Berkeley’s city planning ‘cancel culture’

Note: This is the first in a series about Berkeley’s plan to upzone the city’s transit corridors.

Under the mystifying label “Corridors Zoning Update,” the City of Berkeley is proposing to upzone three low-rise, low-density neighborhood shopping streets—College (the Elmwood), North Shattuck, and Solano Avenues—for mostly market-rate housing. Paired with California’s State Density Bonus law, the CZU would allow up to eight stories on College, 11 stories on Solano, and 12 stories on North Shattuck.

The plan has four announced goals:

• Expand housing capacity
• Support local businesses
• Foster equity and inclusion
• Promote sustainability

To assist staff in developing and administering the CZU, the city is paying a consultant team headed by Raimi + Associates $600,000.

The proposed upzoning has alarmed neighborhood residents and merchants, as evidenced by the public comments at the Planning Commission’s September 17 “study session” on the CZU, where city staff and the consultants invited commissioners to comment on two alternative upzoning scenarios for each of the three neighborhoods. For a video and time-stamped transcript see here. (The city of Berkeley does not film its planning commission’s meetings and has refused to fund the work of Berkeley Public Eye, which videos and posts the meetings. For info on how to donate, see below.)

The top concern is the viability of the shops. Redevelopment would require the demolition of existing buildings. Retail businesses would either relocate or simply shut down. Upzoning would increase the assessed value of the real estate, boosting property taxes. To cover the higher taxes, landlords would raise rents in the new buildings beyond what their old tenants could afford.

Due to lapses in the planning process and associated problems with the materials that the planning staff and the consultants presented on September 17, the Planning Commission was not in a position to make informed recommendations to the council. The council is scheduled to have its own CZU study session on November 6. That event should be delayed until staff and consultants have revised the alternatives report to include, among other things, protections for the shops.

No questions allowed in full meetings

The lead-up to the September 17 meeting included three “community workshops” about the CZU, one for each of the three neighborhoods. At the August 27 workshop about upzoning Solano Avenue, members of the public were forbidden to ask questions, much less to engage staff and the consultants in give-and-take, about the proposed changes during the full meeting.

This was the fourth meeting in a row at which staff imposed such a ban. The first was the raucous “Middle Housing Community Meeting” convened by Councilmembers Rashi Kesarwani and Terry Taplin last October. Many attendees, chanting “we want to talk,” protested Kesarwani’s refusal to answer their questions and her insistence that they break up into small groups.

The next three meetings were the “community workshops” about the CZU, all held in August. Each time, members of the public were shunted off to “Open House Stations” where they were allowed to converse with consultants or staffers and invited to express their views by filling out an online survey and pasting Post-its on story boards.

I’ve lived two blocks from Solano Avenue since 1990. Just before the start of the August 27 meeting, I rose and said that, as a former president of the Thousand Oaks Neighborhood Association, I thought the proper format was one that permitted conversation among members of the public and the staff and consultants in the full meeting. I expected to be silenced, and I was: Using his mic, Planning Director Jordan Klein drowned out my appeal.

After the meeting, I emailed a consultant who’d attended the Solano and north Shattuck workshops, Plan to Place’s Dave Javid. I asked why Q&A was not allowed in the full meeting and only at the storyboards.

Javid emailed back that the planning team had decided to “keep the same format we had at the N. Shattuck and College Avenue Workshops to give everyone an equal opportunity to contribute, recognizing that there would be other opportunities to engage in different formats, including the Planning Commission Study Session coming up on September 17.”

Javid had cc’d Klein, whom I emailed next. The reference to “other opportunities to engage in different formats” is, I wrote, “a dodge.” I noted that staff had refused to allow questions in the full meeting, and not only at the three CZU workshops but also at Kesarwani’s members of the public had been refused. “The question is, again, what is the motive for this repressive policy?”

Klein emailed back:

There is no specific policy regarding our meeting formats. The format of our recent workshops was chosen to maximize opportunities for community participation and dialogue That is anything but “repressive.”

He said that “at least 100” people had attended the Solano meeting. I’m going to cite the rest of his reply in full, because it illustrates the cynicism that pervades the planning profession:

If every attendee wanted to engage in a back-and-forth dialogue with staff for five minutes in the full meeting setting, that would have taken over eight hours. We didn’t have that much time, and it also would be unreasonable to expect all the attendees to sit through an eight-hour workshop. Instead, we had about a dozen project team members at the workshop, engaging in separate conversations with small groups of attendees. Using that format, we were able to engage with more people during the time we had. I was pleased that the vast majority of attendees participated in the open house format, engaging with us and each other, getting their questions answered, expressing their opinions, and sharing their new ideas. I witnessed many community members with differing views talking through the issues together, politely and constructively. And we recorded a great deal of feedback that will inform our forthcoming work on this project.

He added:

Another of our goals is to create a safe space for everyone to participate. Believe it or not, many community members are not comfortable participating in the meeting format that you are demanding. Some people aren’t comfortable with public speaking. Many people prefer asking their questions and expressing their preferences in a small group setting. We aim to design our workshops to be as inclusive as possible.

As we’ve mentioned repeatedly, there will be many meetings on this project that will be held with the public hearing format.

I replied:

You know full well that the public hearing format doesn’t allow for a back-and-forth conversation.

Some people prefer expressing their preferences in a small group setting. You are only accommodating such people. There’s no reason that “a back-and-forth dialogue” would have to last eight hours. It could be taken up [sic] a half-hour in an evening meeting. That would give people who prefer that format to raise questions. Instead, we get a 25-minute Power Point presentation crammed with enough info for a college course, followed by a science fair format.

Banning dialogue in the full meeting protects staff and consultants from having to grapple with questions from knowledgeable members of the public—in particular those who are critical of the direction taken by the “pro-housing advocates.”

Here are some of the questions the planners need to answer in public meetings that permit—indeed, encourage—give-and-take:

Why are there no protections for neighborhood shops?

The city has officially designated “Support local businesses” as one of the plan’s four goals. Moreover, on May 23, 2023, the Berkeley council approved on consent Item 37, which referred $250K in the FY 2024 budget process

to study and develop options for all commercial corridors, with particular attention to the higher-resourced commercial avenues identified in Program 27 of the Housing Element, Solano Avenue, North Shattuck and College Avenue[sic], including but not limited to changes to zoning, incentives/programs/financing mechanisms, and objective design standards to:

The colon is followed by directives related to six topics. The first three address housing. The fourth directs staff to

[e]nsure [that] recommendations for zoning and design standards consider unique characteristics of each commercial area, including lot sizes and depths, availability of rear-access to parcels, abutting/neighboring residential zoning standards, and any other unique characteristics of each commercial district and its surroundings.

The fifth and sixth directives focused on locally-owned and neighborhood-serving businesses:

5. Enhance the viability and avoid displacement of locally-owned and neighborhood-serving commercial uses both during construction and over the long term, including but not limited to studying potential temporary relocation of businesses during construction, “right to return” for existing establishments, appropriately-sized commercial spaces for locally owned businesses, and the potential for new commercial spaces to be offered at lower rents as a community benefit. Examples of neighborhood serving commercial uses may change as retail trends develop, but may include grocery/food stores, banks, dry cleaning and shoe repair, hardware stores, wellness and hair salons, restaurants and cafes, fitness centers, and clothing and gift shops.

6. More generally study potential ground floor uses to support locally-owned commerce, housing, and other potential uses, so long as they do not break necessary continuity of retail.

You’d think, then, that the consultants’ work would feature protection for neighborhood shops, which are a major factor in the uniqueness and appeal of the Elmwood, north Shattuck, and Solano commercial districts.

Instead, the shops seem like an afterthought.

The “Existing Conditions” report, running 33 pages proper plus 13 pages of appendices, lists the types and number of retail businesses in each area (29-30) But it doesn’t analyze the state of the retail sector in the East Bay or in Berkeley specifically. It says nothing about the pressures on locally owned or independent retail. Nor do we learn which businesses own their property and which rent. A word search for “rents” comes up empty. The report doesn’t state the number of commercial vacancies in the Elmwood, north Shattuck, or Solano shopping districts, much less account for them. It doesn’t survey either the merchants or shoppers on any of the streets about the proposed upzoning.

As for uniqueness: Remarkably, the consultants ignored the distinctive charm of the Elmwood, which is widely regarded as the most fetching of the three districts, partly due to the narrowness of College Avenue compared to Shattuck and Solano Avenues, as well as the overall small-scale of the storefronts.

On the other hand, North Shattuck, we’re told, “has a history of being key in the development of California Cuisine and the farm-to-table movement”—surely a reference to Chez Panisse. But North Shattuck also houses many other less-famous but distinctive shops, including artisanal boutiques, enticing restaurants, and two longstanding  cooperatives—the Cheeseboard and the ACCI [Arts and Crafts Cooperative] Gallery.

Businesses on Solano Avenue get no kudos at all. What about Sue Johnson’s famous lamp and lampshade shop? Just up the block is Ensler Lighting, which sells new and used lamps and lampshades. It’s rare to have one such store on a street; two are unheard of. But—nada.

At the Solano workshop, a consultant assured the crowd that Chez Panisse and Mrs. Dalloway’s bookstore would not be redeveloped. That’s nice, but the message here—that what matters are the trophy businesses—is misguided. In reality, it’s the whole ensemble that accounts for the unique character and attractiveness of the three streets. The service-oriented shops and services play important roles in the mix. People go to the post office, the grocery stores, the stationer (Solano still has one—with a notary yet), and the copy shops and then visit nearby establishments.

What interests the consultants is the districts’ history of and potential for redevelopment. “North Shattuck,” we read, “has seen the most change in the last twenty years of the three corridors, including two sites that have seven-story mixed-use projects approved or under construction.” Nothing about changes in the shops.

On College: “[s]ince the post-war boom, there has been a lack of new development.” Again, nothing about the shops. At least the nature of the businesses on Solano gets a passing mention: “The majority of uses along this portion of Solano Avenue are neighborhood-serving commercial uses; common businesses include hair and beauty salons, clothing stores, home furnishings stores, and realty services.” Here, again, the “history of development” is about real estate, not retail, development—and purported stagnation:

Since the turn of the century, there has been little to no development in the area. Additionally, the area has seen very little ownership parcel aggregation, as each individual storefront building is generally owned individually.

It doesn’t seem to have occurred to the consultants that the individual ownership of storefronts may contribute to the appealing scale of the retail on the street on Solano and indeed in all three areas or that “ownership parcel aggregation” might make these streets less attractive to shoppers.

Mission unaccomplished: the CZU Request for Proposals

I was about to chide the consultants for not fulfilling their contractual obligations, when it occurred to me to wonder if they’d even been asked to delve into the retail scene. I found the Corridors Zoning Update Request for Proposals online. Its “Introduction” begins promisingly:

The City has a number of lively pedestrian-oriented commercial areas that developed along former streetcar routes and near the University of California. These commercial districts add to the City’s charm, offering distinct pedestrian-scale placemaking as well as cultural and economic opportunities.

Unfortunately, that’s the last we hear about charm and placemaking.

The problems—at least with regard to the shops—begin a few sentences later with this statement in the “Project Overview.”

The goals of the zoning updates are to (1) revisit the land uses and permits required in these districts; (2) establish objective development standards in accordance with State laws; and (3) increase the zoned capacity for housing development by at least 2000 units.

I’ll address the 2,000-unit increase in a future article. (A teaser: that increase in zoned housing capacity, which is specified in Program 27 of the Housing Element, applies not only to College, north Shattuck and Solano Avenues, but also to San Pablo and Telegraph/the Southside, The Existing Conditions report says that a thousand of those units have already been accounted for in the Telegraph/Southside upzoning.)

For now, what matters is that “Support local business” doesn’t appear in the RFP’s list of the CZU’s goals. The only reference to such a goal is in the discussion of “Community Outreach and Engagement,” where we’re told that “the engagement” is “intended to understand potential ground floor uses to support locally-owned commerce, housing and other potential uses.”

Nor is familiarity with retail business among the RFP’s expectations of the consultant:

• Be knowledgeable about State requirements related to objective development standards, streamlined approvals, state density bonus, and housing regulations.
• Be informed of local policies and recent rezoning efforts, including the San Pablo Avenue Specific Plan and Safety and Environmental Justice Elements efforts currently underway.
• Analyze the built environment and other factors that inform the local context for this project.
• Engage a variety of community members and policymembers, and communicate ideas effectively in various forums.
• Formulate a range of options and alternatives to demonstrate potential growth capacities along the three commercial corridors.

Under “Scope of Work,” a bullet point in the section entitled “Background Research and Policy Framework” states that the research will include “[a]ssessing existing land use conditions, including ground floor uses, vacancy rates, owner versus rental, changes in demographics, and business types over time in comparison with other commercial corridors citywide.” The “deliverables” for this section are “Existing Conditions and Policy Framework Document.”

The Existing Conditions report itself does not display “vacancy rates” for either residential or commercial buildings. Nor does it provide “owner versus rental” figures or compare “business types over time in the three districts with “other commercial corridors citywide.” Rather, it asks readers to follow a link to “a project Mapbook.” I followed the link. What came up was a many-layered map that I found nearly impossible to navigate, and that in any case appears to lack information about owners versus renters of commercial properties or commercial vacancies. Curiously, the consultants seem to have ignored information about vacancies and sales tax revenue available in “snapshots” of Berkeley’s commercial districts provided by the city’s Office of Economic Development.

The signal phrase “necessary continuity of retail” does not appear in either the Existing Conditions or Alternatives report. In fact, we see recommendations for retail discontinuity. The “Alternative Retail 2” option for all three streets would allow housing or offices on sites currently occupied by shops, in order to “increase project feasibility and encourage more housing along the corridors. (Figures, 7, 8, and 9, page 29)

There’s no reference to the studies that were entailed by the $250,000 allocation from the City’s 2024 budget. I have submitted a Public Records Act request asking to see that work.

It appears that the city planning staff ignored directives numbers 4, 5, and 6 in the council’s 2023 referral of $250,000 to the 2024 budget, a disregard reflected in the RFP, as well as the contents of the consultants’ two reports. Both staff and the consultants have been remiss, but with respect to public accountability and managerial responsibility, the onus is on the former.

By the way, the Request for Proposal says that the city has allocated $600,000 for the consultants, plus about 10 percent FTE [Fulltime Equivalent] of a Principal Planner, 10 percent FTE of a Senior Planner, and 50 percent  FTE of an Associate Planner’s time. Add the $250,000 2024 budget allocation, and it adds up to nearly a million dollars. That’s a lot of money anywhere, but it should have special resonance in a city with a $25 million structural deficit and a hiring freeze

What about parking?

At the Planning Commission’s September 17 meeting, parking was another hot topic. Finding a place to park in the Elmwood, North Shattuck, and Solano neighborhoods is already hard. A significantly bigger neighborhood population can only make it harder—and also discourage would-be shoppers.

The alternatives report estimates the number of units, not the number of new residents, that the proposed upzoning would yield in all three neighborhoods:

Alternative 1/Medium Density plus a 50 percent State Density Bonus: 1,100-1,600 units

Alternative 2/Higher Density plus a 50 percent State Density Bonus: 1,300-1,780 units.

But developers could qualify for a 100 percent State Density Bonus, and the report doesn’t estimate the much greater, corresponding number of number of units.

In any case, many of the new units would be occupied by more than one person, so we’re talking about thousands of new residents on College, North Shattuck and Solano Avenues. Despite proximity to bus lines and, in the case of North Shattuck, a BART station, a lot of people who move into market-rate units are going to have a car and need to store it somewhere.

Here’s where things get confusing. The alternatives report states: “The city of Berkeley does not have parking minimums, so parking is not addressed in the alternatives.” Indeed, in a data-challenged 2021 action, the council eliminated required parking minimums in all new residential projects, except in parts of the hills that are vulnerable to wildfire. At the same time, it set provisional parking maximums in “transit-rich” areas of the city.

But contrary to its claim, the alternatives report does address parking. Under the heading “Redevelopment Potential,” it reviews the “sites most likely to develop.”

The ones with “high redevelopment potential” include “[m]edium to large corner lots with surface parking (e.g., 7-Eleven on College, Post Office on College, old Virginia Bakery site on Shattuck).”

The parcels with “modest redevelopment potential” include “[c]orner lots with one- to two-story older structures on them.” Such parcels “currently have low-scale existing development on them, and they have the ability to provide on-site parking with access from side streets.” Also included in this category but judged to have less redevelopment potential are “[m]id-block lots with one- to two-story older structures on them.” Their lesser potential is “due to their inability to provide on-site parking because of a lack of access from side streets.” That could be remedied “if adjoining lots are assembled into larger parcels, particularly with corner lots.”

The consultants’ private meetings with “Stakeholders”

The most likely source of these assessments are Raimi + Associates’ interviews with what city staff call “stakeholders from the real estate and construction industry in the city of Berkeley.” That description appears on documents that I obtained on October 5 via a Public Records Act request asking to see all materials from those interviews.

I’ve found only one substantial public reference to those meetings. Squirreled away as Attachment 1 to Item 11 on the Planning Commission’s April 16, 2025, agenda. Dated January 24, 2025, the attachment describes the consultant’s “Community Engagement and Outreach Plan.” for the CZU. Under “Engagement Strategy,” Raimi+Associates writes: “Given the sensitive nature of this project, the engagement plan will outline a transparent process…”

Transparency dims when we read that in early 2025, the consultants planned to hold private “Stakeholder Meetings” that included “up to four hours…to gather feedback during the first phase of the project.” The meetings were anticipated as follows:

• 1-hour Property Owners Meeting with “targeted” property owners
• 30-minute Small Developers Meeting
• 30-minute Individual Meetings with Patrick  Kennedy, Charles Kahn, David Trachtenberg, Kevin Gordon. (Kahn sits on the Planning Commission. To my knowledge, he has not publicly disclosed his participation in one of the interviews.)

In reply to my PRA request, the Planning Department said that no notes had been taken at the meeting, but in fact the documents they sent included “a summary or takeaways” from the 30-minute individual meetings. They attached no names to the views expressed. The three opinions grouped under the heading “Ideal Site Characteristics” all mention parking:

•  Small (<10,000 sq. ft.) and/or infill sites are challenging for on-site parking provision and access.
• Non-corner sites are very challenging due to lack of space for parking entry on commercial corridors, particularly for Solano and College.
• Providing on-site parking on large (>10,000 sq. ft.) and/or corner sites is easier, meaning these sites more likely to redevelop.

My own takeaways:

First, the consultants need an editor.

Second, the Berkeley City Council may not be concerned about parking, but the developers and architects are. They know that most of the prospective occupants of new housing are going to be paying market-rate rents, and as such, they will want on-site parking. Minimum parking requirements are illegal, but the city could strongly encourage builders to provide on-site parking.

Finally, the pro-real estate development bias is glaring. What qualifies “medium to large corner lots with surface parking” for “high redevelopment potential” is that they “are large enough to accommodate more financially feasible building types, and the current amount of development or current use may no longer be the highest value use of the land.” Meaning that they may no longer yield the highest profits that can be squeezed out of the respective sites. Neither the Existing Conditions nor the alternatives report compare the “values” that retail and market-rate housing uses will yield.

Another thing I learned from my PRA request: the meeting with the property owners, originally scheduled for early 2025, hasn’t occurred. It’s now going to take place on October 29—a week before the council’s November 6 study session. In other words, the alternatives report was prepared without consulting the property owners in the three districts.

Meanwhile, most merchants in the three areas are in the dark.

What is to be done?

First, planning staff immediately needs to send a written notice to every shop in the designated area, describing the proposed upzoning and the likely effects on their business.

At the same time, the alternatives report that the staff and consultants present to the council’s November 6 study session needs to be revised to include protections for locally owned and neighborhood-serving businesses and the unique character of each area, as per the council’s May 2023 referral of $250,000 to study the Corridor Zoning Update. The revised report also needs to compare the profitability of retail versus market-rate housing in each of the three neighborhoods.

If making these revisions means delaying the council’s study session, that shouldn’t be a problem: the CZU was originally scheduled for council approval in December 2026. For some reason the date was moved up to summer 2026. If necessary, it can be moved back to December.

When revising the alternatives report, city staff and the consultants should bear in mind the words of Levi’s Plaza landlord, Jamestown President Michael Phillips. On October 6, Phillips told Chronicle reporter Laura Waxmann:

“You’re seeing many more neighborhood solutions…What’s really the DNA of San Francisco and of Northern California? It’s village high street shopping, it’s destination shopping.”

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