it.
It won't happen.
So what strikes me about this, though, is that I appreciate the fact that there were these presentations by the planning department when the city was laying out the two options.
But they could have anticipated that business owners would have panicked.
They could have anticipated that business owners would have come to that meeting and thought, what are the implications of this for my business? And there was no attempt to be proactive about getting in front of that and saying to the community, we know that some of you are going to be unhappy because this could potentially mean displacement and relocation or closure of legacy businesses.
And College Avenue is filled with businesses that have been there 20, 30, 40, and in my case, 50 years.
I've got 10 employees.
They depend on me.
I've got a family that depends on me.
What about all that? What are we doing to protect that? So I want to say this isn't a case of nimbyism.
This is a case of smart planning.
And I don't want to see this turn into an adversarial conversation between young, old, racial issues, all of this.
It's not necessary for us to go down that path.
We can work together.
We can talk over these problems.
We can meet.
I'm heartened by the fact that we've been talking about more collaboration and reaching out.
This is the first time that I've heard that we're not deciding anything tonight.
But when I heard your comments at the State of the City address, I was really heartened by your comments, Mayor Ishii, when you said Berkeley has had a reputation of not being a business-friendly city.
And I want to turn that reputation around.
And my office understands the direct connection between the success of our local businesses with our local economy, jobs, and the unique culture of Berkeley.
And to that, I say bravo.
I'm asking for you to show us the respect that we deserve.
Social justice is about housing, but it's also about protecting our small businesses.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you.
And let's see.
I think we're at 7-8.
We just did 7, so 8.
Okay.
Thank you.
So you will have three minutes.
Thank you so much for giving me an opportunity to speak with you tonight.
My name is Vanessa Vichit-Vatican.
I am one of the 50 worker owners of the Cheeseboard Collective.
I am here tonight because we are the owners of the building that stretches from 1500 to 1512 Shattuck Avenue and is going to abut any building that is built in the space where the Bank of America building currently stands.
So it's obvious that we're concerned about how that will affect us.
And I don't know because we haven't gotten any information really.
We were lucky that a neighbor sent us an email letting us know that the construction was an actual plan in the neighborhood, and that's how we found out maybe three weeks ago.
So..
You're taking her time.
So thank you.
I am here to ask you and us to work with the cooperative lens on.
This is how we operate, and this is how we've stayed in business for 58 years today.
This is our birthday today.
So what that means for me and for us, I think I can speak for the cooperative when I say that this involves really good, clear, frequent, and good communication.
This involves transparency, honesty, and cooperation.
It sounds kind of simple.
It's a little bit difficult sometimes, but it's how we've lasted this long.
It's how democracy lasts and endures.
We have to practice it to keep it alive.
Yeah, I think that there was a question about the timeline of things feeling like they're going really fast, and someone over here, I believe, said, actually, the timeline doesn't seem that fast, but when you're a small business who's about to be shadowed by a building, that might or might not be a good thing.
I don't know because we don't have the information, but once we do, we'll know.
But that timeline feels a lot faster when you're about to be in that shadow.
So I want to echo what I've heard before, which is please involve us in the communication and the process.
We are here to do that.
This is what we do.
The cheese board is all about that.
So thank you for your time, and thank you for this opportunity.
Thank you.
We have 11, 12.
All right.
11 is over here, so 10 and 11.
Hello, Ms.
Mayor, City Council members, consultants, and fellow Berkeley business owners.
City Council, thank you for your efforts to address our housing crisis.
I'm Mike Apte.
I'm a retired LBNL scientist.
I'm now the manager of Apte Family Properties, LLC, a task left to me by my late father.
We own two commercial buildings in Berkeley.
We have Berkeley business license to operate both properties.
The CZU directly involves our property at 1519 and 1521 Shattuck Avenue.
We've owned that for 45 years.
You may know it as the 94709 post office.
We have several other tenants, including Chez Panisse offices, jewelers, and three therapists.
As a landlord, I take the responsibility of caring for and protecting the interests of our tenants seriously.
When major issues such as possible rezoning of the neighborhood come up, I need to know about it, because it likely has major downstream effects on both my business and that of my tenants.
That is why I was appalled when I attended the Ramey Associates workshop in the North Berkeley Senior Center.
I found out about this meeting as a local citizen from a neighbor, not as a local business owner.
The workshop proved to be an attempt to stifle real community input with no real options offered.
Questions to the presenters were quashed, and the poster board voting was merely a show of a choice between a couple of design elements for one rezoning outcome.
Little or no consideration was provided on how local businesses would be protected from the disruption caused by implementation of this one basic approach.
We were not given a chance to discuss, explore, or offer other possible approaches to development of new housing.
Why does this bother me? My business has never received any communication by any means from the city to elicit our ideas or otherwise participate in planning.
As a licensed business owner, we have been let down by the city by its lack of notification and invitation to participate.
Having personally walked and contacted all the local stores along North Shattuck Corridor, I can confirm that not a single shopkeeper has received an invitation to participate in developing strategies to create more local housing.
It is shameful that the city thinks that it can get away with a taxation without representation scheme.
Our business urges the city council to slow down and bring us to the planning table.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Next person.
Oh, 12? Do you need four minutes? She's gonna..
Okay.
Alright.
You'll have three minutes then.
So, 12 and 13.
Plus yours.
Hello, members of the city council and mayor.
My name is Mary Orem.
I own a real estate business that I had with my husband until he retired and it's been in the Elmwood neighborhood for 40 years.
I also live in the Willard neighborhood.
I walk to work almost every day.
My concern is that in considering what you're planning on doing, it's going to sow the seeds of the destruction of these small commercial districts in Berkeley.
Not tomorrow, but gradually over time.
The problem is that there are two conflicting groups.
There are the property owners and the business owners and they have different goals.
The property owner, of course, wants to maximize their income.
The business owner wants to continue their business and maximize their income.
In changing the zoning, you will dramatically change the incentive of the property owner to sell the property.
Because the bigger the building you can build on these lots, the more valuable the lot will be.
As it currently stands, there's a balance between the commercial rent and the return that the property owner is getting.
When you increase the potential for many more rents by building many more housing units, it's going to dramatically increase the value of the lot.
Perhaps the current owner has a good relationship with their business tenant.
But if that current owner's circumstances change or if their family inherits, that imbalance is going to come forward.
That's when those properties are going to be sold.
That's when the existing businesses are going to have to leave.
That's when the property is going to be torn down and something is going to be built in its place.
It's going to be very disruptive.
I live across the street from Willard Park.
A couple years ago, they tore down the old clubhouse.
They built this community center.
It took a year and a half.
Now, there's only houses on one side of the street, but the construction people took the parking on both sides of the street all day.
They took, I think, an equal amount of land in the park for staging the construction.
I'm very concerned that the little former dry cleaners on College Avenue is going to be rebuilt because there's no room for the construction workers to park.
There's no room to store the construction materials.
I think it's going to be devastating to the businesses that are on either side to say nothing of the traffic on College Avenue because I figure they're going to have to close off a lane at times.
The AC Transit bus goes there, the 51B.
It's going to be a mess.
I think those are my cues.
Come on up, please.
We've got to keep our line moving.
Thank you.
My name is Margo Smith, and I've lived in Berkeley since 1969.
I speak for the Berkeley voters who oppose the upswing plans for three Berkeley business districts, North Shattuck, Solano, and the Elmwood.
These vital commercial districts now allow small businesses to flourish and shoppers to buy near their neighborhoods.
I can walk to shops from my home to take care of my daily needs.
Unfortunately, it seems that there's some commitment to allowing massive housing in my neighborhood that will destroy this vital commercial district.
Not only that, as a social scientist, I can tell you that the city upzoning survey was poorly written and will give council misinformation.
It only allowed opinions on new proposals, not other options.
Not only that, you had 1,200 respondents in a city of 100,000 people.
That's not very representative.
I hope you'll ignore the survey and look for something with better reality.
The city plan for upzoning will permit the building of massive structures that will displace many small businesses and uproot our successful local business community.
We can see the future in the row of high-rent vacant shops in downtown and elsewhere, Center Street and Poyle.
You don't have to look far for this.
We've been building housing here in Berkeley for the last 30 years, and the rents have not gone down, and we haven't provided more housing for low-income people.
What do you think that this trickle of low-income housing is going to do for the future here? I'd like to think that our council members cherish our charming and unique Berkeley, value its small business and active commercial districts, support low-income housing and rent control, and listen to constituents and respect their concerns.
Thank you.
Come on up, please.
Come on up.
Hello, mayor, council people.
My name is Drew Detch.
I'm here to talk about what everyone else is talking about here.
And all you council people do know, you've all walked these neighborhoods.
You know we actually have really vital neighborhoods.
These things work.
Most planners would give their I.T.s to develop something with that much texture, but life.
These are fabulous places, but they're very fragile.
And, yes, we need housing, but housing has to be thought of in an appropriate way in appropriate areas.
Absolutely important that we have adequate housing.
What we had here, you heard of it before, the process was skewed.
Working in urban planning for 40 years, when you have a workshop, you present things to people.
You get their input.
You show opportunity.
You show options.
You show alternatives.
You inform people and get their informed opinions.
This didn't happen.
Thank you.
I have someone giving me a minute in the back.
Stephanie? Okay.
Pardon? I have two minutes.
Go ahead.
That's up to you.
You can keep the mask on if you want.
I have a dad with dementia and a sister with cancer, so I try to be super careful.
Good evening, council, mayor, and staff.
My name is Moni Law.
I'm a resident of Berkeley.
Mayor, council, I appreciate your stated goal of adding more housing with a goal of equity and affordability.
To those formidable goals, I have questions and concerns.
I'm a Cal alum.
I've owned three homes.
I'm starting my nonprofit business, and I'm fortunate to live in a rent-controlled apartment in Berkeley.
I love and support businesses in all three corridors, including, I love Saul's and their matzo ball soup.
Since 1978 to 87 and the last 15 years, one, has the city conducted an audit, a comprehensive study of how many current housing units are actually empty or being Airbnb'd, which is just as well be empty because they're there for a couple weeks and gone? I've had Cal parents and students tell me that many units are empty, Shattuck Avenue, University Avenue.
New buildings now charge $3,500 for one bedroom, $4,500 and up two bedrooms, and many new buildings are charging students by the bed, $1,200.
And these are not rent-controlled units.
Two, is the town and gown coordinating as we build? UC went decades without building, as did the city, failed to build affordable units despite its nexus studies confirming 20%, not just 10%, and they stuck on that.
So ABAC cited us for failing to increase affordable units.
My alma mater just bought the Marriott Hotel on Center Street, gutted People's Park and killed over 50 trees, and the last open space that was in South Berkeley.
Three, is the council passing a community benefits ordinance to require diversity hiring, local hires, public art, affordable childcare, free conference rooms, et cetera? Four, and final, what steps are being taken to increase the number of black, brown, and indigenous tenants to these new units? Equity for Black Berkeley preference points were created after extensive workshops, legal research, and Jack McCormick and the Mayor air game, an awesome team and healthy black families to try to turn around the displacement and gentrification of 42% of South Berkeley used to be black and now it's 27%.
Thanks.
Hi, I'm Sonia Trouse and I live right here on Browning.
Sorry about a block and a half away.
I support the up zoning.
We definitely need more housing.
We definitely do not have enough housing.
We're renting actually in a triplex.
So some little multifamily zoning and it's working.
So that's good.
I think there are definitely creative and fascinating ways to solve all of the real problems that people are presenting here.
Small businesses are super important and they definitely do need support from their local governments.
And I think there are people who are sincere in their concern about small business.
So I hope that they spend all of their energy thinking about solutions to the problems.
I am a professional organizer, and so I would like for everyone to know that you never have to wait for the city to ask you for an idea.
You can always have an idea on your own and bring it to them.
This is part of the housing element, which was passed in like February of 2023, and it's now 2025, which is two years.
So it's not shouldn't be a surprise.
Thank you.
My name is Julia.
I am an owner of novel on bakery in the Elmwood.
And I am here to say nobody who works at my bakery can afford to live in Berkeley.
Low income housing is a joke here.
Think about what minimum wages and think about how much people make when they make your food.
And that is low income housing.
And if you can't provide that, we don't want it.
Good evening.
I'm Dr.
Stephen Alpert.
I live 300 feet from Solano Avenue.
At the 2nd, Solano Avenue workshop on August 27, the presenter assured the audience that applicants would most likely request only 50% density bonus, which allows for 8 story buildings with upzoning is enacted.
Accordingly, every single slide displayed show building heights of only 8 stories.
In fact, 11 story structures are on Solano with 100% density bonus as documented on page 19 of the August 18 Berkeley quarters alternative report shown here at a meeting of the Berkeley design review committee on August 16, a developer.
What do you know? Requested 100% density bonus.

Segment 6

Thank you.
I just have to say that we did actually address that.
That was one of the questions I asked.
So just to be clear.
Go ahead.
Hi, I'm Dr.
Celeste Marks.
Planners mislead us by saying up-zoning would improve housing equity.
Most of the units built will be market rate.
The private real estate industry is not going to build housing for people of modest means because it doesn't yield the profit they, their creditors, and their investors demand.
What if a developer evicts the tenants, retail and residential, and then decides not to build? That's what happened to the once vibrant row of restaurants on Center Street in downtown.
Please pause this process and engage with us.
Thank you.
Come on up.
Feel free to move the mic.
I'm Michael Hammersley.
I was born in the Bay, went to school and college here.
I live on the edge of Berkeley in Oakland with my wife and daughter.
We also pay way too much in rent.
Our rent is 60% of the median Berkeley salary, and my landlord is still terrible because there isn't enough housing in the Bay.
We need more at any price.
I'm worried we won't be able to afford to raise our first child here, let alone the second or third we'd like to have.
I'm also one of the lucky ones.
I haven't been pushed out yet, but many of my friends have already left for less expensive places, and my rent keeps going up to subsidize the status quo.
So on behalf of all the folks who are spending tonight either working or raising their kids, I respectfully request that instead of adding only two or three stories in each corridor, let's explore five or seven or 23.
Let's keep it retail-ready, but let's minimize, if not eliminate, setbacks.
Let's study upzoning not just along the corridor, but for several blocks parallel to it on either side.
Please make Berkeley affordable for its young people who want to raise their families here.
More housing cannot wait.
Housing delayed is housing denied.
Thank you.
Folks, please don't boo.
It's okay if you clap.
Be aware you're taking up some of their time when you're doing that, but please no booing.
Okay, go ahead.
Halloween's over.
Second minute.
14.
Steve Tracy.
Good evening.
When I walk from Euclid to North Shattuck, I get some exercise, but yesterday I drove to Elmwood.
I had to carry stuff back with my car.
And I paused and looked at shops I'd never seen before and realized this is part of the culture.
This is part of the DNA of the city.
So I'm asking you, Council, tonight to please consider what you can do to support small businesses.
And that housing element has kind of paid for this.
Can we see that? You don't need to see me.
That way, this way.
May, consent calendar item authorized.
We can't hear you in the, yeah.
May, a quarter million dollars was authorized on the consent calendar to study small businesses.
I think that's part of the 600 grand for the current study.
Oh, thank you.
It's out of the camera, though.
There were specific directives, six.
I didn't practice this part.
Six specific directives, three of them about housing, but three that haven't been addressed by the current study.
So it would be nice if the current study addressed these items four, five, and six to support the sustainability of small businesses.
Please pause.
Think about option three, not just option one and two that are laid out.
And then go drive down Shattuck and go look at 2109 Virginia.
92% density bonus is already under current law.
Eight stories at Francisco, seven stories under construction.
Thank you.
Current density bonus.
OK, a minute.
Oh, go ahead.
I wish I had better pictures.
You can put that down.
I wish I had better pictures from my silly cell phone.
What is mixed use? Guys, hold up the number of fingers.
What percent needs to be commercial to be mixed use? It only takes two hands.
Because this project at 2109 Virginia is 6% commercial, 94% housing.
So we took out all those businesses.
Poulet is gone.
We took out those businesses and we're putting in 1,200 square feet.
The second building that's under construction at Francisco, you need two more fingers.
12% commercial.
That's a big one.
Those hit the 10,000 square foot bonus that you guys were talking about to make it viable.
Thank you.
They're already there.
Thanks.
Come on up, please.
Come.
Hello, my name is Joan.
I actually live in Oakland on the border and I shop in the Elmwood all the time, which is why I'm making the time to come to this meeting.
What really concerns me more than anything is the upzoning is the height of the buildings.
College Avenue is a narrow two lane street.
It's very easy to walk across it.
The pedestrian scale nature of the buildings, one and two stories, is what makes it so very enjoyable to walk there and shop there.
And to build at the scale that is being considered takes away from that.
I think of it as the Manhattanization of College Avenue.
But to the extent that I've been around long enough to know how these things go.
When you start allowing construction of these buildings, please consider anything over three stories, which they will be.
Thank you.
Setbacks.
Thanks.
Sixty.
All right, there you go.
Hi, my name is Caitlin Randolph and I am the owner of Imagine it on College Avenue.
Go ahead and pull it closer to you.
Yeah.
And I'm also a homeowner in the Elmwood neighborhood.
I'm pro housing, especially affordable housing.
I want to live, raise my kids and run my business.
I want to live, raise my kids and run my business in a vibrant and diverse neighborhood.
However, I am opposed to the corridor project.
This proposal will be catastrophic to the economic health of our local businesses.
We have not, as of yet, been provided any meaningful outreach data resources or any sort of reassurance to local business owners about how upzoning would impact us.
To think our businesses could ever survive the building, which we rent being sold to corporate developers who will have to demolish and start a years long process of installing a mixed use high rise is completely out of touch with reality.
The proposal itself specifies that this is not a mandate to build and by their own estimates could take anywhere from 15 to 20 years to play out.
So why are we spending so much money, time and resources on a project that might yield results in a decade or two when we could be making more thoughtful and strategic moves that get us housing sooner? I understand that this proposal is a result of a measure to add more housing to high resource areas, but could it not be argued that the reason why these areas have become so successful is directly tied to their local businesses.
Yet, me and my fellow business owners don't feel supported by our city planners.
Instead, we just feel shut out of the conversation entirely.
I urge us to take a pause, collaborate and get back to the drawing board.
This is Berkeley.
The amount of brainpower and innovative thinking in this room alone is insane, like the mayor's right there.
Let's use it and come up with some ideas we can all be proud of that are in support of both housing and small businesses.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Okay, 17, 18, 19.
All right.
Hi, Mayor Ishii and wonderful Berkeley City Council and staff and consultants.
I'm a Berkeley kid.
I grew up here, went to Malcolm X, went to West Campus.
This used to be our cafeteria, except for it had pizza on the floor.
I am a pro-housing dude.
I am a pro-housing guy.
I am a transit-oriented development guy.
My dad was a nationally famous housing economist and planner.
I have lived this stuff my entire life.
I'm also interested in having housing in the right locations.
We do not put tall apartment buildings in the Rose Garden.
We do not put tall apartment buildings on San Pablo Park.
We do not put tall apartment buildings right over here on Strawberry Creek Park.
We also don't put tall apartment buildings in the middle of a contiguous two-block long street of precious 1910s to 1930s glassy shop fronts that are robust, that are occupied by thriving businesses.
We don't jack them up by putting some giant crazy apartments in the middle and ruining, as one of the other speakers said, a beautiful amenity that people travel from all over the region to come to.
That is what will happen.
I have to say that even more importantly than all of those strong feelings about place and about the built environment, there's also, as a Berkeley native, as somebody who went to Berkeley High and heard people talk about democracy, who heard people talk about citizen participation, we live in the birthplace of free speech.
This process has so far engaged with developers.
This process has engaged with paid consultants.
Well-meaning, no doubt, but paid consultants.
And we were funneled into a process that literally had us putting yellow and blue stickers on predetermined choices in so-called workshops.
We were asked to fill out surveys which also had predetermined choices on them toward outcomes that were either, you know, do you want your broccoli on a blue plate or a green plate? This is not democracy.
Right.
I love, I love, love, love what the woman from the cheese board brought up about, you know, the history of collective action, the history of talking to each other, the history of working together.
We need that here.
We need that.
That's what you folks were brought in as representatives of your constituencies and your neighborhoods to do, is engage with people.
Not just take the paid consultants and the planning staff, the nice large planning staff, and take their recommendations and go with that.
With that in mind, I would like to make a motion or have you guys make a motion on behalf of the beautiful Save Berkeley Shops consortium and community.
This is Berkeley, California, one of the smartest communities in the world, birthplace of the free speech movement.
We can do better than this, and that's why we're here.
To ask you, our elected leaders, to right this wrong.
We ask that you hit the pause button and engage with us by adopting the following motion.
City staff and consultants, excuse me, one.
City staff and consultants shall pause development in the corridors zoning update.
Two, the planning department shall mail notices of its current proposals and future proposals to all businesses within the three corridors and all residents within 1,000 feet.
And three, most importantly, city planning and economic development department shall engage corridor businesses and residents in a collaborative analysis on ways we can increase housing in these neighborhoods without displacing existing businesses.
Thank you.
Okay.
Folks, I want to.
I want.
Excuse me.
I just want to remind folks that there is no action being taken today.
This is a workshop, so we're receiving information, so we're not taking any votes.
Just so you understand.
Okay, go ahead.
Next person.
Hi, good evening.
Council.
Hi, everybody.
Delighted to be in your company.
Thank you.
4 minutes.
My name is Amy Thomas.
I'm the owner of Pegasus Books.
I have 2 stores in Berkeley and 1 in Oakland.
Just for the record, our stores operated in the Solano Avenue location for 42 years, our Shattuck store for nearly 30 years, and our oldest store has been in Oakland for 56 years.
What we are asking you to do is pause this decision so we can have some time to really discuss the implications of it.
No one from the city has reached out to me for my input.
Not, you know, whatever.
Sending an email about a Zoom doesn't cover it since the implications are so great.
Having a meeting that turns out to be a presentation by people who have already sold themselves on the zoning change is not getting input.
What I see is the city giving permission for building owners and developers to build taller buildings and it will be a gold rush with only vague offers of oversight and community input.
I see no vision for what this will actually look like.
Will it be independent stores? Larger national chains? If you want to fill up a lot of little expensive spaces with retail, who have you got? There's no vision, whatever, except that the developers come up with and they have only one goal and that is to maximize their profits.
And they will say anything now to get what they want.
I offer you a few examples of what has happened when the city council demonstrates both recklessness and naivete when it comes to city planning.
In 2001, the Gaia building was put up with the promise of making a community space with the input from the Gaia bookstore.
The bookstore did not, the building went up, the bookstore did not survive the recession, the space did not materialize, but the building is called Gaia.
In 2002, the fine arts theater on Shattuck was evicted and the building was torn down.
The developer there promised that the theater would move back in, but it didn't.
No fine arts theater, but the building is the fine arts building.
So on both, we don't have to talk about Center Street and Herald Way, but it's dismaying.
One of my stores is at the corner of Shattuck and Durant, and I'm just dismayed by the mess.
It's a right mess down there, guys.
On Solano Avenue, Oaks Theater was sold and left empty and boarded up for 10 years.
A huge drain on my business.
When that theater closed, my business dropped 20%.
It took years to get that back.
These are the people you were living the vision to.
I'm so disappointed that you keep going down this road of getting involved with these for-profit developers for a tiny amount of actual affordable housing.
Like, what's a creative solution? How about a lot of smaller buildings built in conjunction with non-profit developers with 100% affordable housing? Will you require developers to offer apartments that, say, my employees could afford? Will you require them to create affordable commercial spaces on the ground floor? Do you know how congested Solano Avenue is currently? Do you know that there have been two traffic fatalities on Upper Solano in the last few years? Do you know how many years it takes to bring a retail business to profitability and keep it there? We have been through the wars as retailers.
It's hard.
The scars are there.
We're fragile.
Business is up now, but it's, oh my God, I don't have fingernails because of this.
I don't know if you know specifically what it costs the retail sector to get through the plague.
We are asking you to delay this decision until real vision is played out and not at the busiest time of the year, fourth quarter.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Hello to all of you.
I'm Sue Johnson of Sue Johnson Custom Lamps and Shades on Solano Avenue on the corner of Ensenada, which is one of the targeted buildings.
I'm so glad to be here tonight to hear from you because I haven't heard anything before.
And my heart is just sinking.
I love what I do.
I'd love to share my ideas with you as you've been sharing your ideas with me tonight.
The Solano Stroll was started by three of us on Solano in the mid-70s.
My shop has been there for 53 years.
And the Solano Stroll brings 250,000 people.
I'm sorry, I can't see who's talking.
Okay, thank you.
250,000 people to Solano.
That is a vibrant, lively group of people.
For the Stroll, I do a treasure hunt.
And I have over 250 people who come in and fill out a form to do the treasure hunt.
Tiny children and adults.
We're a community.
You and I are a community, too.
And I want to be with you in community.
I want to hear more about alternatives.
An eight-story high building on Solano is just a dead space.
We don't need dead spaces.
We need spaces that are alive.
And I want to study that with you.
I want to share my ideas.
And I want to hear yours.
Thank you.
23 and 24, please.
23 and 24.
It's 23 still.
Okay, 25.
It's 23 and 24, so we're still 23 and 24.
Hi, my name is Fern Solomon.
And I am the owner of Fern's Garden on Solano Avenue.
I am also the new chair and commissioner for the City of Berkeley for the Solano Avenue bid.
And a member of the Solano Avenue Association.
Today, I am speaking for myself and my business.
I chose Upper Solano nine years ago to build my business because of the walkable charm of the street.
We feel very lucky to have a store on Upper Solano.
Our customers are totally devoted and come from every part of Berkeley and beyond.
It's amazing how far they come.
I've become a destination store here in Berkeley.
Recently, I have been completely overwhelmed by my customers because they're so upset about the upzoning proposals.
They're concerned that their neighborhood will be turned into something that's completely unrecognizable.
They love the century-old charm of the street.
When Pete's closed down last month for just three weeks to remodel, all the businesses around me took quite a big dip in sales.
Our sales have been doing terrific.
Pete's closed down.
The trucks lined the street.
I am very concerned about construction on our narrow street on Solano Avenue.
I can't even imagine how it could happen.
I'm so happy to be here tonight, and I can't believe the community outreach.
Thank you guys so much for coming.
It's so hard to make a small business work.
I have somehow created a business, 2,000 little square feet, that attracts people from all over the world now.
I'm on the board for Visit Berkeley, and I'm working hard to create a more permanent vision so that people who visit Berkeley can visit all the independent shops with a map, with a way to help people understand that there are so many incredible Pegasus, Sue.
We have amazing people that have been here for a long, long time.
Thank you so much for all you guys do.
I really appreciate it.
Thank you, Farn.
Thanks.
Good evening.
I'm William Torsciana, and I live by the College Avenue corridor.
Given that I have 54 seconds, I'll keep it short and just make three quick points.
First of all, the College Avenue corridor is one of the most vibrant and diverse in Berkeley.
It represents an enormous value for this city, and we'd be absolutely foolish to wreck it.
Second, I disagree strongly with Mr.
Klein.
Once you start ripping at the fabric of a low-scale, architecturally cohesive area like this, the impacts happen very, very quickly, and not over decades.
And once you lose a neighborhood like this, you don't get it back.
Third, the meeting materials clearly show already that the College Avenue corridor is heavily oriented towards rental housing, primarily younger tenants.
There are 100 empty apartments on Zillow on College Avenue as of this morning.
We absolutely need to address housing affordability, but you don't do it by destroying a commercial district and giving it away to the real estate industry.
Thank you.
Hi.
My name is Nancy Fasher.
I live off of Solano.
Thank you all for your service.
My comments tonight are focused on Solano.
I'm not really suited to speak for the other neighborhoods.
I've been a homeowner for 31 years.
I'm a social worker married to a lifelong BUSD teacher, and I've had the privilege of raising my children in Berkeley.
Unfortunately, they can't afford to live here, and I really strongly believe we have to increase the housing stock as one solution to a very complex problem.
We do know that increasing supply does show a modest impact on housing prices.
Just like the neighbors who live around Solano, we all read that article about Thousand Oaks.
Solano itself has aged in place.
Buildings are old, the foot traffic is down, and as a result, we have lost many cherished small businesses that can't afford to make ends meet.
There's an ever-increasing number of vacant storefronts.
I'm in favor of the higher density that will allow businesses to thrive, and, of course, our shops will need care and attention during the transition, which will happen.
Thank you.
Hi.
My name is Glenn Wokenfeld.
I'm 63 years old.
I'm a Berkeley homeowner, and I live two blocks north of Solano Avenue.
I spent 27 years as a science teacher at Berkeley High School.
Democracy is about electing people who can make wise decisions, and that's what we've done.
So I'm hoping that you have the courage to know that many of us support upzoning.
We do have to take care of our local businesses 100%, but for anyone who opposes upzoning in the Solano corridor, try this.
On a Saturday night at about 9 p.m., go to the corner of Solano and Calusa, and you can lie down in the middle of the street.
Nobody is there.
Solano's dying.
It's the central corridor of a retirement home that only works for privileged old folks.
We need more foot traffic.
Folks, let him finish his comments.
It's also our anti-zoning history.
My adult children can't live here.
We need more housing to lower prices.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thanks.
Just want to make sure folks know it's not safe to lie down in the middle of the street.
Your point is taken, but just to kind of put that out there, thank you, though, for your comment.
Please just be safe on the streets.
Okay, go ahead.
I've got a minute from..
A minute from this person over here.
Okay.
Someone waving.
On the far right.
Okay.
Good evening.
My name is Todd Darling.
I live in District 3, where we have been dealing with upzoning for years.
I would like to talk about our future and about where we're going.
First, we should recognize whence this plan emanates.
Berkeley's planning department.
The funding from the planning department and the finance department come from developer fees.
The citizens of Berkeley do not pay their salaries.
The biggest lobby backing upzoning is YIMBY.
Yes, in my backyard.
Ostensibly organized to promote housing, this is not a grassroots organization.
YIMBY funding comes from big tech founders of Facebook, Yelp, Stripe, and venture capitalists like Ron Conway.
They will not engage in questions of who the housing is for, where it is built, or how it is built, and if it is affordable.
These vital questions are ignored and insulted.
YIMBY's prime product is displacement.
And they have a lot of money to do it.
As of 2023, various YIMBY California organizations have $20 million in assets, with revenues of over $8 million.
Their CEO earned $333,000, and local director Matthew Lewis earned $153,000.
These figures are from their tax reports.
YIMBY believes in trickle-down economics, a theory just proven back in the Reagan administration.
They believe in deregulation of industry, and deregulation is evident in this upzoning plan.
They don't care what developers build or where they do it.
And Berkeley has obliged them.
Thousands of new units, but the units are too small for families.
Most of the buildings appear half-empty, and the rents are definitely not affordable.
YIMBY is a political project, and YIMBY cashes flooded California politics.
Our current state senator, our current assembly member, all receive their endorsements and their money.
Our former mayor, our current mayor, received their endorsements.
Two current city council members have long-career YIMBY endorsements, and regularly attend their events.
A lot of us feel like this came out of nowhere.
This is a setup.
Thanks for your comments.
Okay, next person.
Are you waiting for a couple of minutes? I'm just waiting for my minutes.
We did 25.
I thought we had 25 already.
I thought we had 25 already, no? Jane, did you not give your minute? Okay, all right.
So you'll have four minutes then.
25, 26, 27? Three.
I'm going to go for three.
Throw in four if I need them.
Okay, 25 and 26.
Okay, go ahead.
My name is Claudia Hunka.
I am the owner of Unibasic Bird.
I've never lived in the Elmwood, but I've grown up in the Elmwood.
Because my business has been there for 44 years.
I support housing that is in scale with commercial districts.
The proposed plan would disfigure our historic...

Segment 7

Neighborhood Corridors, Displace Independent Merchants, and Forever Alter the Character of Berkeley.
This plan was created without any study of the economic and social impacts on the businesses, many in the Elmwood who have been serving this neighborhood for 25 to 50 years.
The loss of any business impacts an entire commercial district.
We share customers.
We all lose customers, even when one business closes.
What about the loss of the jobs of over 400 parts employees in the Elmwood, not included in the other areas? In two months, the Elmwood merchants and residents have collected over a thousand signatures in opposition to the upzoning.
Minor changes in the zoning in these corridors could allow for housing without creating six to eleven story buildings.
Meaningful conversation or consideration for the businesses that will be impacted by these proposals has not occurred.
Options and other considerations are not possible without this communication.
We urge the city to engage directly with local merchants and residents in each corridor, create responsible balanced zoning that promotes housing without destroying local businesses.
Studio Session, Scents by the Bay, Meharrow, Pretty Penny, Old Salt Merchants, Worthy, Elmwood Laundry, Palmasay, Imagine it, Casa de Chocolate, State Flower Shop, Elmwood Copy.
These represent These are new businesses that are just investing their lives in the Elmwood.
They represent everything that makes Berkeley unique, creativity, diversity, and community connection.
I want to see them grow up in the Elmwood and have the same potential which I have had.
I ask everyone in the audience who is opposed to this to please hold up their signs.
Mayor Ishii and council members, we request that you please pause this and engage with us.
Thank you.
Thank you for your time.
Oh, I have 20 more minutes.
20 more seconds, sorry.
Counting is never a high.
Thank you.
Okay.
Good evening, and thank you.
My name is Alice Giroux.
I moved to Berkeley in 1975 to go to architecture school, and I'm still here.
I live in District 3, and I shop in all three of the commercial areas, but most often the Elmwood because it's closest to where I live.
As many other people have said, Berkeley's neighborhood garden is one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen in my life.
It's a beautiful place to live.
It's a beautiful place to work.
It's a beautiful place to live.
As many other people have said, Berkeley's neighborhood commercial districts are a treasure.
They are thriving.
They're busy every day of the week with unique small businesses that are a key part of Berkeley's economic health and cultural vibrancy.
In contrast, look at our downtown, once bustling, now with much of it cleared out and empty, waiting for mega housing projects that may take years to come.
Deregulation and upzoning for market rate units is not a housing solution.
It will not guarantee affordable housing, but it may very well kill small businesses.
And by the way, there is literally an ADU in my backyard.
Thank you.
Come on up.
Sorry.
So is he going to give you his minute? Yes.
OK, so yeah.
So you'll have two minutes then.
Go ahead.
Hello.
I'm Renee Copalis and this is my husband, Edwin Gamis.
We own Elmwood Laundry in the Elmwood.
And as Claudia mentioned, we are new business owners.
We invested our savings that we've worked for to buy the laundromat in 2021, 2022.
And we have a lot of customers like Claudia and other people I've mentioned to.
Our businesses are all codependent.
Most of our customers, if not all, are also customers of everyone else in our neighborhoods.
Businesses, a large portion of the community in the Elmwood also do not have laundry washers and dryers in their homes.
And they use the laundromat on a weekly or even more often basis.
And we are just devastated because this project will, as our council member said, will be mortal to us, to our business.
And I think that once the if the upzoning project goes through, it actually will be mortal to the Elmwood in general as well.
It's never going to be the same historic, charming neighborhood that it is today.
And it's sad to know that we are such a wonderful destination.
People from the outer community come visit the Elmwood.
They do the laundry at our laundromat.
We met a person from Fremont who came with her husband this weekend and they spent the whole day in the Elmwood shopping, doing laundry, eating.
And, you know, they come.
We have customers from the city, from San Francisco, who either they come out here to work or do other things.
And they want to enjoy what we have because it doesn't exist anywhere else anymore.
And it's very important to preserve.
And by not going through with this project, our neighborhood will be preserved.
Thank you.
Can you just talk to him one minute to talk about protecting a unique and wonderful commercial shopping center called Elmwood? I think that's a metaphor for what's been going on recently with this project.
One minute.
And I know the time constraints, but one minute to talk about protecting a hundred year old, thriving commercial district.
I want to be a little pragmatic.
Everyone said many things and I agree with almost everything.
But the one thing is we're talking about 80 units based on discussions with the city staff.
80 units and you could destroy the Elmwood for the future.
We talk about children and first of all, housing.
Housing is absolutely critical.
But we want to preserve the Elmwood for the children of the future.
Thank you.
Hello, my name is Arnold Mamarella.
I live in the Solano Avenue area.
I'm an architect and an urban planning consultant.
I work for several cities in the Bay Area on these type of projects, among other housing things.
And what I want to say is, first of all, all three of these districts are different.
They should be approached differently to what works for each district.
I think it's a big point that's not been talked about yet.
The other thing I want to say is we've got to see what we can get out of this.
We need more imagination, more nuance, more creativity.
There's something missing here in this process.
It's not a choice between eight-story buildings with small apartments or nothing.
We need to find another way.
We need to look for better examples like Market Hall in Rockbridge.
Look at that project.
Look at it on Google closely.
Look how the upper floors were actually, you can't even tell, there's a village up there.
They're small offices, but they were originally planned as possibly housing units.
We need to think differently.
And in a minute, I can't go over everything.
Also, one more thing, we need to keep more than 35 percent of the building.
Thank you.
Thanks for your comment.
I'm sorry your time's up.
Just so I have a sense, if you are not making public comment, if you're finished with your public comment, can you please sit down or move away from this wall? Because I'm trying to keep track of how many people are here, and I think the line gets a little confusing.
Okay, and then also, if you are still making a comment, can you just give me, raise your hand so I can see.
Are folks in the back here making comments? Woman in the blue hat.
Okay.
Could you sit down or move away from the line, please? Because I think it's confusing.
So none of these people here, no one here is past the door is making a comment? No.
Okay.
So, Brandon, you're the last one.
No? There's somebody here? Sure, that's fine.
Okay, so where is your spot in line? You don't have to stand, I'm just curious.
Sorry, where are you? After Brandon.
Okay, there's someone.
And Kelly's after that.
Okay.
All right.
I think I'm clear.
Patrick, are you getting in line right now? Okay.
Okay, so there are two people in front of you, and then Brandon, and then Patrick, and then anyone else? Okay.
Yeah.
All right, go ahead.
Sorry, I'm just trying to get a clear sense of, I'm trying to figure out breaks, and we have online comments, so go ahead.
Hi, my name is Jacob Dadman.
I live in District 3, and I'm here to ask the city to fulfill its legal obligation to affirmatively further fair housing by alternative to in the corridor zoning plan.
Putting more affordable homes in Berkeley's most exclusive historically redlined neighborhoods is not only good for our economy, but it's the right thing to do.
I love my neighbors, and I want more of them, and I think that apartments are good, actually.
And when we put people closer to where they want to be and where they want to go, that means fewer cars on our roads, less carbon and air pollutants in our air, and more vibrant and vital neighborhoods that are not only up with the times, but can be resilient to future changes.
So I appreciate everyone's comments here, but I would really love to see alternative to not only on the corridors, but also in the streets adjoining.
Thank you.
Hello, Miss Member, sorry, Miss Mayor and members of City Council.
My name is Karina Holbrook.
I'm a Berkeley resident, and I often shop at Elmwood, and I'm speaking to express my support for upzoning and for Berkeley's commitment for racial equality.
I'm Japanese-American.
My mother is Japanese.
I grew up part of my life in Japan, and someone like me, and when Elmwood and Solano were created in 1931, I wouldn't have been able to rent a unit.
I wouldn't have been able to buy a unit just solely because of my race, nothing of who I am.
That's shameful, but we are making steps towards fixing it, and I commend the City Council for being brave and envisioning a better future.
I fully support the proposed upzoning, and I encourage the City Council to think bigger, to allow for six stores everywhere, prioritize transit-oriented development, and build more housing.
That being said, I also support protecting small businesses and expanding commercial spaces.
Small spaces are often more affordable, so I encourage the Council to allow for commercial businesses at all intersections and reduce city fees for new and existing businesses.
Let's build housing today for a better Berkeley tomorrow.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Okay.
Next person, please.
Good evening, Council.
Good evening, everyone.
My name is Julie Ewer, and I'm the owner of Bill's Trading Post.
My family's business.
I'm the fourth generation.
We've been in the same location for over 85 years.
And historic Elmwood District.
I am speaking today on a lot of—everyone has touched mostly on all the points about the zoning and how all that is—we didn't really get any information about that, but I would like to touch base on the historical charm of that place.
The proposed construction project threatens not only the character of our charming neighborhood area, but also the livelihood of all the small businesses that makes this community unique.
This project will bring a significant congestion to an already very congested area.
College and Ashby, if you've ever driven down there or even tried to walk, it's just it's heavily trafficked.
People would struggle or just avoid going to the area during a construction period, which can last many years.
Thank you.
Excuse me.
Just hoping to get two or three hands from the audience.
One, two— 25, 26.
Oh, excuse me.
Sorry, wait, wait.
No, we did 25 and 26, so we're at 27.
Sorry, 27, 28.
27, 28? Where's 28? Okay, thank you.
All right, go ahead.
Thank you.
I'll be honest.
I hate coming to these meetings.
I hate the stink eye from my council member, and I see you Yimbees laughing over there while people like me bleed our hearts out.
You sit there smiling while the businesses, the workers, and neighbors who build this city are fighting to stay.
We show up month after month because we still care, because we still love Berkeley, even when you don't act like you do.
I'm here because I love Telegraph.
We are the canary in the coal mine.
When Telegraph struggles, Berkeley's soul is in danger.
From those stupid Lyft bikes, from Yimbee smart-ite kiosks, to Blackstone real estate development, to the destruction of over 100 mature trees, 30 years of topsoil at People's Park, they always attack us first, the ones living 200% below the poverty line.
And tonight, I'm the ghost of Christmas Past, and I'll tell you what, Santa is pissed.
I love this city.
I love the small businesses.
I love working with Food Not Bombs and Nabalone and Cheeseboard are here who help us give meals to our community.
Thanks.
I stand with the 50-year-old businesses you've swept away, though, like Trash for your housing progress, Missing Link Bike Cooperative, Annapurna, Mars, Buffalo Exchange.
You even fined Ken Serekin at Bad Monks thousands of dollars because our community dared to gather and share food after you barricaded us off at People's Park.
You took away our public space, then punished a business owner for helping us create our own.
Shame on you.
You erased more than 100 parking spots for those double-stacked razor-wire shipping containers and called it safety.
Guess what? It's a park.
People park there.
Now they have to double-park on Durant Avenue just to pick up DoorDash, and they're constantly being policed for it.
People get ticketed trying to support themselves and the city, and your response? A freaking bus lane.
Thanks.
You'd rather bulldoze Telegraph for a bike lane than stand for the businesses that are feeding us, employing us, and caring for our neighbors every day.
I have no confidence in the City Council.
I have no confidence in Paul Budgegan, who's been sitting in the city job for over a decade.
I have no confidence because you criminalize our poor, you hand our streets to multinational corporations, and you sell out my neighborhood to a multibillion-dollar war corporation called UC Berkeley.
And you gave them the right to destroy our homes, our community, through eminent domain in the Constitution of the California state.
And now I won't even have Christmas on Telegraph.
You destroyed it when you built People's Park because now we can't have a street fair.
I won't be able to hear our churches singing or kids singing, Hark the Herald Angels Sing.
I won't be able to work with Games of Berkeley to give out toys because of you, but you can help these people.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thanks.
Hi.
Sometimes there is a gap between the ambitions of a program and the options that staff puts in front of you.
With middle housing, they recommended that you zone South Berkeley at a greater density than North Berkeley, when the whole point was to eliminate those disparities.
You rejected that, and you equalized the density.
In other words, you acted to affirmatively further fair housing.
But why did staff recommend that? They didn't set out to treat different areas differently, but they followed one of the assumptions of their profession, which is that changes in land use should be gradual and not stark.
That approach, when you apply it to formerly redlined areas and formerly exclusionary areas like the Elmwood, by definition reinforces those disparities.
Here in these proposals, by basing it on existing commercial zones, basing the details on existing land use patterns, we are reinforcing the exclusionary policies that we are trying to get away from.
This is the antithesis of affirmatively furthering fair housing.
We are not treating the high resource corridors the same as South and West Berkeley.
Thank you.
Thanks.
Hey, folks, no booing, please.
You can clap, but please no booing.
Hi.
I'm here to agree with what the prior speaker was saying.
I'm here to ask you to ask staff to study including six stories of housing across the board, across all of these neighborhoods, even, Stephen, Solano College, San Pablo, and North Shattuck.
As the previous speaker was saying, what makes San Pablo different from North Shattuck, from Solano? Why is it a different thing? These are all corridors.
It's just that one of them was formerly redlined.
This is one of the best chances we'll have for a while to affirmatively further fair housing in our city and to create some integration in our zoning.
I ask also that you up-zone adjacent streets, gradually tapering the zoning down to the rest of the neighborhood.
And I ask you not to require ground floor commercial new construction.
I live on San Pablo, and the ground floor of my building is vacant.
The people who face onto the street, sorry, it was vacant.
Anyway, please don't require ground floor and taper the zoning.
Thanks, I'm going to go slide fast.
Thank you.
Good evening.
I live three blocks from college in Ashby with my parents.
I am starting to work in low-income housing, and I deeply want affordable housing in Berkeley.
But we don't get affordable housing if we don't build housing.
When market rate housing isn't built, those people don't cease to exist.
These richer people outbid the rest of us for housing.
If we can't be better and truly give more people opportunity, we have said more housing, and we did not act on it.
By continuing to restrict new homes, Berkeley is closing its doors to its own children and to its own grandchildren.
We, the younger people in the crowd, are the future of Berkeley, and I hope this city council builds for the future.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Excuse you.
Not helpful.
Folks.
Security.
Decorum.
Go ahead.
Thanks, thanks to the council.
So I'm a young father and a homeowner in Elmwood.
Hey, hey, folks, you know what? Decorum.
You can have a conversation outside.
Okay.
Thank you.
So I'm a young father.
I'm a homeowner in Elmwood.
I have a young daughter, one more on the way.
I love the Elmwood corridor.
I shop there every week.
I'm looking forward to continuing to do so and raise my family there.
I would want to urge the council to support the corridor zoning effort.
We need to create more opportunities for people like me and especially ones who weren't as lucky as my wife and I in our 20s to be able to live here and to raise their families here in this incredible city.
Development can absolutely be disruptive.
I've really learned a lot from listening to all the folks here tonight, and we should think about how to mitigate disruption where we can.
But I urge the council to courageously prioritize the housing opportunity here.
And lastly, I'd urge folks to think about the balance of all the voices who aren't in this room.
I was actually here before.
I had to leave to put my daughter to bed, and then I came back.
And a lot of other folks in my position just couldn't swing that tonight.
So thank you so much.
Thank you.
Okay, so just so folks know, I'd love to get through the comment in here in person, and then we're going to take another break.
I think we're going to take a 15-minute break, because it's been a long sit.
And then I know there was someone who was over here that's still – just so you know, don't worry.
You haven't lost your spot.
I just – and Kelly Hammergren as well, but that's it.
Okay, go ahead.
Hi, I'm Julie Nachtwey, and I've lived here since 1980.
I disagree with people who say redlining happened, you know, 60 years ago, so we should punish people now because they somehow managed to get good jobs through good education, combine those resources, and buy a home around the Elmwood.
I think that the city council should think outside the box and not think that families are going to be happy living for their entire lives in 6- to 8- to 12-story buildings.
We might think about the woman who suggested having smaller units with, like, maybe 4 units and place them other places so that the people who live in those units can feel that there's a community of their own, not just taking the elevator up and down the 12-story building.
So I think that we should also think about the city making some job efforts to educate people, give them job training so that they can afford to rent anything, because if they don't have some kind of income, they're not going to be able to afford anything.
Thank you.
Thanks for your comment.
Good evening, everyone.
My name's Rebecca.
I'm a worker in the North Shattuck neighborhood.
We've been hearing a lot from business owners tonight and much less, I think, from the workers, so I want to speak on behalf of workers.
Workers at these businesses can barely afford to live in Berkeley, much less in the high-resource neighborhoods that we're talking about tonight.
As business owners, if you want to keep your workers, you've got two options.
Pay us more or help us lower the cost of housing.
But I've got good news for you.
Building more housing in Berkeley is working.
I just moved out of an apartment in downtown, and I checked.
It's now renting for $400 cheaper than what I was paying for it a few months ago.
If I had known that, I would have stayed and renegotiated.
So why stop now? Let's keep building more housing so us workers can continue to live and work in all these beautiful neighborhoods.
Thank you.
Thanks.
Hello.
I've got a friend to give me a minute in case I need it.
Wait, where's your friend? Okay, thank you.
Hi, council and mayor.
My name is Brandon Young, District 2 resident.
It's interesting to me how every time we have a conversation about a new district rezoning, it turns into a conversation on whether or not we should build more housing.
I just want to address people here.
That conversation is over.
That debate's settled.
This is a workshop, and we should be focusing on how do we work together, find consensus, and implement policy that helps with this issue, particularly here of retaining our small business community and supporting them in what is a transitional moment.
So toward that, I want to share some ideas.
These zones we're talking about are overwhelmingly smaller lot sizes.
They're going to have very small setbacks.
We probably want to encourage very small or no front yard setbacks to maintain that very vibrant commercial frontage.
Because of that lot configuration, I would consider our policymakers to reconsider the on-site art requirement, our 1% in-lieu fee.
Typically those pieces of public art are provided on-site or on the building facade.
I would kind of suggest that maybe we reassess the effectiveness of that program overall.
But I think for this rezoning, we can consider allowing the option of instead of having that fee or provision, we create a fund that helps, very similar to a program that San Francisco administers, support for our small businesses, relocation, and basically act as brokers between interested small businesses and new ground floors.
Next, there's a lot of interesting research out there about what we can do to help this issue of reducing the costs of improving our ground floor commercial spaces, a lot of which developers don't put the capital into turning what we call the hard shell into a rentable area.
There's policies we can put in there.
So yeah, let's think creatively and work on solutions.
Thanks.
I think this woman was behind you, Brandon.
Go ahead.
Yeah, you.
And then Kelly is behind.
I'm sorry, Donna.
I forgot your name.
Apologies.
Go ahead.
And then Kelly and then this person.
Okay.
My name is Donna.
And there are two things that I've noticed being said here tonight.
We keep being told that no one will use the 100% density bonus.
We also keep hearing that we need to provide more affordable housing.
If that's the case, then don't up zone to a place where if you invoke the 100% density bonus, it won't be built.
Zone to a place where it will require the 100% density bonus to get the affordable housing units you need.
So don't let it go up to 12 if somebody does it.
Because right now you're just giving it away.
You're giving away to developers that other part of the affordable housing.
It's clear that it's a disingenuous thing.
And you can't guarantee on the equity thing.
You can't guarantee who's going to rent these places.
So that's a disingenuous argument.
Thank you.
Thanks, Donna.
So Kelly is next.
Kelly is next in line.
I had said that earlier.
I'm sorry.
I don't know if you got that.
But this is like a mobility standing thing.
So she told me she was standing there.
Okay.
Thank you.
I'm not going to repeat what other people have said.
I just want to make a few short comments.
I think I attend more design review committee meetings than anyone else in this room.
I've probably missed five or less in the last 11 years.
And I'd like to say that the worry about commercial space is very real.
I invite everyone who remembers to go back to 2000 university and to see cafe Briscoe.
Because that's what is left over after we've given everything to the residential building that they need.
The elevator banks, the stairwells, the mail room, the leasing room.
Everything is just taken up on the first floor.
And so there's very little commercial space.
And unless you really invest a lot, you won't get it.
Thank you.
Thank you for your patience.
Can I have one more minute? Kelly, is there anyone left? Okay.
So just a couple more things.
I just want to make this real quick.
I'd like you all to write down the title of this book.
It's called Sick City.
And it's disease, inequity, and land use.
And it's about what happens when you add more density to land.
And this is by Patrick M.
Condon who lives in Vancouver and is a landscape and city planner.
And what he found, he believed in adding density and that it would really work in terms of lowering the cost of housing.
And in 2021, he wrote this book.
And what he found is that it didn't lower the cost of housing at all.
And it was actually someone who identified this problem back in the 19th century called Henry George.
And what he found is that when you add density, you increase the value of the land and increase the housing.
Thank you.

Segment 8

Okay.
Thank you for your patience.
I appreciate it.
Go ahead.
I'm Mary White.
I'm a West Berkeley artist and educator and I go to the Ellenwood several times a month from West Berkeley to the Basic Bird and other places.
I think we have a disconnect between low-cost housing and this proposal because I don't think density will mean low-cost housing at all.
And so I urge that you pause and that you get the younger people who've spoken and the businesses to come and talk and that each area, each of these residential areas, is commercial, is district.
I also know that 4th Street is specifically popular because it's low low density in that area, that shopping area, and I've been here for about 45 years and what about focusing on San Pablo and University, where all of those houses, all those commercial businesses, have managed to be destroyed.
Thank you.
Concentrate on that pause.
Thank you.
Thank you.
My name is Patrick Kennedy.
As you all know, I am a big booster of housing, rental, and for sale, and I'd like to talk a little bit about disruption of small businesses for development.
I'm quite familiar with the Ellenwood.
My mom lives on Benvenu and Woolsey, and she's been there since 1986.
I patronized the Basic Bird, Gordo's, the Ellenwood Cafe, and many others, and I'd like to tell you that the fears of the neighbors and the businesses there are grossly overblown with respect to interests of market-rate developers like myself in their spaces.
They're too small, the complications of construction are too great, and the costs of assembling a property that is big enough to make an economically viable development is far too great.
Moreover, because the council recently passed the missing middle housing, there are much more, there are many more, okay, opportunities, there are many more opportunities next to Ellenwood.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, please.
Thank you.
We got to keep the, we got to keep the flow.
We're doing so well on timing, everyone.
Thank you.
Okay, the question was raised as to how the 2020-23 upzoning in Oakland has impacted the College Avenue businesses.
Last year, a small business owner in Rockridge advised me that she and her, the adjoining owners, are living with complete uncertainty.
Because the landowner, who has never done this before, refused to provide more than a three-year lease.
And so they're presuming that he's looking for the bigger profit in the development.
And second, I am puzzled why the Sacramento corridor isn't being looked at.
It is, has been designated a high-resource area.
You have homes there selling single-family dwellings for 1.2, 1.4 million dollars.
And south of Dwight, there are vacancies and underused properties that that, those areas could use housing.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Wait, wait, I had 29 written down already, so you're on 30.
30, okay.
Wait, sorry, so 30, how many minutes are you getting? 31? Two.
Two? Okay, so you'll have three minutes total and we went up to 31 just now, right? Okay.
Yeah.
Okay.
I'm Mark Goldberg.
I've lived in Berkeley since 1968.
Nobody here, except one individual a short while ago, mentioned the greater cost, the greatest cause of Berkeley's housing shortage.
That's UC Berkeley.
UC Berkeley agreed 10 years ago to limit its enrollment to 32,000.
Right now, it's at 46,000.
So there are 14,000 young people without housing who are students.
Now, you are building the housing for the students.
A lot of the, these apartments are basically chicken coops where you can jam three, four, and five students into an apartment.
So, I wonder why UC doesn't build and why it's throwing the burden onto the city.
In 2023, the California Supreme Court, in its People's Park decision, said, the university has plenty of places to build, so why are we destroying viable neighborhoods to house students? Those are the people who you are trying to provide housing for that UC should be providing housing for.
And what is done in your desire to provide that housing for UC students, you've killed the downtown.
And, you know, other cities seem to get by without these mandates.
I don't see any high-rises in El Cerrito or Albany.
I don't see any in Piedmont, where Patrick Kennedy lives, and I don't see any in Lafayette and Orinda.
Why are we taking on this immense burden when no one else is? Thank you.
So, I was told that you've already used your minute.
You gave it to somebody.
I never gave it to anyone here.
Okay, so I, well, but she has to use her minute, but she's telling me she didn't.
She's got 44, so I don't know what happened, but go ahead.
You've got your minute.
I'm not even going to take a minute.
Okay, go ahead.
My name is Meryl Siegel.
I'm the co-founder of Beautiful San Pablo, and I've been communicating with our people and their business owners, and they're asking if it's possible to push San Pablo Avenue plan, specific plan, to another evening.
I'm so sorry.
We really have to keep going.
There's a lot to cover.
We have only three council meetings left, and there's a lot of information to do, so, and we still, yeah, so, anyway, so we've finished the in-person comments for this evening.
Can I just have a sense, if you are online, can you please raise your hand if you have a comment on this item? Okay.
We're going to take a break, but I want to see how many comments we have.
It says 12 now, so if you're participating remotely on Zoom and you'd like to give comments, please raise your hand on Zoom.
Okay, so we have at least 12.
At least 12, yeah.
13.
13.
Okay, so we are going to take a 15-minute break, and then we will be back for these 13 comments.
Thank you.
Recording stopped.
So Recording in progress.
Recording stopped.
Okay.
Recording in progress.
Hello.
Hi, everyone.
It's 10-12, and we still have at least 13 comments online.
Folks.
Uh, how many comments is it? Yeah.
Sorry.
Yes.
10 to 13.
It keeps me going.
It's about now at 14.
14.
Okay.
All right.
Hey, folks, please.
Can I have your attention? All right.
Very good.
So we are back in session.
Oh my gosh.
Council members.
Thank you.
All right.
Going on.
We're going to the online comments.
I know we're reaching the silly hour.
I can tell.
Um, so let's go to our online comments.
I think we've got about 14.
We still have council member comments, and then we have another item.
So let's get going.
Okay, folks, please.
Take your conversations outside.
Okay, go ahead.
Okay.
The first public speaker is Bertha Magana.
Hi, my name is Bertha Magana.
I own a house right next to Solano Avenue.
Um, and I do not support the up zoning of Solano Avenue.
My family and I are the only Mexican family on our block.
We are one of only two families with a young child on our block.
And as the first house right off of Solano, that means that we have two commercial properties to the left of our lot and one commercial property in the back of our lot.
Um, so I don't want to see a massive ugly wall wrapped around my backyard.
Our backyard is gorgeous.
It's an oasis.
It's my child's favorite place to be.
And if you really want to be equal, then support actual homeownership with green spaces.
Don't just facilitate living in poverty and some high rise.
Okay, next speaker is Veronica Fuxon.
Veronica, can you please unmute yourself and let us know who you are and where you're from? Should be able to unmute, Veronica.
Yeah, thank you.
I'm sorry.
My name is Veronica Fuxon.
I would like to join with the comments that were made by Sue Johnson and the owner of Amy Thomas on either or, and there's a need for people to get together and to work these things out.
Because something can happen doesn't mean that you have to make it happen.
And so you can take your time.
This one says that people want to be cooperative.
They want to get together.
They want to figure some things out.
And I urge you to do that.
It's really, really important.
Having things dropped on one at the, when they don't know it's coming and it's heavy is not the way to do government.
Believe me.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Next is Amy Baldwin.
Oh, hi.
I was going to see my minute to DeepMAR if he's still on line.
To who? DeepMAR Lawrence.
Is he? I don't.
Oh, he might have gone to bed.
Okay.
Then I guess I will comment for myself.
The episode.
Sorry, Amy, they're looking for him.
Okay, he's on.
Yeah.
Yes.
Okay, great.
I'm seeing my minutes.
Okay.
Thanks, Amy.
All right.
And yeah, when he comes up, then when they come up, then they will get that extra minute.
Go ahead.
Yes.
Okay.
Next is Scott.
Yes, hi.
My name is Scott.
I want to thank all of the small business owners who came tonight and represented themselves at this meeting.
I have lived in Berkeley for over 50 years, and I shop at all those stores and many more.
I'm opposed to up zoning.
That is a power grab by Wall Street.
Follow the money.
Any discussion regarding housing and low income housing must include representation from the University of California.
The University of California has approximately 50,000 students, and they provide about 10,000 beds.
This is part of the housing crisis that's been going on since I moved here in 1971.
I also want to give a big happy birthday shout out to the Chiefs Board Collective.
58 years now today, and I agree with Vanessa from the Chiefs Board that to solve these issues must work together collectively in community.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Next is Becky O'Malley.
Becky O'Malley, you should be able to unmute.
Yes, I'm here.
Okay.
Who shares this computer is seeing a minute to me, so I guess I have to.
Sorry, Becky, are you there so that you can tell us that you're giving a minute? No.
First of all, thank all of you.
Sorry.
Wait a second.
Just to be clear, so Becky needs to be there to give you a minute.
I just can't hear.
Okay.
Okay, go ahead.
Where are we? Is it okay for me to start? Yes.
I would like to thank all of you for making the effort to get down there.
I heard some really remarkable speeches.
And Mark Goldberg at the end really nailed it, as did this other guy who spoke afterwards.
It's the university that's causing all these problems.
And there have been many deals with the university sometimes with money exchanging hands, which were part of the program and continue to be part of the program.
There's not a lot you can do about it.
But I did want to point out one thing.
Even you might consult somebody at the university about this.
The First Amendment, you can't say people can cheer, but they can't boo.
That is censoring content of permitted speech.
And it's absolutely not consistent with the First Amendment.
I think your legal counsel will probably tell you that.
If people want to boo, they should be able to boo.
And that's really all I have to say.
I appreciate all the work that everybody else has done.
I myself, I'm at home with the end of a bout of pneumonia, so I can't be there, which might be why I sound sort of funny, too.
Okay.
Thank you.
Next is Nancy Rader.
Good evening.
My name is Nancy Rader.
I live in the hills above North Shattuck.
I avoid buying online as much as I possibly can and buy local.
Just today, I shopped at She's Bored in Ace Hardware downtown.
I buy all of my books at Pegasus, et cetera.
But for various reasons, it's not practical for me to walk or bike down and up the hill to shop, so I drive.
But parking is already tough.
So my question to the planners is, have you considered the impact of potentially much greater density and congestion in these commercial areas on the ability to park so people can keep supporting these businesses? What's the plan? And if you build the cycle tracks that are also planned on Solano and Shattuck, we'll lose most of the parking we have.
I attended all three community meetings and didn't hear a word about the impacts of the proposal on parking, which allows thousands of people in the hills and people all across the city to buy local on Solano, North Shattuck, and the Elmwood.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Okay.
Next is Michelle.
Should be able to unmute.
Hi, my name is Michelle Hainer, and I live on the edge of the Elmwood.
I'm a high school teacher with two kids, including one in Berkeley High School.
I would like to reinforce that, you know, in the past, gosh, less than a year, the city council voted to open up, you know, 80% of Berkeley to a massive rezoning to increase housing stock.
Without going into to what extent that's just going to be fueled by venture capitalists, though we have received many cash offers on our old brown shingle house here, I want to reinforce that before we instigate another wave of massive change, including the destruction of really precious historical areas, local businesses, we should go slow and look at how housing is already going to be massively increased by what you have already implemented.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Next is Tony Mester.
Good evening.
Good to see everybody.
I would like to donate my minute to Dietmar Lorenz.
Okay.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Dietmar will have three minutes.
Next is Christopher Kroll.
I just decided to, I'm going to give Dietmar my minute as well.
I don't know if he wants it, but he's going to get it.
Thank you.
All right, thank you.
Okay.
Dietmar will have four minutes.
Next is Nathan Landau.
Nathan should be able to unmute.
Unmute.
There you go.
Hi.
We always have trouble identifying where housing should be, should go.
We all want it.
These corridors are among the best places in the city.
People who live there can walk to businesses like the Cheese Board and grocery stores.
From North Shattuck, you can walk to BART.
And, of course, there are business districts around the world in the country that have apartment buildings and businesses on the ground floor.
And what we'll get from this is we'll get a mix of old and new spaces, different rent levels.
It will be very healthy for the district, particularly easy for me to see it on North Shattuck.
I'd also say, what happens if housing isn't built? Well, we know that prices skyrocket.
Also, the state could impose the builder's remedy, which would take away Berkeley's ability to control development.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Okay.
Next is Joel Meyerson and Peggy Raydel.
Oh, yeah.
So the representative from beautiful San Pablo requested that you push the discussion of the San Pablo plan to another evening, presumably because of the late hour and how much time is being taken up with the corridor zoning update.
And you basically dismissed her by saying, I'm so sorry.
We really have to keep going.
There are only three council meetings left.
You know, as well as I do, that the council can call another special meeting anytime they want.
And I think you're really just blowing off important stakeholders by not doing so.
Thank you.
Okay.
Next is Brianna Morales.
Hi, my name is Brianna with the Housing Action Coalition, a nonprofit that advocates for housing across California.
Small businesses are essential and displacement is a real concern.
We need to pair strong protections with zoning that actually has new homes being able to be built.
Housing and small businesses cannot and should not be put against each other.
More homes means more customers, more stability, and more life on our streets.
Fixing the housing crisis means homes at all income levels, including often forgotten missing middle.
In my work with affordable nonprofit market rate builders, when projects can't pencil, we lose new homes and crucial affordable housing funding that comes directly from market rate fees.
We urge a strong six-story base zoning across all corridors and no mandatory ground floor retail.
Focus active uses where they make sense and allow housing when retail isn't viable.
Rather than I support housing, but dot dot dot, every neighborhood in Berkeley is someone's right place.
If we want an inclusive city, especially now, we have to start saying yes here too.
We cannot afford to wait while in a housing crisis.
Thank you.
Next is Alfred Twoh.
Hi, everyone.
Here to speak in support of the corridor zoning.
It's a matter of fairness.
South Berkeley already was rezoned and San Pablo Avenue is coming up as well.
I think to address some of the concerns of the businesses, Berkeley could do something like San Francisco's legacy business program, which provides funding to many of the longtime businesses to help them get through impacts from construction and other issues.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Okay, next is Dietmar Lorenz who have four minutes.
Hi, good evening, Mayor and Council.
So just to clarify the seated minutes by Tony Mester and Amy Baldwin and Chris Call, I think they wanted to see these minutes for me to speak on the San Pablo specific plan.
So I will keep this to one minute relating to the corridor zoning update.
I found this CZU public comments very compelling, very differentiated and nuanced.
And I think it's also many statements that it's really a false choice to say, well, it's eight story or nothing.
I'm an architect and I've seen this from both ends.

Segment 9

and seeing how difficult it can get through with zoning and everything.
But there is a great in-between zone that has not been explored.
Somebody made this comment, what's for dinner? Chicken, right? So I think we need to zoom out on a larger city level, and I think it's very important to give equal opportunity for West Berkeley.
We are into four and a half hours of this meeting now, and West Berkeley, again, is getting the short end of the stick.
You said, did you want to use that? Give me one extra minute for this, because I think it's really important.
Just saying, sorry, this is the end of it, and this is the last meeting, then you need to make time for it.
This is going to redefine the city in a very fundamental way that will shape what the city will look like decades from now.
It's 10.30.
The people in our group, in our neighborhood, they dialed out, they went home, they're tired.
You are tired too, even if you're saying, well, it's too bad for you if you went home.
But who of you really is going to have the stamina to give the same amount of consideration and an open ear to what we have to say in West Berkeley? It's a historically disadvantaged part of town, and again, we will be thrown under the bus by not getting the same opportunity that higher resourced areas of the city have.
So, I would find it inconsolable to just keep going and brush this aside, make more room for it, postpone the part for the San Pablo specific plan.
Please.
Thank you.
There's no more hands raised, so that's the end of public comments.
Okay, so we are moving on to council member comments.
Briefly, I just want to touch on two things.
One, yes, of course, we can always call another special meeting, but out of respect to staff who have been waiting, out of the fact that there are many folks who have waited this long to speak on this second item, we are going to continue with it.
And the other thing I wanted to address is the booze that is actually in our procedural matters document under decorum.
So that is a stated thing.
People are not allowed to boo and hiss.
It's not a First Amendment violation.
So, okay, moving on to our council comments, starting with council member Taplin.
Thank you.
And let me please begin by saying that I certainly have stamina for both these corridors and my own corridors and have Avenue.
And I do think my West Berkeley people who have stuck it out, and I do share your frustration for how much space and time these corridors took up.
That being said, can you please restate what you're asking feedback on? Yes, please.
Yeah, well, thank you.
Council member Taplin, we're going to bring those questions back up.
I think to summarize, we were hoping to get your feedback on the alternatives presented, whether you think alternative one or two or neither of those hits the mark to the extent you're comfortable giving us feedback.
The building form alternatives we presented regarding step backs, ground floor, residential, whether to require it throughout the entirety of these districts, or you saw the maps that we showed where we would allow ground floor residential in certain areas of these corridors.
And also the question of whether city council would be interested in having staff and the team bring back more detailed objective design standards for each of these corridors.
And we could potentially look at differentiated standards that vary for each corridor if council's interested in that.
So it would be helpful to get that feedback.
Yes, I will limit my feedback to the zoning alternatives and the ground floor question, and I do want to reflect that what I heard tonight was a very strong interest in protecting our small businesses and a great concern for the risk of extensive commercial vacancy.
What I did not quite hear was whether the conditions of these 3 corridors were conducive currently to the vitality of these businesses and if so, how and if not, why not like does low density, low pedestrian traffic support fragile, small businesses.
As someone who lives along a thriving, vibrant and historic commercial district that has neighborhood serving businesses, it's been my experience that having customers who live nearby is a net positive for them, and that's how they've been able to stay.
That being said, I do look forward to the continued outreach to the businesses in these corridors, and I would like to see what's working for them, what's not working for them.
So we can think about how to make make those conditions continuous throughout each of these corridors moving forward.
I don't think we should require commercial ground floor, not because I don't think it's nice to have continuous storefronts.
I just also am very concerned about the potential of having extensive commercial vacancies.
So I think some flexibility is important there.
Thank you.
And in response to the person who asked why we're not trying to build on parks.
It's because we have.
I do think it's important to have parity across the corridors because I don't see any utility in reinforcing the segregationist history of exclusionary zoning.
So I would support seven across.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Madam Mayor.
Thank you again to our planning staff and the consultant team for your extensive work and the community outreach that has taken place since the council first passed the housing element back in January, you know, this is a really exciting night for me personally, you know, that we are discussing rezoning these transit commercial corridors and high resource neighborhoods as was stated during the presentation.
This is because it is in our housing element plan required by the state.
Why is it in our housing element? It's it's there because we are required to affirmatively further fair housing.
This is a mandate that originates from the Federal Fair Housing Act of 1968 to create inclusive communities on a technical level.
What this means is that we have a requirement to attempt to locate more affordable housing and higher income neighborhoods.
And the slide that we saw during the Q and a council member Taplin asked that we put that up.
We could see visually that there has not been development of any kind, whether affordable or not on Solano and North Shattuck and college.
I think we just have a couple projects now on North Shattuck.
So we know that our rules are a barrier.
We have just two stories that are allowed currently on Solano Avenue, which is such a wide street.
We have college that only allows two to three stories.
North Shattuck is just three to four stories.
And we all pass that Bank of America lot.
It's completely underutilized.
There's so much potential there.
And, you know, I understand it was actually just recently purchased.
And so if we can do this rezoning, we can hopefully have people living right there, right next to cheese board and all of those wonderful businesses walking along that street, patronizing those businesses.
You know, that is really what I see is as beneficial to the businesses.
And that's not to minimize the concerns we heard tonight.
I actually want to thank especially the business owners who are trying to run a business who took the time out of their evening to come and talk to us tonight.
I really think we need to continue and I know our staff and consultants will continue to reach out to businesses.
And I just want to express my support for the study that we will be doing.
I think the staff mentioned through strategic economics to look at what we can do to make sure that our small businesses are supported.
So let me just get into the feedback points in the remaining time that I have.
I think that we should have a minimum height across all of the commercial transit corridors of seven stories.
And I think we should keep the eight stories for North Shattuck as proposed an alternative to.
And here's why people tell us that they don't want to see taller buildings in residential neighborhoods.
We kept middle housing to three stories.
And I often get feedback from the public that we think that the taller buildings should go on the commercial transit corridors.
So I think this is our opportunity to do that.
I just want to remind us we zoned the North Brooklyn and Ashby BART station for seven stories.
State law SB 79 that was just signed by the governor will now allow seven stories within a quarter mile of all of our BART stations and six stories within a quarter mile to a half mile from those stations.
So we are going to see over time more height along transit corridors.
So I think it makes sense for these three corridors to sort of have the similar standard of seven stories.
And I really think that we need to do this now.
I think about some of the young families we heard from.
Some of them have been fortunate enough to buy a home in Berkeley.
We didn't hear from some of the people we heard from during middle housing.
Some of those grad students living in garages.
We know that many of our college students are homeless.
They're couch surfing or living in cars.
We need to be thinking about the next generation.
My son is seven years old and in second grade.
So 15 years from now when he and his peers graduate from college and they're trying to figure out where they're going to live, we need to plan for that future for the next generation.
So I think we need to be ambitious now.
I also think we need to look at increasing the floor area ratio for non-residential and mixed-use development to make sure that there is the square footage that's necessary for things to be feasible.
I just want to quickly wrap up that I think we should have no step backs because I don't want to lose units.
I don't want to do that tradeoff of losing units for step backs.
I think we should be flexible on the ground floor, I'm talking about, by concentrating retail in the targeted nodes, those major intersections, and allowing ground floor residential or office and other locations, again, to improve feasibility.
And I don't think we need differentiated objective design standards for each corridor.
I'll talk more about that when we get to the San Pablo plan.
I think we can use some targeted standards for the ground floor and apply them to all the corridors.
So that's all I have.
Thank you very much.
And thank you again to the business owners who came and spoke about their concerns.
And I know that we will continue to outreach to them.
Thank you.
Council Member O'Keefe.
Thanks a lot.
Thank you so much to planning staff.
You guys are doing great.
And thanks so much to everyone who came out, especially the small businesses.
I really appreciated hearing from so many of them.
Small businesses are among the most vulnerable and most affected by this kind of change, so it's very important to have their voice.
And I want to say it's probably true, like two things are true.
I think that planning staff was very diligent and did a great job reaching out.
It's also a huge task.
And so I think that's true, and it's also true that there were quite a few business owners who didn't hear about it.
And so I just want to, I think, don't feel blamed, but I do want to validate that clearly that was some people's experience.
I want to plug my newsletter.
Any small business in Solano or North Shattuck should absolutely subscribe to my newsletter because we definitely announced it a lot.
You can get great information that way.
But anyway, if that was your experience, I'm sorry.
Fortunately, we had this forum.
This was also to get feedback, so I'm glad you're part of the conversation now.
So that's the main feedback I have, is that I agree, and I really think we do need protections for small businesses.
I was glad to hear that there's nothing really to talk about now, but it sounds like you guys are taking it really seriously, and you have a process moving forward that will result in some good ideas.
So I'm looking forward to that, and I really am going to place a lot of importance on something coming from that.
That's my main feedback.
And then I have to say something that's been bothering me.
Most people left, unfortunately, but so many people tonight said, you know, this is being shoved down our throat.
We're only giving one option.
Nobody's listening to us.
We're only being offered chicken.
I hear that, and it makes sense.
That sounds frustrating.
That's totally valid.
But what I didn't hear alongside that is, like, an alternate idea.
Like, if there's another way to bring density to these neighborhoods, I want to hear it.
They want to hear it.
We're open-minded.
You know, this is what we're working with now.
Nothing is set in stone, and so I just want to give a plug for just, like, work with us.
And so I really, you know, I invite it, and I'm sorry that people feel left out.
Okay, so this process is ongoing, and there will be more conversations, and I know that they're nodding.
They definitely want to hear from you.
We do, too, and thank you again for coming.
So, okay, I want to just make one final point, which is I have a real north star when it comes to how to think about this sort of thing we're up to here, and that's equity.
And so this is my feedback for all the other questions.
Okay, small businesses, and then whatever we're doing in the other corridors that we've up-zoned, I want to do that with these.
It's equity.
That's the whole point of this.
So when I hear proposals like, well, you know, but we love our businesses.
Yeah, we love our businesses.
I love them.
I love all of Berkeley's businesses.
So I want us to do whatever we're doing citywide, and just to bring it back to my original point, I want the small business protections that we will come up with to be applied citywide.
I want, you know, Sue Johnson's lips to be protected.
I want your basic bird to be protected, and I want all the nail shops on University and San Pablo to be protected.
Right? This is universal.
This is equity, and that's a very important value, and that should be our North Star.
And so I think that's all I want to say, although I get my nails done on North Static, I want to say.
Polished is a great place, but I want all the nail shops to be protected, but polished is great.
Okay, so that's all.
So small businesses, be an equity.
That's my feedback.
Thank you.
Thank you, Council Member.
Council Member Draco.
Thank you, Madam Mayor.
Thank you, colleagues.
I want to begin with a shared truth.
We all care deeply about making Berkeley a place where people can afford to live, work, create, and belong.
In short, a Berkeley we can all call home.
We hear from young families, students, and working professionals who want to stay here and cannot.
We also hear from small businesses who are holding the cultural and economic heart of our neighborhoods, and from property owners who are navigating real financial pressures and real uncertainty in this market.
So the question is not whether we need more housing, which we absolutely do.
The question is how we create this housing.
How do we affirmatively further fair housing in a way that strengthens our communities? There are two values here that may at first glance appear to be intention, but don't have to be.
And I am confident that by the time we as a community together figure this out, they will not be intention anymore.
We do need to understand the impacts on small businesses.
Construction can be extremely disruptive.
Businesses rely on consistent foot traffic, predictable customer patterns, and stable rent conditions.
If we're encouraging redevelopment along our most vibrant corridors, what is our concrete plan to support the businesses that make these corridors vibrant in the first place? We want them to still be here when new residents arrive, not replaced by empty storefronts or national chains.
And we must acknowledge the mixed incentives facing property owners.
Some want stability and want to keep neighborhoods serving businesses.
Others, probably no one that attended tonight, may hold properties vacant waiting for redevelopment.
And these dynamics have real consequences for street life, economic diversity, and cultural identity.
So how are we accounting for this variability in policy design? We have lived through the very real impact of stalled construction and unfinished projects in my district.
A condition that predates my time on the council, but one that we are absolutely committed to resolving.
We need clear safeguards and performance standards to prevent long-term commercial vacancies called shells and fenced off lots.
There is a path here.
I was heartened to hear staff's responses to my questions around how do we protect these small businesses? I was very confident about my vote in support of middle housing.
Because I believe this was the first council meeting after I was sworn in.
I also voted for what I believe to be one of the strongest demolition ordinance in the nation.
We unfortunately are constitutionally barred from having those same levels of protection.
But I want to work with all of you and with staff to figure out what we are able to do to keep small businesses here.
I'm just going to briefly respond to feedback topics on zoning alternatives around height.
I agree with the Planning Commission's recommendation that perhaps what matters most is what we're doing to keep the vitality of the neighborhood.
So this may be somewhat context specific.
Similarly with the upper floor step back, I do believe to further housing, I support there not being a step back on the main street.
But I certainly understand the reason and would be open to having a step back going towards the residential neighborhoods.
On ground floor, I support transit having commercial storefronts on the ground floor concentrated along certain nodes.
I very much support objective design standards.
Council Member Keefe and I used to be on a committee to try to develop them and maybe we can actually get it done here.
I wanted no design standards.
I support thinking beyond these particular resource rich areas.
Some commenters have said, let's look at the north side of Sacramento or south side of Sacramento, other wide arteries.
I am very open to looking at those as well.
And lastly, I very much support flexibility, including being creative around having live work, looking at what San Francisco is doing.
That can be a North Star right now.
You're a minute over now, so I just please, if you can.
Yeah, we have a responsibility to build housing and to protect the communities we are building it for.
And I believe that we did not have to choose one or the other.
The goal is to do both well with care.
And I am committed to working with all of you and the neighborhoods and our small businesses.
And we'll be reaching out to those in our district to do that.
OK, Council Member Humbert.
Thank you, Madam Mayor.
And I bargained with the mayor to get a couple extra minutes by promising not to ask too many questions.
So I'm going to try to wrap this up within seven.
Thank you, Director Klein, Utara Ramakrishnan, Justin Horner and the planning staff for all your work on this really important effort.
Thanks to the consultant team who produced such a thoughtful report.
And I want to thank the entire team for the outreach they've done so far.
And I know they will continue to do.
And, you know, not no casting no shade, but let's let's do even more.
I think it's really critical.
And that's what we heard tonight.
Deep thanks to all those who've spoken here tonight and the vast numbers of Berkeley residents, merchants, a lot from my district, who've sent compelling emails, all of which I've carefully read and considered.
First, I want to emphasize that I reject arguments that district aid in the Elmwood should not allow for any new homes or that they strictly belong elsewhere.
I've heard a lot of that, and it's disheartening.
And I don't I don't believe in it.
It's it's unfair.
My conviction that we can't simply say no to any new housing along college is consistent with my strong support for middle housing, which upzones significant portions of district eight.
And I hope we'll go a long way to addressing previous exclusionary zoning practices.
I think that middle housing is the right thing to do and that we need to continue to take steps even beyond the quarters of zoning that we're considering here to make sure that district eight is building its fair share.
I want to see my daughters be able to afford to live a middle class life in Berkeley.
They're in their mid to late 20s, and it's really so difficult for them now.
I want to see other people's children and grandchildren have the same opportunity to become homeowners if they don't want to be renters in our beautiful community.
I want to see people living close to work instead of burning time and carbon commuting in from excerpts.
At the same time, the Elmwood commercial corridor faces a number of concerns and constraints that I believe are unique.
It's a very narrow street, very small lots.
And I believe these argue for a careful, focused approach.
Colleges by far the narrowest of the three quarters under consideration, which means maximum building heights would need to be lower to maintain proportionality with the street width.
Some of my colleagues don't agree with that.
Even more importantly, College Avenue is the shortest of the quarters, comprising essentially only two blocks of retail.
When you combine this with the fact that College Avenue has, I think at this point, well, there might be one old storefront that's been empty, but essentially zero retail vacancy.
This means that any displaced businesses will have nowhere else to go within the district, and that their loss would have a much greater impact within this small and tight knit shopping area.
Additionally, Elmwood has what are currently some of the most continuous pedestrian oriented retail blocks in Berkeley.
Not a single driveway crosses the sidewalks along College Avenue all the way from Russell to Webster.
This differs considerably from the other quarters where there are multiple existing parcels with auto oriented parking and driveways facing the sidewalk.
The only parking areas facing College are at the 7-11 and the post office, both at the very edges of the district.
Indeed, combined with the rear parking lot of the Wells Fargo, which has its driveway on Ashby, these three parcels represent the sole likely opportunity sites for potential development identified by the project team.
Taken together, I think all of these constraints argue for limiting the rezoning at this time to the three parcels identified as opportunity sites.
I want to emphasize that taking this approach would have no effect on the projected potential units, as far as I can tell, because these three sites were the ones really deemed likely to redevelop and thus are the only sites, maybe I'm wrong, the project team calculated build up for, but perhaps a few, some additional.
If we can get the exact same projected housing potential or something similar, but take an approach that addresses neighbors and merchants concerns, why wouldn't we take that opportunity, that approach? In the future, development economics or the will of the neighborhood or council may change.
The new zoning could be expanded to other parcels.
But given what we've heard from stakeholders and what staff have deemed our best sites, I think we should work smarter, not harder when it comes to rezoning, specifically in the Elmwood.
I want to also acknowledge the apparent lack of economically feasible housing opportunity along College is understandably disappointing to people who want to see a greater degree of geographic equity, and I agree.
This is why I want to suggest that we also, not in the context of this project, but immediately after, if we can, we look into potentially doing a targeted rezoning of both some upper Claremont parcels that currently feature solely auto-oriented uses, as well as the areas of Telegraph Avenue that fall outside the Southside plan.
The long stretch from Woolsey to Parker, taken together, such upzonings could contribute huge multiples of the housing that's available on the puny little, or the very small area of College Avenue.
If the goal is to increase geographic equity and maximize housing production in the high-resource areas, adding Telegraph, which is a high-resource area, it's just on the other side of the Elmwood and Willard, and runs through District 8 and along District 8 for its whole length from Woolsey to Parker.
Having said all of this, I think we ought to look at that, and I think we ought to upzone Telegraph, because Telegraph is not a thriving commercial district.
They tend to cast no shade, but it could use a help.
It could use a leg up.
Having said all of this, I understand there are a number of directions this could go, depending on the sentiments of my colleagues.
I therefore want to provide a few other specific points of direction tonight that I think will be crucial for any upzoning option and potential housing development in Elmwood.
One, we preserve active retail frontage along College Avenue.
Two, in addition to minimum active retail frontage, I would strongly encourage adoption of requirements for any new residential entrances and lobbies to be located at the rear of the buildings, off of College Avenue.
I want objective design standards to be ready for adoption.

Segment 10

Concurrent with any rezoning.
They don't need to be particularly prescriptive, but I want to make sure we're avoiding what are poor design choices, like over articulated facades.
I strongly support objective design standards that Mayor Planning Commissioner Alfred Tu's excellent work about reducing massing, but increasing visual articulation and orientation.
This would also be consistent with more traditional building styles and what we currently actually have in Elmwood.
Finally, I want to ensure that a retail retention and relocation program is also put in place at the time of adoption.
I know we're legally limited in what we can require in this respect, but perhaps some incentives and other carrots and sticks and development agreements could be deployed to ensure that all the corridors retain existing businesses, all of them.
Again, I want to thank staff and the project team and all the Berkeley residents who spoke and emailed me about this effort.
I hope my comments tonight demonstrate that even as I remain committed to allowing for more homes in our community, I'm listening to and acting on your concerns, and I welcome your continued participation as we take what will be many more additional steps in this effort.
It's not over.
Thank you.
I move we extend the meeting till midnight.
Second.
Is there any objection to that? No.
Okay, then we will extend the meeting until midnight.
Sorry, so I'm going to give up some of my time just because we went a bit over there.
So I'm going to move on to Council Member Bartlett, please.
Thank you, Madam Mayor.
And I want to appreciate and join myself to many of the Vice Mayor's comments.
You know, Mr.
Humbert is Vice Mayor now.
No one has mentioned that so far tonight.
Yeah, it's important to mention that.
It's important.
As we mentioned it when Ben was Vice Mayor.
You know, you got to stand up for yourself.
So, yeah, the, you know, so the land use committee that I chair, or we had a brief opening discussion about small business retention and storefront issue.
And this is an issue that our conversation tonight has really driven home the point that we need to really get creative around preventing our storefront apocalypse and to that end, we are really blessed and fortunate to be a part of this.
We are blessed and fortunate that college is stacked and it's the business are there and we know from experience when they have to leave for 2 or 3 years, they don't come back.
I have a number of places like that in my district, and it's difficult.
So, you know, I do want to say probably on the college front, those lots are small.
So they likely will not be torn down and developed into large buildings.
If they extended it, like, I wish they would wish you would, there are larger lots that you could work with, which could ease the pressure that I think that people are feeling on college, but I guess you can't you're doing the CZ thing.
But if you were able to extend the college, the college Avenue arena, and also the vice mayor had great ideas about some spot zoning parcels around it, which are large, which could draw the development pressure away from the stores.
And what else, you know, I, of course, you know, having gone through this process with tremendous vigor.
For many years, and I'm having to tangle with my colleagues and everyone else in the community and you all and landing on 7 stories on that line corridor, you know, I definitely call me old fashioned just like the whole fairness thing.
I want 7 stories everywhere.
Call me old fashioned, what can I say? And yeah, I think I think.
The I think those are my key points telegraph to also could could absorb and facilitate some of this pressure.
The telegraph we're talking about is the part that's, I guess, to the south of the college.
I guess, to the south of the area you're thinking of around my colleagues area.
So, going down from Dwight Dwight towards Ashby that area that we that we share could use development.
It is you'd have very little pushback from the community there because it's really kind of kind of not activated much in the same way that parts of that line corridor or not.
So, I would encourage you to expand this corridor horizon to telegraph as well.
And I think that's all to say, and someone mentioned Henry Henry George, someone mentioned Henry George economics, but that was the area.
So, I'm an old school Henry Georgist and, you know, I think and this is, of course, the concept of getting revenue from from those who utilize the public space, the public goods.
And I do think that we will be evolving into that sooner or later because it makes the most sense and it survives the wealth concentration.
So, and more on this later, but thank you.
Okay.
Thank you.
Council member.
Thank you.
I have a couple thoughts and they're a little disorganized.
So, sorry, but I first just want to thank staff for the work that has gone into this for that region.
And I just want to thank the city for the effort that it required.
I also want to thank many of the people who showed up tonight to engage in the public process.
People are mostly gone, but I still I want to talk a little bit about.
Yeah, so, 1st of all, we are in the preliminary stages of this decision making process.
We received emails that they're claiming that there's no public process for this.
And I think that that's a little ridiculous public outreach was conducted with residents and business owners and yeah, secondly, that's that is how initial data collection processes work there based on a representative sample of the population 3rd this is public process that's that's why we had this meeting.
We're here to listen to everyone's opinions are, and that will inform our final say, not next week, not next month, not even in 6 months.
This is going to return to council around July 2026.
so we have we have a lot of time.
I've also been hearing from neighbors who are conflating the concept of up zoning with the potential destruction of the cherished businesses and vibrant neighborhoods that we love.
And I think that this perspective is really unfair.
Our community is in dire need of more housing, and it is unfair to expect that certain neighborhoods, specifically districts, 1, 2, 3, 4 and 7 should shoulder the entire responsibility of creating new housing.
An equitable approach to housing requires systemic collaboration across all neighborhoods to ensure the development and preservation of diverse affordable housing options in a variety of neighborhoods.
The wealthiest neighborhoods are not exempt.
In fact, with resources contract concentrated in those areas, they are poised to welcome new neighbors.
And while I empathize with the businesses that came out here to speak, and I hope that they will be included in further versions of this, I do agree with my colleagues that we need to apply the same standard across all commercial quarters across the city.
And we should not be treating these high resource neighborhoods as uniquely in need of protection when we haven't done that for rezone corridors all over the city.
I also don't really understand why the height of a building would destroy the livability of neighborhoods or be fatal for businesses.
I don't see how a new 3 story building would be fundamentally different from a new 7 story building when the temporary impacts of construction would be the same, but the long term effect of new neighbors and therefore new customers and workers will be multiplied.
I really appreciated an email that we received from the Elmwood families refuting the claim that upzoning destroys neighborhoods.
They said, quote, more housing is actually what's going to save these neighborhoods from turning into ghost towns, more people will create vibrant, thriving business districts and actually the South side plan, which is the densest in both residential units and one of the densest in small businesses and also one of the most vibrant neighborhoods in the city.
The South side plan has some really great ideas about incentivizing and required smaller commercial units to avoid some of the large commercial vacancies that we see.
I also, I want to clarify that council writes and passes policy, and this is from council staff and all the city departments follow council's direction.
So it is misguided, inappropriate and unacceptable to direct your frustration or anger at our planning director or his staff who have done so much work for us.
The direction to upzone these areas ultimately comes from a state mandate and from the Berkeley City Council.
So, I and my colleagues are here to listen to your concerns to answer your questions and to engage in conversation because that's our job, but do not castigate staff are doing theirs.
Finally, I want to concur that I think we should have a minimum of a 7 stories across all the corridors, but between these alternatives, I do prefer alternative to those presented to us.
I don't think that there needs to be a upper floor step backs and I think that we should be flexible with the ground floor requirements and not require a ground for ground for commercial outside of the commercial notes.
Thank you.
Thank you, council member Black.
Yeah, great.
Thanks.
And I know you and I are the last 2 standing between us and San Pablo.
So I'm gonna try and be real fast.
I just want to thank staff and the team for their amazing work.
The presentation and I just, I do.
I joined my colleagues and thanking everyone who's come out tonight and participated.
This is a work session.
This was a workshop.
This is not the beginning of the end.
It may not even be the end of the beginning.
So we're very much in the middle of this process.
That's what this was designed for.
And we appreciate feedback.
I want to associate my comments with council member.
I appreciate your leadership and your thought partnership on this.
I value the feedback of everyone that came tonight.
I value the passion of all the small business owners who came.
I know that being a small business person is more than just a job.
It's more than a livelihood.
It's about you.
It's your identity.
It's who you are.
So I want to thank you 1st for caring about the future of these quarters and the city that we all love.
We all love from whatever perspective we come to it.
And I look forward to continuing this conversation and thinking together about what we want to do.
Not just this year or next year or 5 years from now, but 25 and 50 years from now.
That's really what this effort is all about.
And we all need to kind of think big about that.
As I was sitting up here, I've been thinking, I've talked to a number of residents in district 6.
Many people who are thinking about downsizing at this stage of their life.
Their kids have moved out, they've got a house, they've got a car, maybe they don't want to drive the car.
And they love the cheeseboard, and they love North Berkeley.
How great would it be to have a space to not have to work, not to live with And then we've got, you know, I think the ideal here is we've got all sorts of people sharing the same spaces together, sharing the same community together.
Whether you're grandparents and you're retired, or whether you're a student, or whether you're a young family.
And I think that's really the vision of where we're trying to get.
That's the goal.
And I think that's a beautiful vision.
I think that's great.
That's a great aspiration.
You know, I believe we can walk and chew gum at the same time.
You know, we can build new housing and support our small businesses.
We can activate these three quarters and make them even more compelling spaces where we all want to spend time.
And I think, again, that's the goal.
We have a lot of work to do.
Like, we're not there yet.
Clearly, you know, we have a good start at this product.
But we have more engagement to do, more communication to do.
We have more kind of bridge building to do and some problem solving to do.
But I have confidence that with this team, we can do it.
A couple of very specific comments.
I also support figuring out ways we can add some of these small business protections.
I do really think, like we're seeing in the San Pablo plan, if we could add these public realm policies, again, and think about what we want to do with these spaces beyond just how we're zoning them for development of housing and how we're protecting the businesses, but really how we're activating these spaces.
So I really encourage that to be part of this process if we can.
But really, it's, you know, let's think bigger.
Let's work together.
My door is open.
I went up to a number of people after the session this evening, and I think we all do want the same thing in the sense of finding a way forward here and making sure that we're all included in this process because we share the city, we share these spaces, and we share the vision for where we want the community to go.
So I look forward to the process ahead.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Actually, Council Member Taplin also has his.
My apologies, very quickly.
I would support eight stories on North Shattuck.
I think any consideration of ODS should include cost impact analysis and should preclude design review.
And because no one else has said this, anyone who thinks that the downtown is dead, I invite you to join me any night of the week, and I will show you just how much life there is.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you so much again to staff, to everyone who came and gave public comments.
I really appreciate you all taking the time out of your evenings to share your thoughts with us and also for the presentation, just all the time and energy that went into it.
This is about supporting housing and thriving businesses.
We can do both.
Yes, of course, things will change.
And at the same time, we're committed to a fair, transparent and thoughtful process and partnership with local businesses, residents and community members.
It's clear to me that we need to do more outreach and that more engagement is needed with the business community.
And as Jordan mentioned earlier, the planning department is available and interested in meeting with the business owners, community leaders, residents, different groups of folks.
So this is your opportunity.
If you are looking for a sign, it's here.
It's now.
So please reach out.
As Jordan said, his staff have business cards on them.
So go ahead and grab one if you if you haven't already.
I don't know if people know this, but Jordan actually came to the planning department from the Office of Economic Development.
So I know that he's really committed to retaining and supporting our vibrant commercial districts and that he really does understand the impacts of housing on business districts, because this is literally the area he used to work in.
Regarding the specific staff, the guidance that staff is looking for.
I want to say that I agree with my colleagues about consistency.
Just just to be clear, it's equality, not equity, because if it was equity, we would actually upsell in these areas even more.
Thank you.
Not to be too smart about it, but I'm just saying I think that what folks are saying is that we should be equal.
And I think that is important to be to be considering as we're talking about this.
I am interested in having staff explore the criteria for a potential criteria for zoning overlay for specific opportunity sites as an alternative, and I'd like to look at what that looks like in terms of ground floor residential.
I don't think we should require commercial uses on the ground floor since I'm really concerned about having too many empty storefronts.
We have many empty storefronts in our city.
And at the same time, of course, we need to consider what we can do to prevent commercial dead zones.
So that, of course, can really impact businesses as well.
For the objective design standards, I really don't have very strong opinions about this.
I think it's great to encourage things.
And at the same time, I think requiring them can be overly burdensome.
But I know that we've had conversations about objective design standards that are similar to like North Berkeley BART station or something.
And I think that would be interesting to be able to see.
And I want to just come back to this thing that I said at the beginning, that it's about supporting housing and thriving businesses.
We don't have to pick.
I love our business community.
I shop in all these stores, all these folks that came today.
I'm there quite often.
And so I really do want to keep our businesses thriving.
And it doesn't have to be either or.
So this is our opportunity.
We've heard the feedback.
Our staff's going to take that.
And we're going to make some adjustments, right? So thank you all so much.
Because this is a work session, that's it.
We don't have a vote.
So we're going to move on to the next item.
Thank you.
Thank you so much, council members.
If you could just give us two minutes or maybe even just one.
First shifting.
All right.
All right.
How's everyone feeling? Good.
All right.
We're ready.
Okay.
Pull up your neck.
Yep.
Okay.
I've heard this is about a 15-ish minute presentation.
So.
All right.
Send it to midnight.
So let's see.
We've got questions, comments, public comments.
So ready, set, go.
Item two, the San Pablo Avenue specific plan.
All right.
I'll turn it over to senior planner, Robert Rivera.
All right.
Good evening, council members, Robert Rivera, senior planner with the planning department.
And project manager of the San Pablo Avenue specific plan.
Here's our agenda for this evening tonight.
I'll discuss the project background.
And provide a summary of the outreach we've done to date.
Then I'll provide an overview of the specific plan and how it's organized.
Then I'll provide a summary of the outreach that we've heard and the overall vision and desired results of the plan.
Providing discussion questions as I go along.
Then I'll close by discussing how.
The specific plan relates to West Berkeley.
And lastly, provide next steps.
Before we discuss our outreach.
I want to briefly discuss why we're conducting a specific plan.
There are three main drivers to this specific plan process.
The first is the need for a robust plan for the corridor.
In recognition of the need for a robust plan for the corridor.
Referred staff to develop a plan that could guide development.
Second is available funding.
A bag and MTC designated San Pablo Avenue as a.
Priority development area or PDA in their long range planning efforts.
This designation provided access to dedicated funding.
Third is the need for a robust plan for the corridor.
This designation provided and were awarded with approximately 750,000 in planning grant funds for San Pablo Avenue.
And lastly, the recently adopted housing element includes program 27.
Which directs staff to develop a plan, which will increase, allow densities and or development capacity.
And study design standards, public improvements and mechanisms that incentivize affordable housing.
The specific plan boundary comes from the MTC defined PDA and includes parcels currently zoned as West Berkeley commercial.
In addition, the plan boundary was refined to capture additional opportunity opportunity sites.
And the specific plan is also within the larger West Berkeley plan area.
Here's our community engagement and plan development process to date.
The specific planning process started in 2023 and included key community leader interviews, target intercept surveys, small group meetings and a community open house where staff received feedback and comments related to the general condition of the corridor.
Staff asked questions like what resources would be most important? Which areas would you like to see prioritized? And what is your future vision of the corridor? The feedback from phase 1 directly impacted the formation of policies that were presented in phase 2 of this specific plan.
In phase 2 staff presented these proposed policies for more feedback and refinement.
We held pop-ups at various events, including a walking tour of the corridor and conducted a community workshop to discuss height and massing and public open space.
In this current phase, we're excited to present the public review draft of the specific plan and receive even more feedback.
Staff recently distributed flyers on the corridor and held a review session for the specific plan last week.
Over 65 community members attended, provided feedback and comments on the proposed policies.
And we anticipate even more discussion as we present the specific plan at various hearings in the year, with our aim to incorporate feedback and prepare a final draft for adoption by the middle of next year.
Before I provide an overview of the specific plan, I want to touch on some of the key findings from our existing conditions work.
Starting with community demographics and equity, a demographic analysis was conducted for the study area to highlight how the community has changed over time.
Much of the area was historically redlined in the 1930s, which shaped the neighborhood's demographic with many black, Asian and other racial and ethnic communities settling in South and West Berkeley.
Today, more than half of the study area is designated as an equity priority community, which is a regional designation used to target funding for affordable housing, transportation and land use improvements in areas impacted by historic inequities.
As neighborhoods within the study area continue to grow, demographic shifts have varied across racial and ethnic groups from 2000 to 2020.
The white population increased by over 45% while the black population decreased by over 39%.
Even with these changes, the corridor remains one of Berkeley's most diverse areas and has a greater racial and ethnic diversity compared to the city as a whole and Alameda County with regards to commercial activity.
San Pablo Avenue is Berkeley's largest commercial corridor and functions more as a regional destination for specific uses rather than a walkable neighborhood serving commercial district.
The quarter contains a variety of existing commercial uses and serves as a home to many small locally owned businesses, light industrial uses, service providers, and community institutions that reflect the neighborhoods, cultural and economic diversity.
An assessment conducted as part of the specific plan indicates that approximately 90% of the brick and mortar businesses are locally owned with 21% being women owned and 41% being owned by people of color.
Ground floor vacancy rates by square footage doubled between 2017 and 2020 from 5.5% to 10.8% peaking at about 15.5% in 2023, but recently has declined to 7.1% in 2024.
Retail sales tax is the largest source of tax revenue for the area, larger than food and beverage taxes and professional and business service taxes.
Some of the existing transportation and public space conditions, originally part of the Lincoln Highway, San Pablo Avenue has long served as a major regional and national transportation route and remain designated as a state highway, which means any improvements within the right of way require approval by Caltrans.
There are also ongoing projects by Alameda CTC, which includes safety enhancements, parallel bike improvements and bus lane and bike lane improvements.
Staff conducted public realm and open space analysis, evaluating the streetscape conditions and its elements, such as sidewalks, landscaping, street, furnishing, lighting, and building and site frontages.
One finding and a major public comment is there are no public parks on San Pablo Avenue or within the specific plan area, which means the sidewalks are the only public space along San Pablo Avenue.
The sidewalk conditions conditions vary, but are typically 13 feet wide, but are narrower compared to the preferred with guidance in the city's 2020 pedestrian plan.
Some structures along San Pablo Avenue feature a consistent tree canopy and active storefronts that create a more pedestrian friendly setting, but these remained exception.
As we presented this information to the community, we've heard a variety of feedback in all our outreach events.
Staff received support for affordable mixed income, high density housing, but there were concerns about architectural details.
Some folks were concerned that excessive building height and massing could diminish the public realm.
However, the community as a whole recognizes that San Pablo provides opportunities to address regional and local housing issues.
The community expressed frustration with poor sidewalks and express a desire for safer, greener, more vibrant public realm.
And there was strong interest in active, flexible ground floor uses to reduce vacancy and improve vibrancy along the corridor.
Overall community members expressed their vision that San Pablo Avenue will be a vibrant mixed use district that connects neighborhoods, supports variety of housing and local business and reflects Berkeley's cultural heritage.
Staff has translated that overall vision into 4 key areas of positive change or our overall desired results from the specific plan.
Each of these goals will be addressed through policies, programs, development standards, incentives, and other implementation strategies.
First, we aim to increase the diversity of housing types and the overall supply of housing to better serve a range of households.
This includes creating opportunities for affordable housing, live work, housing and family friendly housing units.
Second, we want to increase business activity to support a thriving community.
This includes expanding allowed uses such as temporary pop-ups, maker spaces and public markets and providing support for local small businesses.
Third, the plan seeks to enhance interaction between private and public spaces, encouraging designs that connect buildings, streets and open areas to create a more vibrant, engaging public realm.
And lastly, we aim to improve local and citywide access by strengthening connections to parks, schools, neighborhoods, employment and commercial centers, as well as major destinations like BART, downtown and UC Berkeley.
Here's how the specific plan is organized.
The first two chapters, the introduction and the vision provide background on the planning process to date and set the stage for the rest of the document.
Those are followed by the main chapters, land use, economic development, streets, transportation, and the public realm, including utilities.
And finally, implementation.
Each of these chapters connects to the objective design standards, which refine and provide more detailed development standards within the specific plan.
As you'll see throughout the presentation, many of the policies and objectives are interrelated.
I'll begin each section by reviewing what we've heard from the community, the desired results and review the policies.
I'll end each section by providing some discussion questions before I move on to the next one.
Starting with land use, the community expressed a desire for more housing, both in quantity and diversity of housing types.
The overall, the community agreed that the nodes should be the focus of the plan area area community members who want more affordable mixed income housing were also concerned about excessive height and massing across all outreach events.
Community members were concerned about the high storefront vacancy rates.
And the following land use policies are intended to increase the variety of housing types and increase the overall supply while supporting business activity.
First, in order to update standards and create a zoning framework staff is proposing a new commercial San Pablo zoning district that will replace the existing CW West Berkeley commercial district.
Staff is also proposing to keep the nodes, but proposing 2 types of notes, allowing greater residential and commercial intensity in tier 1 nodes and then tier 2 nodes, tier 1 nodes being intersections of University, Gilman and Ashby and San Pablo and tier 2 nodes being Cedar and Dwight and San Pablo.
Staff is also proposing a housing overlay on 6 newly designated parcels within the plan area to allow and encourage 100% affordable housing.

Segment 11

This meeting is to discuss the proposed development standards for the CW zoning district and the existing commercial zoning and family friendly units.
Again, this would apply to 6 parcels designated newly within the specific plan boundary.
Here are the existing and proposed development standards for the proposed commercial San Pablo zoning district.
The maximum height currently allowed by the existing CW zoning district is 40 feet and 3 stories for single use, and 50 feet and 4 stories for mixed use, regardless of location, and ground floor commercial is required within the nodes.
The maximum height proposal in tier 1 nodes, which are at University and Gilman and Ashby, would be 85 feet and 8 stories.
The maximum height proposed in tier 2 nodes would be 65 feet and 6 stories, which are Cedar and Dwight, while development standards outside of nodes would be proposed to be a maximum height of 55 feet and 5 stories, and then ground floor commercial would still remain required within those nodes.
Questions for Council related to land use.
Are the proposed development standards appropriate? Should there be different development standards in the nodes, and should the specific plan include the proposed housing overlay? The land use chapter is also proposing to establish a San Pablo Avenue local density bonus program.
This local density bonus program would provide an alternative to the state density bonus program.
Under current state density bonus law, developers are able to waive or reduce development standards set by the city.
This alternative would allow developers to pay an in lieu fee to the city's affordable housing trust fund to receive a similar density bonus.
However, in exchange, the city would ask developers to follow certain objective design standards, such as open space requirements, ground floor commercial requirements, such as minimum depth and improvements like grease interceptors, as well as building facade articulation and massing requirements.
Moving on to economic development.
What we've heard from the community is a desire for a mix of local serving businesses, affordable retail, and a variety of restaurants, cafes, and bars.
However, input from businesses, architects, and developer stakeholders identified challenges that hinder the ground floor commercial use.
The following policies are intended to increase business activity and support a thriving community.
Retail professionals cited an oversupply of commercial space along the corridor, and businesses reported high tenant improvement costs that are either cost prohibitive or not suitable for many small businesses' needs because they're too shallow or unimproved.
The next policy is related to economic development.
The policy would create a ground floor commercial in lieu fee for spaces outside of the nodes.
This in lieu fee would allow residential ground floor instead of the required commercial space for only properties outside of the nodes, thereby concentrating commercial space within the nodes.
Funds from this policy would be allocated to other economic development policies like strengthening the city's revolving loan fund.
Revenue generated from the commercial in lieu fee would supplement the city's revolving loan fund to provide targeted financial assistance to small businesses for tenant improvements, assistance in relocation within the planned area due to redevelopment, and succession planning.
The specific plan would also propose to initiate a study to evaluate the feasibility and scope of forming one or more business improvement districts in the planned area.
The study would assess a range of coverage and could explore extensions into portions of West Berkeley outside of the planned area.
Questions related to economic development.
Are there specific economic development policies that should not be included in this specific plan, or are there any other economic development policies or strategies that the plan should consider? Moving on to the public realm.
Community members expressed support for buildings with engaging and active building frontages.
Concerns were expressed that new developments are creating urban gated communities that are nice to live in, but not to live around.
Participants also would like to see ground floor and underutilized space become community gathering spaces for outdoor events, food trucks, and pop-up retail to support local businesses.
The intent of the policies are to enhance the interaction between public and private spaces and enhance local and citywide access.
The specific plan proposes policies to incentivize the widening of sidewalks and is proposing objective standards to define sidewalk zones with a requirement to restore full sidewalks as redevelopment occurs.
As a land use policy, the specific plan is proposing incentives for sidewalk easements and requirements to provide privately owned public open spaces.
The specific plan would also look to encourage converting up to 10 minor street segments into side street plazas by limiting or removing vehicle access at intersections within San Pablo Avenue.
Land use policies would also create incentives for adjacent development to provide side street plazas.
With regards to safety, the specific plan also includes strategies to reduce vehicle speeds and improve overall safety for all transit modes, prioritizing pedestrian and bicycle improvements on streets that provide access to schools, parks, and connections to major destinations.
Questions related to public realm.
Are the proposed streets, designs, and mobility strategies sufficient to address safety and comfort for all travel modes along San Pablo Avenue? As including the staff report, the draft plan includes a detailed objective design standard document.
The ODS defined requirements based on different building types, ranging from townhomes to medium and large high rise developments.
The ODS defined standards for building massing, articulation, and includes details for roof treatments and fenestration.
They also defined standards for how certain uses engage with the sidewalk and public realm to create a more engaging and comfortable pedestrian environment.
This includes how ground floor residential units are designed to balance the desire for active building frontage with adequate privacy for ground floor residents, and include requirements for commercial spaces, defining minimum commercial depth, and even improvements like venting and grease interceptors.
Questions related to objective design standards.
To what extent should the specific plan incorporate objective design standards? How can the specific plan balance inclusion of ODS with flexibility to avoid being overly prescriptive? And should ODS be applied to all projects or only certain types? And should ODS replace design review requirements? The following map shows the intersection of West Berkeley plan and the San Pablo Avenue specific plan.
As part of the specific plan process, because the plan intersects portions of the West Berkeley plan, staff must amend the West Berkeley plan and update sections related to San Pablo.
As part of the planning process, staff conducted an assessment of the West Berkeley plan and found that a large majority of the West Berkeley plan implementation measures have been completed.
Any future updates to the specific plan and West Berkeley plan area would require a general plan amendment, which is a limited process compared to a zoning amendment.
General plan amendments are limited to four amendments a year.
Given that a large majority of the West Berkeley plan implementation measures have been completed, another option would be to retire the West Berkeley plan.
Retirement of the West Berkeley plan could simplify future policy developments in West Berkeley and allow for greater policy flexibility.
However, staff could propose only amendments necessary to enact the policies included in the specific plan.
Questions for council is should the West Berkeley plan be amended specifically to enact the specific plan or should it be retired altogether? Here are our next steps.
The public review draft is available on the city's website for comments until mid-January.
Staff anticipates attending a variety of hearings and will present at the Transportation Infrastructure Commission, as well as multiple future hearings at Planning Commission and Council.
After receiving and compiling feedback, staff will begin preparation of the final draft plan with a goal of plan adoption by the end of spring or beginning of summer in 2026.
And this concludes staff's presentation and I'm available for any questions.
Thank you very much.
Council Member Taplin, do you want to start with some questions? Just a question.
Thanks.
I just have one question.
Can we see the plan study area? Sure.
Okay.
Sorry.
You mentioned that there were no parks in the plan study area.
Does that mean that George Florence is outside of the plan study area? Here's the plan study.
George.
George Florence Pants is within the study area, but I believe it wasn't open when we were conducting the existing additions.
Thank you.
It's Strawberry Creek Park in the plan study area.
Pardon me? It's Strawberry Creek Park in the plan study area.
I don't believe so.
Thank you.
I just wanted to ask, just so people weren't worried that there were no parks anywhere nearby.
Okay.
Thank you.
Council Member Traiga.
Thank you.
I have two questions.
The local density bonus is essentially what is being contemplated.
As described on page 12 of the report, I'm curious what would incentivize an applicant to choose the local density bonus scheme, where they have to give up certain rights over the state density bonus.
So that's one question.
So that's one question.
The second one is around the revolving loan fund.
Would this be a separate fund from the one that currently exists? My understanding is citywide for businesses facing relocation or other hardships.
Thank you.
With regards to the local density bonus our interviews with real estate and different developers found that the ability to pay an in lieu fee instead of providing onsite affordable housing was enough value that would be enough of an incentive to encourage the local density bonus program.
We also found that there was a need to include additional information on the land and some objective design standards.
And then with regard to the revolving loan fund as the language is now it would supplement the ball revolving loan fund and could include additional details that may describe qualifications for for use of the funds.
So, in order to be able to do that, they would be motivated to pay this fee.
Correct.
Okay.
And so we'd rather haven't paid the fee than just encourage them.
I'm just trying to think through how that how that would work unless we think it's a desirable in and of itself to create more ground floor residential.
In which case, we wouldn't want to disincentivize them with a fee, but I was just thinking through that.
Yeah, yeah, what we found looking at the recent development along San Pablo, and the development standards was that because there was a discrepancy between the land and the development standards, they would be motivated to pay this fee.
So, in order to be able to do that, they would be motivated to pay this fee, but I was just thinking through that.
Yeah, yeah, what we found looking at the recent development along San Pablo, and the development standards was that because there was a discrepancy between the height of the single use and mixed use that there was more of an incentive for to gain additional floor with mixed use development.
So, in order to achieve that additional story of residential.
Because of single use were allowed the 40, 40 feet max and mixed use were allowed that 50 feet max.
So developers were providing minimal ground floor commercial and we're improving those spaces and would rather let them sit empty in order to receive the additional residential.
So, I'm not sure I fully understand the local density bonus portion of things.
I'm going to want to talk through it and then and then.
Please correct me.
The goal of the state density bonus is to produce more affordable housing units total.
And in return, they receive a higher.
They receive concessions and waivers.
What would the goal of giving them a waiver? Here be.
So because of the success of the affordable housing trust fund to generate more affordable housing.
The goal here would be to generate even more funds for the affordable housing trust fund in exchange for certain objective design standards that the community has has been incredibly important.
And those funds would be able to pay in lieu fee and have more higher density.
But be required to comply with those objectives and standards.
So, I don't want this to end up with us having less affordable units or the equivalent in funds than we would if they had the state density bonus.
It doesn't bother me if they're on site or not on site.
I just don't want to end up with less total less net affordable housing units.
And I'm not sure that that isn't clear to me here.
I don't know if there's more information on that.
No, I appreciate that.
And I think that's one of the things we should look at as we consider whether to advance this as part of the final plan looking at the total number of unit productions because they're likely would be.
At least some kind of trade off there.
I mean, that's why they're incentivized to fee out rather than provide the units on site.
So we'll, we'll take another look at running those numbers so that that any, any potential trade offs are clear.
Thank you.
And also, because the density bonus has so many pieces to it, where if you provide a little amount of affordable housing versus if you provide 100% affordable housing.
How this could also play into that.
Those many levels of how much money they would see out.
Because if we are giving them this local density bonus program, and they're choosing to fee out that fee should be higher than what we usually.
Well, give them.
Yes, thank you very much.
I just want to express.
Since the councilor Luna brought up brought up the local density bonus option that I'm also interested in just more details around that.
I guess I'm just not sure of the.
How does the fee solve the problem that you were describing of, you know, because I think we've all heard that, that, that developers don't even, you know, they don't even know what they're doing.
So, I guess it's hard for me to imagine like, okay, so, you know, I'm not sure if that's a good idea.
I mean, I'm not sure if that's a good idea.
I mean, I'm not sure if that's a good idea.
I mean, I'm not sure if that's a good idea.
I guess it's hard for me to imagine like, okay, so, so you recharge them a fee.
How does that improve the situation so that they get out of it and they don't have to do commercial? Is that the idea? Correct? Yeah, they would not have to provide the ground floor commercial and then the funds would be used to pay for that.
How does that improve the situation so that they get out of it and they don't have to do commercial? Is that the idea? Correct? Yeah, they would not have to provide the ground floor commercial and then the funds would be used to help support small businesses within the nodes of the specific plan area.
Okay, because our idea is that in the nodes, I mean, that's one of the proposals in the nodes, we do want to have commercial.
Okay, so the idea of the fee is just for the nodes? Just for outside of the nodes.
Oh, outside of the nodes.
Okay.
Okay, so, because we could just do, we could just say outside the nodes, it doesn't matter.
You don't have to do ground floor commercial.
We'll let you do office space or live work or residential and then there's no in lieu fee.
But the trade-off is then there's no funds to support the small businesses in the nodes.
So it's just sort of, okay, I mean, I guess a lot is riding on how high is this fee, which you haven't stated here, correct? No, yeah, we would still have to do additional studies to determine a fee that would be not too high that it deters developers from paying it, but high enough where it can still generate a good number of funds for business support.
So we'd still have to do that analysis.
Okay, thank you.
Yeah, those are great questions.
Thank you all.
I'm also curious what you think led to the drastic decline of vacancies on San Pablo Avenue.
Increase? No, well, decrease.
I think it went down.
It went up and then down.
Yeah, I know why it went up.
I mean, I would be speculative.
I know that San Pablo has been later to react to recovery compared to the other commercial corridors from COVID and that, but I'm not 100% sure what led to the sudden drop in vacancy rates in 2024.
Okay, we also had a lot of vacancies recently, so we don't have the 2025 numbers yet.
So, all right, thank you.
I think those are the only questions.
So let's go to public comment, and then we're going to go after that.
We will go to council comments.
So if you know, so, question? No, I'll move to extend the meeting.
So 1.30.
12.30.
12.30.
Sorry, sorry, sorry, 12.30.
Okay, there's a second.
Is there any, is anyone opposed to extending our meeting until 12.30? Okay, very good.
So if you have public comment, please line up.
I see.
Go ahead, come on up.
Go ahead.
Go ahead.
Yep.
Okay.
Hi.
So different vibes here for San Pablo, which is sort of the point, right? This San Pablo plan is important.
It's a corridor that is really struggling.
I'm there all the time.
I push my kids in a stroller down that street.
My little area north of university, there are probably a couple of dozen shops and restaurants that I treasure just as much as anybody else in any other neighborhood treasures their shops.
Something that happened a few years ago was the 99-Cent Store closed, and if you never shopped there, you wouldn't know that it was actually a low-cost grocery store.
It did not have the same clientele that you get down the street at Whole Foods.
It was the only place in I don't know how far where you could buy affordable fresh groceries, and I don't know what happened to those people.
I don't know, are they driving farther now for their groceries? Are they just not eating fresh food now? This is actually a fragile community, and so we need to be really thoughtful and deliberate and consider the completeness of the community.
Also, privately owned public spaces often suck, so let's like be thoughtful about it.
Thank you.
Okay.
Next, come on up.
Yeah, so I have my minute and Donna Dedamar's minute.
I might have Peggy's, but I might not need three minutes, so I'd like to give, if I don't need the third minute.
Why don't you start and we'll see, but you've got two minutes at least, and then, you know, I know you've got a third in the wings.
Go ahead.
So mainly what I wanted to talk about was what it would look like and how it would be a walkable, a walkable, vibrant place.
And I think at some point it should be broke.
I don't think all of the retail should be in the nodes, because I could imagine like being on Cedar and then having to run because to university, to from node to node, to go shopping.
So I think that should be rethought.
I know there's been a problem with ground floor residential, and I just think the planners need to demand, they need to get something from the developers and say, make sure you build adequate, appropriate first floor residential.
And, you know, this is a commercial corridor.
People want to have their amenities.
The other night at the planning department meeting, someone mentioned that there should be something really grand on San Pablo Avenue because it's a grand place.
And certainly the Rivoli Theater is a grand place, but I don't think that will be kept in such a state.
I also hope that we can maintain the cultural, diverse ambience of the businesses and the historical buildings.
It's not going to be everyone, but there really needs to be a focus on maintaining that as well.
And I think that is about all.
The businesses do need their parking, and we know that the new buildings won't have much parking in them.
So that really needs to be considered.
Every business that I've spoken to, and I've spoken to businesses up and down San Pablo Avenue, talked about how their businesses would really close up if there wasn't the parking.
Thanks, Meryl.
Come on up, Kelly.
It's late.
I'll try to be coherent.
Just a couple of things.
The design review committee is really important in terms of the design of the building and making it better buildings.
And it's not something that really slows down the process.
So it would be really disappointing to have that excluded from this process.
I don't have enough time to go into a lot more.
I think a local density bonus is really kind of a poor idea, and I hope that that's not pursued.
I just have a lot of concerns because we really need more inclusionary housing, and I'm afraid that with the local density bonus, we'll lose inclusionary housing and we'll really have less affordable housing.
I think, you know, businesses do better when we have clusters of businesses.
And I guess I'm out of time.
Carol will give you her minute.
Okay, go ahead.
We really do need a lot more study on this, and I would like to say that I've been looking a lot at San Pablo lately just in terms of getting out and walking, especially looking at the newer buildings that have gone up on San Pablo.
And the frontage is really uninviting, and the businesses that are going in.
And we really need to do something about, we need to have objective standards that make those buildings inviting, because it's not inviting to walk by reflective glass or a plain wall and if you just get out and walk that street and look at the newer projects and the frontage on those buildings or the lack of frontage, it's really, it's nothing that you really want to be around, and we have to do much better.
I have a lot of ideas I can share later.
Thanks, Kelly.
Did you have a comment? No? Okay.
Anyone online? Currently I have three, four hands raised for comments on San Pablo area-specific plan.
Now is the time to raise your hand if you're on Zoom.
And if Deidmar is on, I think they have two extra minutes from before.
They had three, they used one of them, so now there's two.
So just, I was keeping track of that in case someone came on just to give him back his minutes.
Yes, first is Amy Baldwin.
Amy, are you withdrawing your minute from Deidmar, or did you want to keep it? I think I'm going to say my own statement.
I don't know whose minute got used during the last comment.
I don't know.
One thing I wanted to say was that the Office of Economic Development spoke with the planners about the San Pablo plan, but the Office of Economic Development told me that only business improvement districts have regular meetings with the Office of Economic Development, and San Pablo does not currently have any business improvement districts.
Therefore, the small businesses on San Pablo Avenue have not been represented by the OED.
And I really hope that even though it is scheduled to close comments gatherings in mid-January, that I hope the plan will have an opportunity to create a venue for businesses to come and voice their concerns.
Another problem is that our city does not have something set up like a commission-style setting where these conversations could have been going on for years, and everyone would have much more knowledge about the needs of small businesses and business districts and how to make them work.
And we seem to be reshuffling everything without knowing how it's going to be.
Thank you, Amy.
Your time is up.
Thank you.
Okay, next is Deidmar Lorenz.
We've got two minutes.
Hi.
Yeah.
Again, I want to express my frustration to see the West Berkeley portion hearings so rushed literally at the 11th hour.
And as several council members have noted, the room has emptied.
This is not fair.
So let me make good use of my time here.
I appreciate that many concerns expressed in the sessions that were held are, in fact, reflected in this draft plan, such as the differentiating of Tier 1 and Tier 2 notes and the importance of the public realm.
However, overall, the ODS measures seem a little like a grab bag of smaller scale mitigations.
It's hard to see a broader vision on an urban planning scale, form-based and more muscular, for the lack of a better term.
I attended the planning commission yesterday, and there were several members who echoed that concern.
Talk to them.
Robert noted that the sidewalks are the only public space along the corridor, and I think that needs more than parklets and other incremental tweaks.
San Pablo stretches almost three miles from one end of Berkeley to the other, once built up to six to eight stories.
These tall walls would truly form a corridor that would need periodic relief valves in the form of.

Segment 12

Open Plazas.
Such truly public plazas would make sense at the Tier 2 nodes, I think.
I would call them the community nodes because they don't have the cross traffic from the freeway entrances, so they are neighborhood nodes.
And those have to act as community hubs for the increasing West Berkeley population.
Let's keep in mind 6,700 new units as proposed here at an average Berkeley household size means 18,000 new residents, which is roughly the population of Albany.
Therefore, we can't approach this solely through the lens of stacking apartments.
This is about building a city, not a bedroom community for Silicon Valley.
And that leads to the goal of the 15-minute city.
It doesn't make sense to propose half a million square feet of residential area without commensurate commercial and community amenities.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Okay, thank you.
Next is Theo Gordon.
Theo Gordon.
Wait, not, okay, not yet.
Okay, I will unmute myself.
Sorry, Theo.
Theo Gordon.
Hi, council members.
Thank you for getting to work on this.
As you know, homeowner and dad, et cetera, et cetera, I support this plan.
Just a few specific points.
Don't make this overall too complicated.
Let's not overdo it with popos and nodes and all that.
Just allow eight stories everywhere.
Let's improve the sidewalks and streetscape.
It's a wonderful neighborhood, just like the one we heard about earlier tonight, but it's got a highway going down the center.
We can get so much more out of that width than just keeping it a car sewer.
Lastly, but most importantly, I want to talk about equity.
Every neighborhood is special.
Every neighborhood is someone's backyard.
So you have three choices.
You don't build in anyone's backyard.
You banish people to the exurbs.
You perpetuate or you perpetuate segregation and only build in the backyards of those who have never had a voice, or you treat the city equitably and allow eight stories of buildings across all commercial corridors.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Okay.
Now, Sarah Bell.
Thank you so much.
So thank you for everybody who put work into this plan.
As mentioned before, I live on San Pablo.
I love West Berkeley, and I like so much about this plan.
I like the idea of incentivizing plazas, widening sidewalks, public open space.
Well, I think I like the idea of higher intensity commercial nodes.
I agree with the previous commenter that we could run the risk of being overly prescriptive.
I think we should allow intense housing everywhere along the corridor.
I think a custom density bonus for ground floor commercial or perhaps from an in-lieu fee could be good, but let's not make the developers who are already providing a good, that is housing, on tight margins to pay for our commercial.
Let's use carrots, not sticks, to get what we want.
I also want to clarify earlier, I asked for six stories, but more is better.
We should make sure we get to at least eight stories, and I want to thank every council member who spoke up for treating San Pablo and the other commercial corridors equally.
Thank you.
Thanks, Sarah.
All right.
Oh, okay.
You can do it.
Come on.
Thank you.
I appreciate it.
I just wanted to speak to this and voice support as a son of someone who lives a block from the corner of San Pablo and Delaware.
As you know, my name is Taj.
I'm a resident who strongly supports the San Pablo Avenue specific plan, and in particular, the proposed upzoning along the corridor.
San Pablo is one of our region's most transit-rich walkable arterials.
It is exactly where Berkeley should be placing more homes, including mixed income and affordable units, close to AC transit lines, bike networks, and daily services.
We cannot meaningfully respond to our housing shortage, reduce displacement pressure, or achieve our climate goals without increasing the legal capacity to build more homes where people can actually live car-light.
And also on this point, I want to second what Theo Gordon said before me about the equity piece of all this.
I think that's very important that we keep in mind.
The corridor already functions as a major urban spine.
The zoning in this plan finally recognizes that reality and aligns the land use with the transportation and climate frameworks we have already adopted.
Thank you.
Thanks so much.
Okay, going on to Council Member Comments.
We're starting with Council Member Kaplan.
Thank you very much, and thanks, everyone.
I may need your help going through the discussion questions.
I do have notes here, but I want to make sure I'm not missing anything.
Just to quickly share my origin story, as you all know, I grew up down along San Pablo Avenue.
My entire world for 37 years of my life has been bounded by San Pablo University and essentially these greeners.
I've lived in that little square for all these years, including now, so this is very close to home.
I do like the tiered dome structure.
I do think the height should be uniform across.
I would support seven.
And on the Muley overlay, I would support allowing conversion of what are currently parking lots into multi-family residential, where this overlay to allow and enable housing technologies that could accommodate family growth and which would be income integrated.
Thank you.
I'm no on the popos.
I think, you know, ODS should be focused primarily on the ground floor to create a pleasant and continuous professional experience.
That being said, I think it's important that whatever ODS we consider be cost-effective and actually result in the kinds of things you want to see.
I'm a no on the local density bonus.
I'm very pleased to see the recommendation to do a bid study.
My office has been engaging with several of the merchant clusters in this area over the years.
We've identified that there is a concentration of organized activity along University and San Pablo, and there are two groups I think would be ideal partners, one being the University Avenue Merchants Association, the other being the International Marketplace.
And, you know, were a bid to ever extend beyond that, I think that the sort of innovation hub around Aquatic Park could be a potential area.
And I think, you know, we would then see two different populations.
We would have merchants versus, not versus, but merchants in addition to those who would have sort of large property owners.
And I think, you know, we would then see would have sort of large property owners.
So we want to think about how we can sort of wed the two areas of need.
I hate that one.
Very supportive of the idea of having side street plazas, and I want to join my remarks to Dean Morris regarding that.
And on the West Berkeley plan, so this is something that I've actually spent my entire time in office thinking about, and I've been like tinkering with potential referrals to do a new West Berkeley plan, which I do plan to bring forward next year.
So fair warning, Paul.
But for tonight, I think it would make sense to amend the parts of the plan that would be specifically required by the adoption of this plan.
And yeah, because I wouldn't want to sunset it without having something to replace it with.
I do recognize that the current plan has run its course.
I do see immense value in having a long-term plan for advanced manufacturing and for the creation of jobs and for growing a resilient local economy that could leverage both the history of West Berkeley and Oceanview and how we got here today, and balancing that with the kinds of amazing things we could do when we wed innovation to creative land use.
Then have I missed anything? I've got 30 seconds left.
Streets, yes.
Yes, I do acknowledge that ACTC is doing a lot of work here, but I support all safety measures that will improve the safety of all road users, pedestrians, cyclists, transit riders, especially, we do have a number of senior homes along the avenue, so having safe crossings are of great concern to me and many of my neighbors.
Thank you.
Thank you, and thank you for being so respectful of the five minutes.
Councilmember Cassarwani.
Thank you very much, Madam Mayor.
I'll try to be as efficient as possible given the hour.
Thank you again, staff, for the presentation, and can you bring back, okay, are these the prompts that you have for us? Is it all on this slide? Oh, okay, so, all right, that's fine.
I think I've covered all of those in my comments, so I already talked about height, but just to reiterate, I think that, I think there's no need to differentiate height by nodes, and I'm comfortable with seven stories here, and I think where the nodes could be useful is differentiating ground floor uses, so having commercial at the, I guess they're called the retail nodes, and then being more flexible elsewhere along the corridor, and I've already explained my reasoning for why I think we can go higher to just align with what we're doing at other transit stations and transit corridors, and then I am also interested in exploring a higher floor area ratio so that we can ensure that projects are feasible and have the square footage that they need.
On the objective design standards, I thought that these standards were too complex, and, you know, I was thinking philosophically, do I think that the new buildings that have gone up in our city in the last 10 years are designed badly? I don't think so.
Maybe some people in the audience think that, but it's typically that the people who have a problem with the design of new buildings, honestly, are against all development in my experience, so I haven't met people who have said I support housing who, you know, just have a problem with the design, so I just, and I'm sorry if that has offended people, but that's the reality.
I don't think we're winning anybody by having these numerous, complex, and costly objective design standards.
We have to recognize that it is already very expensive to create these buildings because the building code already has such extensive requirements, so I just don't think there's a lot of added value with it.
Having massing breaks eliminates residential square footage that I think we want.
I think we want those homes, and so I also thought it was really, I just have to say this, I thought it was really odd to have objective design standards for middle housing here when that's a citywide program and we're not having objective design standards for middle housing anywhere else in the city.
I think that creates a very weird precedent, so in general, I just didn't support these objective design standards.
I do want to say that, you know, I could see some utility and some limited standards for the ground floor that I think should apply to the other three corridors as well, you know, things like having the windows and things like that.
I think that could be useful, and then finally, in terms of public realm, I'm not for the privately owned public open spaces.
I don't think that that creates a lot of value.
I'm also concerned about the 40 square feet per unit of open space.
I think that's too high and could have the effect of severely reducing the unit count that's feasible in buildings, and I think it could be very harmful for affordable housing, so I think we should, instead of looking at those two strategies, I mean, I think we can have some open space per unit, but I'm worried that 40 square feet is too much, so instead, I think we should look at having wider sidewalks, and then, you know, my thought was, well, if we increase the floor area ratio, maybe we can make space for a wider sidewalk because I think in places on San Pablo and University and elsewhere in our city where there's space to put tables and chairs out in front of a restaurant or other type of business, it's a very nice amenity, and I think people enjoy that, and so if we have the wider sidewalk, that's what would make that possible, and there's just going to be more people on this corridor, hopefully, so they're going to need more space.
I do just want to really applaud the inclusion of the parklets and closing off streets to create plazas.
I think having those sorts of spaces in the public realm is beneficial.
I'm just going to quickly wrap up and say that I do support the concept of a local density bonus because I think where I think it could be particularly useful is for condo development because the state density bonus requires you to have affordable condos on site, and I think that just renders a condo project infeasible, so I think we maybe, and I don't know if we can, because I think some people are against it, so if there's a way to just do local density bonus for condos, maybe that's what we could try, but I don't think it's worth, I don't want to say let's just drop that idea completely because I think, you know, Council Member Lunapata had said like, you know, maybe if the fee is increased, it might be workable, and then I just want to say, after I asked you the question about the commercial in lieu fee, I just want to express a deep skepticism about it because there are already so many fees and exactions.
I was told today, and I haven't verified it independently, so take it for what it's worth, that the cost of a project in Berkeley, 27 percent of it is related to our local fees and permit check costs.
I haven't double checked that, but we need to be very cognizant of what we're adding to this because it's just, it's not, there isn't just an unlimited well of resources, you know, to do this.
We have 17 projects in our downtown that are stalled right now because of the economic conditions, so I don't think it's reasonable to just keep adding more fees.
I do think we should retire the West Berkeley plan, and I do support the housing overlay for the sites.
Thank you.
Thank you, Council Member O'Keefe, and also, we might need to extend, depending on how long everyone's comments are, so just keep that in mind.
I'm going to be short.
That helps, mostly because I'm just really tired, and I'm sorry I can't be more helpful, but I'm not going to talk just for the sake of talking.
I'm just going to say what might be useful, which is the part of this that I really just want to speak up for is the attention to the open public space, and I think, actually, Council Member Casarwani just said it much better than I was going to, but just emphasizing the plazas and wider sidewalks more than the privately owned stuff.
I think that's really where we can move this from being like a good, solid plan that will make a nice area to like a beautiful, livable, community-feeling, vibrant area.
Those things make a huge difference, so I really wanted to make a plug for that, and no design standards.
That's all.
Thank you.
Council Member Trageb? Thank you.
I largely associate myself with Council Member Taplin's remarks.
Maybe after we're done with the Downtown Berkeley isn't dead tour, we can go to a San Pablo is alive tour.
I wanted to just quickly highlight, I do support seven stories along this corridor.
It is wide enough to I think accommodate that and certainly has a lot of carrying capacity.
I recognize that there are some legal questions that need to be answered around different elements of this proposal.
In Luffy's local density bonus, certain elements will likely require a nexus study to be done.
With that said, I'm excited about this plan overall for its creativity.
I do want to, and this is not a caution, I just want to flag.
To the extent that certain elements of it carry the day and are implemented, I would like to see that in the rest of Berkeley, particularly the other commercial corridors.
I think we've talked about this on the dice extensively around equity along all commercial corridors.
I will say I generally support objective design standards.
I agree that in order for them to succeed, they cannot be overly onerous.
I look forward to hearing more about that.
I concur with the concept of concentrating where we put ground floor retail along commercial nodes.
I appreciated the comment someone made about the loss of the $0.99 store.
I remember going to the grocery outlet as well that used to be there and then sadly had to close.
I don't know where those customers now go as well, the ones that can't afford whole foods.
That was unfortunate.
I was on the Zab that voted to replace that with housing.
There was, at the time, the promise of a community serving grocery use, but we could not as a city regulate that.
It just didn't pencil.
That led to my, over time, recognition, evolution of thought.
We can't, even if we want to, and I think all of us would like to, demand certain uses and we just can't.
It's what the market will bear.
I don't think the market will bear having the entire length of San Pablo be storefront commercial uses that are occupied.
The ones that sat empty for years have been replaced with live work in some cases, and that seems to actually be working well, and occupancy levels are up.
That is how I support doing what we can and understanding the macroeconomics and how the interplay of them and understanding the forces that we can't control and doing what we can around the carrots approach and incentives.
Last comment on mobility.
I support any effort to move San Pablo from a historic highway use to something where, as a bike rider, I would not be scared to grow down the length of San Pablo or something that can prioritize bus traffic.
I'm curious how that could be done, and there may be some conflicts with some car serving uses, but I definitely support that vision.
Thank you so much for all your work on this plan.
I'm going to make a motion to extend the meeting to 12.45 just so we don't hit it.
Second.
Okay, is there anyone in opposition? Opposed? No? Okay, great.
We will extend it to 12.45.
Thank you.
Okay, Council Member Humber, we'll come back to you, Council Member Taplin, after everyone's gone.
Yeah, thank you, Madam Mayor.
My comments are going to be really brief.
San Pablo Avenue is one of my favorite parts of town, and I'm really looking forward, and I really sort of appreciate the history of it as being the western end of a highway that ran across the whole country.
I mean, it's just there's something about that that I find really neat.
I like to spend time there.
My favorite grocery store, Mi Tierra, is there, and I just really look forward to it having wider sidewalks and a lot more and more vibrant street life than it even has now.
So those are my comments, and thank you for everybody who's worked on this.
Thank you, Council Member.
Okay, Council Member Blackaby, and then Lunapara, and then Taplin, and then..
Yeah, I'll also be extremely brief, just mostly to thank staff for their great work and creativity.
I know a lot of time and effort and outreach has gone into this, so thank you.
The creativity, I'm especially drawn to the public realm policies, and just the thought and how exciting that would be to activate the space in that way, and I hope that as we move the corridors piece ahead, we can also push our thinking in the same direction there, because I just think it makes the whole plan work, and I think it will also build more support for what we're trying to do in all these places.
So thank you for that, and I'm not thoroughly coherent, so other comments I'll make in writing and email other feedback, but thank you.
Thank you, Council Member Lunapara.
Thank you.
I also really want to thank staff for many reasons.
This plan doesn't get as much attention as some of the corridors that we saw earlier, but it is just as important, so thank you so much.
I agree with my colleagues about the stories uniformly and generally against the private open space idea.
Those don't work.
I think broadly the state density bonus is a really incredible, well-crafted policy, and I'm very cautious to try to work around it unless there's something that we really value more than affordable housing units, and there's very little that I would value more than affordable housing units.
So I'm not necessarily entirely opposed to it, but I think that we should be really careful about the things that we're weighing and that we would be trading by making an alternative.
I really love the idea of bull bouts throughout the corridor.
I think that that's really exciting and can really encourage a lot more pedestrian vitality in this area, just in a positive urban realm.
That's really cool.
I'm excited.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Council Member Taplin, did you want to add something? Yes, thank you very much, and I appreciate your patience.
I suddenly recovered everything I forgot.
I want to express support for mobility hubs.
I want to move my horse over to the camp that supports a local density bonus if that could enable BMR ownership units.
I wanted to voice support for ground floor live work outside the nodes, but express skepticism about the utility of a commercial utility.
I want to give a shout out to the local community organizations that have been really supportive of the work that's happening in Luffy.
Thank you very much.
Okay, thank you.
Big thank you to staff, everyone for staying so late.
Thank you all so much.
I do want to just like give a shout out to the little dots because I know we talk, I remember going to the presentation, one of the presentations where you put little dots against the things that you care about, and put it into this.
So big thank you.
And you know, at the same time, I know that sometimes when we do something by committee, that it means that there's a lot of feedback.
And sometimes it feels like it's, it's not always a streamlined.
And so I am a little bit concerned that this might be, you know, overly complicated.
So I am concerned about that piece of it.
When it comes to heights, I'm with my colleagues on this, I think consistency is really important.
I also want to explore the trade-offs that Councilmember Leno power brought up.
So we can really understand the impact on affordable housing.
Thank you for bringing that to the forefront.
I do like the ideas of the idea of plazas and closed streets, as opposed to private spaces that are open to the public.
I also see them closed off and you know, not really that accessible to the public, unfortunately.
And I really want to voice my support again for the businesses that are down here.
I'm really excited that we had a reduction in our vacancies.
That's pretty cool.
And even though we don't know why, and then just, I think that it was made a comment was made earlier about OED doesn't meet regularly or only meets regularly with business districts.
And there are San Pablo businesses that aren't represented.
But I just want folks to know it doesn't mean that OED doesn't meet or represent those businesses.
They still represent them.
They'll still work with them.
So certainly for any business owners out there, if you're feeling like your voice wasn't heard in this, or you want to be more involved in the process, please definitely reach out, you know, Planning Department, but also OED.
Our Office of Economic Development is a really incredible resource.
And you can always start your own district.
So definitely want to encourage folks to look into that as well.
And those are my comments.
And this is a workshop, so we're not voting on anything.
So thank you so much to staff.
Thank you to council.
Thank you everyone for comments and staying late.
It is 12 27, so I'm gonna make a motion to adjourn.
Okay, is there any opposition? And nobody's online, so we are adjourned.
Very good.
Thank you all so much.
Have a good evening, or morning.
Recording stopped.