A Whole Lot of Moving Going On
Students are moving…
The weekend of August 23 and 24 was Move-In for Cal students. The Berkeley Property Owners Association informs us that “the City of Berkeley will have a devoted, full time waste compliance officer driving the neighborhoods that mostly serve campus students” looking for trash blocking the public right of way. Students buy a lot of stuff, including new furniture when they move in and that means they get rid of lots of wrappings — boxes, cardboard, etc — plus they sometimes find stuff left in their new apartment that they want to move out. If these materials block the sidewalk, the owner of the property on which it is located may be fined $500.
This is all part of the “Cal Move-In Program.” Cal gives the City a set amount of money to deal with the impact that students have on the neighborhoods during certain parts of the year — something we’ve certainly noticed at the end of the semester when the students Move-Out, but haven’t much noticed during Move-In. During Move-Out so much stuff is discarded that an underground activity of individuals who pick up the discards and re-sell them on eBAY has emerged. Move-Out seems to have a lot more furniture than Move-In. During this time, Cal also makes an effort to recycle much of the trash. However, both at the beginning and end of school there seems to be an abundance of mattresses!
We appreciate the effort made to clean up the streets and the effort to recycle, but we wonder whether the amount of money paid by Cal to the City increases as the number of students increase and whether the pick-up extends to other areas of the City. We are still seeing mattresses on the sidewalk of properties outside the areas designated as those that “mostly serve campus students.” Besides knowing how much money the City receives from Cal, being terminally inquisitive, we’d also like to also know just how much stuff is picked up and whether there has been any enforcement. We’ll ask questions and let you know.
Structures are moving…
The Blood House, 2526 Durant Avenue, moved in mid-August east on Durant to College, south on College to Dwight Way, and east on Dwight Way to Regent, and found a new home snuggled into a cluster of historic homes being formed on Regent Street. It took about 15 years to get to that move but at last, the deed is done and it’s a very welcome one. Built in 1891, and once the home of Ms. Ellen Blood, it was owned by the well-known Berkeley firm, Ruegg and Ellsworth — the folks who among other real estate deals have been excavating part of the Spenger’s Parking lot to determine whether that site is a shell mound. Ruegg wants to build a 44 unit apartment house at 2526 Durant, so they sold the Blood House to John Gordon — also well-known to Berkeleyans. As one Council Member stated “more people in Berkeley know Gordon’s name from his signs on vacant commercial properties than they know the Mayor’s name.” Gordon paid the princely sum of $1 and plans to restore the house on its new site. Ruegg paid the moving charges which weren’t insignificant. All in all, everyone should be grateful to all involved for saving the Blood House, declared to be a “Structure of Merit” back in September 1999. Thank you all.
The Woolley House, 2509 Haste Street, was supposed to be moved at about the same time, but it wasn’t. The Woolley House was moved to its current location on Haste Street around 1910. It was designated a Berkeley Landmark in October, 1989. It’s the structure just east of the vacant lot on the northeast corner of Telegraph and Haste, and the place where the Telegraph Avenue Association used to meet. After they left, people might not have paid much attention to the house because of the high visibility of the vacant lot on Telegraph Avenue, once the site of the Berkeley Inn, demolished back in the 90s as a result of a fire. (It has been the focus of activity and attention as the City had repeatedly tried to get it cleaned up and redeveloped.) That lot and the Woolley House are currently owned by Ken Sarachan, well-known as the owner of Rasputin Records and other businesses on Telegraph. Mr. Sarachan had the same deal that was offered to Ruegg/John Gordon — sell the house for $1 and move it to Regent Street into the same cluster where The Blood House is now located and Gordon would restore the house. Something went wrong for unknown reasons and the house wasn’t moved, but supposedly the move is still on. Mr. Sarachan wants the house moved so he can proceed with a project that will include both the vacant Telegraph lot and the Woolley House site. There have been many delays connected with redeveloping the Berkeley Inn site, but as we have said before that’s another whole other story. The vacant lot and the Woolley House site are to be developed by Mr. Sarachan into what he calls a “Moorish palace,” a 6-story mixed use building titled as “LaFortaleza” which means “fortress or stronghold.”
The developing cluster of historic buildings in this area is good news for the Telegraph area north of Dwight Way and its neighborhoods, particularly Regent Street. The cluster includes:
- The King Building, 2502 Dwight Way (southeast corner of Telegraph and Dwight Way), constructed in 1901.*
- The Soda Works Building, 2509 Telegraph, constructed 1888, enlarged in 1904-05.*
- The Needham-Obata Building, 2525 Telegraph and 2512-16 Regent, constructed in 1907.*
- Colonial Revival houses at 2503, 2509, 2511 and 2517 Regent, all built between 1901-03. 2517 is designated a City Structure of Merit.
- The Stuart House, 2524 Dwight Way, built in 1891.*
- The Edwards House, 2530 Dwight Way, built in 1886.*
* Designated a City Landmark
And Then There is 2539 Telegraph Avenue
eNEWS readers will find the back story on this 6-story Kennedy project proposed for the former Center for Independent Living (CIL) site on Telegraph Avenue in previous issues. Following the Environmental Impact Report (EIR) scoping session held in July at the Zoning Adjustments Board (ZAB), it is expected that the Draft EIR will be released in late September and the Final EIR Certification will be done in December 2014. The historic consultant, PlaceWorks, will be required to consider the impact of Kennedy’s proposal on nearby burgeoning historic district on Telegraph Avenue and Regent Street. Also the impact on the CIL building itself will have to be considered since it is a site that is historically significant to the disabled community nationwide. There is also a mural inside the CIL building that will need to be considered. This does not mean that the building and the mural cannot be demolished.
In the meantime, it is rumored that Mr. Kennedy has decided to use off-site pre-built, manufactured units, stacked one on each other for the dwelling units at this location. The reason for this decision being the large savings this type of construction offers over traditional methods of employing local contractors and workers.
And Last, But by No Means Least, Parker Place, 2598-2600 Shattuck Avenue — While these Building Aren’t Moving Around, the Permits for Them Certainly Are…
This is a project consisting of three buildings to be constructed at Shattuck and Parker in South Berkeley. Two of the buildings are 5-story (2598 Shattuck — currently used as a Honda used car sales lot — and 2600 Shattuck — currently the Honda dealership) and one building that will be 3-stories at 2037 Parker (currently the western part of the Honda sales lot). The three buildings will have a total of 155 dwelling units (2-bedroom, 1-bedroom and studio/jr bedrooms), 22,905 square feet of commercial on the ground floor, and 170-188 parking spaces. Thirty-one of the dwelling units are to be set aside for low income households under one of two options. The applicant was Mark Rhoades (formerly City Planning Manager) for CityCentric Investments, and the owner at that time was Parker Place Group, LLC, J. Anthony Kershaw of Albany as Agent.
The project dates back to April 2010 when it was first approved by the ZAB, and appealed to the City Council who dismissed the appeal. That approval was challenged in court by nearby residents, Gale Garcia and Planning Commissioner Patti Dacey (deceased), and on behalf of a number of Parker-Shattuck residents, on such issues that an EIR was necessary because of the size of the project and that the soil on which the project was to be constructed was contaminated and not adequately addressed. The court ruled that the City handled the process incorrectly and rescinded the approval. It dismissed the lack of a full Environmental Impact Report in spite of the fact that a portion of the project is built on land that is zoned R-2A, low-density multi-family density and that the project with its 155 residential units and almost 23,000 square feet of commercial space is larger than the Berkeley Central project recently built in the core of the Downtown. Parker Place is in the South Shattuck Commercial District, abutting lower-density residential and well outside the Downtown area.
The project was resubmitted and again approved by ZAB on December 8, 2011 with a Mitigated Negative Declaration, i.e. a statement saying that impacts were to be mitigated to an acceptable level, and a denial for the serving of alcohol and live entertainment in the food service uses allowed in the ground floor commercial space. On January 17, 2012 it was again appealed to the City Council, who held a public hearing and on a motion by Council Member Anderson, seconded by Council Member Moore, the project was approved again.
Voting Yes: Council Members Anderson, Capitelli, Maio, Moore, Wengraf, Worthington, Wozniak, and Mayor Bates Voting No: None Abstaining: Council Member Arreguin
In June of this year, Parker Place LLC sold the site with all its permits to Lennar Corporation which the Council of Neighborhood Associations advised is “ranked No. 1 by the SF Business Times’ recent list of largest developers in the Bay Area.” Lennar decided it needed to modify the already approved permits and ZAB held a public hearing regarding those modifications on July 24, 2014. Therein began a very confused discussion by Board members and neighbors that was further confused by the fact that the staff report which showed a table regarding the affordable units and modifications was incorrect.
Readers need to keep in mind that this is not like starting from scratch. The project already has its permits. It is seeking to modify those permits by
- Increasing the amount of commercial space by about 8,000 sq ft, for a total of around 30,000 sq ft. — said to be twice the size of the Trader Joe’s grocery store at University and Martin Luther King Jr. Way, or about the size of ground floor commercial approved for the Acheson Building, Downtown at University and Shattuck.
- Increasing the amount of parking by 116 spaces — going from 170 spaces to 286 spaces.
- Allowing the project’s commercial use to include offices, gyms/health clubs and dance/martial arts studios. This action would grant Use Permits to such uses so they could be located at the site without further City review. Already allowed are a sidewalk café and a full service restaurant food service uses without alcohol permits.
- Increase the height of the 2600 Shattuck building by a small amount. Note, the original permits allowed the buildings at 2598 and 2600 Shattuck Avenue to exceed the allowable height limit to accommodate “architectural elements, and mechanical and stairwell uses.” The requested additional height is regarded by staff as minimal — a few inches to a couple of feet.
- Replacement of aluminum windows called for in the original plan with lower cost vinyl windows.
Everything else was to remain the same, 155 dwelling units with 31 set aside for low income households.
A few neighbors came to the public hearing concerned in particular about the commercial spaces. The original permits had specified they would all be “neighborhood serving uses.” No one knew what the future of these spaces would be. Lennar representatives (Mark Rhodes again) denied having anything particular in mind, that all they wanted was “flexibility.” Board Members expressed concern that office space at the street level would not bring vitality to the street.
One speaker raised the issue that an appeal would be filed regarding the Design Review Committee’s (DRC) recommendation to hold over the matter of the vinyl windows and an architectural feature that involved whether a concrete strip would run across the entire front of the building for final determination after action by the ZAB. It seems there is a 14-day appeal period after the DRC’s decision and the speaker raised the issue of whether the ZAB should act while the appeal period was still open. No appeal had actually been filed but the 14-day period had not yet ended. When the ZAB determined that no appeal had been filed, no further discussion was held regarding this point.
The ZAB discussion then settled into three areas:
- Affordable housing: The end result was that the applicant agreed to providing 31 below market rate units, but would have three options to choose from:
- 28 rental units would be in 2598 Shattuck and 3 condo units in another building. All would be accessible for the disabled. This was in the original permit, but the agency that was pushing for them seems to no longer be interested. It will remain an option for the developer, but probably will not happen.
- 31 condo units would be available with the option of including 7 and paying an in lieu fee that would go into the City’s Housing Trust Fund.
- 31 rental units would be evenly dispersed throughout all the buildings. This seems to be the one the developer is most interested in doing.
- The amount of parking: All ZAB members expressed concerned about the project being “over parked.” They wanted more bike parking and added to the permit 1 bike space per unit plus 30 more. Car share and electric charging spaces are already required in the permit. Then a rather unusual approval was given to leave it up to the developer to develop the extra floor of parking if they needed to do that in relation to the development of the extra commercial space.
- Retail spaces: No one wanted the “dead space” of offices along the sidewalk, so ZAB added the requirement that offices on the ground floor would have to come back for a permit from ZAB and this issue could be addressed on a case by case basis.
In the end, the modifications were approved on a motion by Allen, seconded by Pinkston with all ZAB members voting yes.
The Council of Neighborhoods September issue reports the following:
Wall Street Journal Market Watch reported on July 31 that Deutsche Asset & Wealth Management (DeAWM) has acquired Parker Place, ‘155 luxury multifamily units,’ on behalf of one of its clients. Todd Henderson of DeAWM is quoted, ‘Parker Place is a high-quality property in a very desirable location that boasts one of the tightest vacancy rates in the nation …We were fortunate to be able to form a joint venture partnership with Lennar…’
On August 14, neighbors filed an appeal to the City Council of the July 24th ZAB decision so we haven’t heard the last of this project by a long shot.