InBerkeley

Three Berkeley post office stations or branches have been identified as candidates for closure as part of a USPS consolidation initiative.  The three branches facing closure are:

• Park Station: 2900 Sacramento St.
• Landscape Station: 1831 Solano Ave.
• South Berkeley Station: 3175 Adeline St.

This list does not mean these branches will be closed, just that they have been identified for consideration because of their size, proximity to other facilities, space allocation and ability to generate the greatest cost savings.  No changes are expected to be announced or take place before Oct. 2, according to the Postal Regulatory Commission, an independent federal agency representing community interests. The process is still in the early stages, according to a postal spokesman.

General

The Berkeley Downtown Area Plan was passed by the Berkeley City Council on a 7–2 vote on July 14, 2009. As expected, opponents of that plan have already initiated a petition drive seeking a referendum to cancel the plan.  According to the Berkeley Daily Planet, if at least 5,558 valid signatures of registered Berkeley voters are collected and turned in to city officials by Aug. 20, the City Council has the option of either invalidating the Downtown Area Plan itself or putting a referendum on the November 2010 ballot for voters to decide if they want the plan implemented.

In Berkeley recently received an email message from Berkeley resident and New York Times bestselling author Ayelet Waldman endorsing a letter she received from Liveable Berkeley Executive Director Erin Rhoades which asks people not to sign the petition now being circulated in opposition to the Berkeley plan.  With their permission, we are reprinting Ms. Rhoades’ letter and Ms. Waldman’s introduction here.

Glory, have we had bad weather and good food here in Maine. Ribs from local pigs. Ice cream and milk from local cows (my kids think the milk tastes like milkshakes – we’re in heaven unless we all get E Coli and die). Vegetables from friends’ gardens. Honestly, it’s a culinary wonderland. And let’s not forget the fried clams and lobster rolls.

But I’m not writing to make you feel bad. If you don’t live in Berkeley, just delete. Seriously, this won’t interest you. But if you do, and you agree that downtown Berkeley is a monstrous blot on our city, that’s is a sinkhole desperate for some decent urban planning, then please read the attached email. It was written by someone who knows more than you and I do, and forwarded by an architect whom I trust.

I’m telling you, I love our town, but I am so goddamn sick of the myopic vision of some of its more vocal (and colorfully-dressed) citizens.

Here’s the letter:

Dear Friend,

I’m writing to ask your help to revitalize Downtown Berkeley.

It’s an easy request. You don’t have to contribute any money, join any group or attend any meeting.

All you have to do is NOT sign the petition now being circulated to cancel our new Downtown Area Plan. And tell your friends to also “just say no.”

After four years of community-wide effort, seven of our nine Berkeley council-members (Anderson, Bates, Capitelli, Maio, Moore, Wengraf, Wozniak) voted to approve a new plan for Downtown Berkeley which would help turn around a downtown stuck in failure.

Our new Downtown Area Plan will revitalize Downtown Berkeley. It encourages more Downtown residents and more affordable housing, supports a pedestrian plaza on Center Street, enforces new green building standards and provides for much-needed street-level amenities to make the Downtown more enjoyable. It’s also essential to Berkeley’s Climate Action Plan because it supports more residents living downtown near transit and daily-needs shopping — essential to our environmental leadership role as a “climate smart” city.

In Downtown Berkeley today, commercial vacancy rates have topped 16%, almost all retail businesses continue to struggle, and only one new affordable apartment building has been completed in years. We need to do better, and the new Downtown Plan will help big-time.

For many years the people now opposed to our new Downtown Area Plan have also opposed all previous attempts to accommodate more people in Berkeley — even though that’s just what we need to BUILD an equitable, diverse and environmentally responsible future for our city.

This time their scare tactic is “Manhattanization:” the specter of “greedy corporate developers” crowding our Downtown with a forest of “huge skyscrapers”.

What’s actually in the new Downtown Plan is something different. It limits “tall” additions over the next 20 years to a maximum of one or two buildings for conference-oriented hotels or housing, plus no more than 6 other medium-height buildings — 2 of which could be office buildings and at least 4 residential. It asks for significant returns from developers for public amenities, including public open spaces in the Downtown. This potential growth over twenty years is constrained to a district that takes up less than FOUR PERCENT of Berkeley’s land – existing zoning limits would still apply everywhere else.

The conclusion the City Council reached is clear: the only way we can turn around Downtown is if we can house more residents and workers in new green buildings to support LOCAL-oriented shopping and services. Given that commitment, when is doing nothing the “better and greener solution” for Downtown, as the petitioners claim?

If the referendum succeeds, four years of hard community planning work would be thrown away and improvements for Downtown would be put on hold again. How would that help make Downtown more successful?

Please join the Council majority, Assemblymember Nancy Skinner, environmental and labor groups and many of your own neighbors in opposing this unfortunate and short-sighted attempt to freeze Downtown Berkeley in failure mode. Say NO to the petition — and say YES to a better and greener Berkeley in years to come.

Please help further by forwarding this message to your Berkeley friends and neighbors. And, let me know if you have a little time you could contribute in the next 3 weeks to help defeat this petition.

Best,

Erin Rhoades

P.S. If the petition gains enough signatures, the required election could cost the city more than $200,000 — money needed for many more important things in these tough economic times.

Yours,

Ayelet Waldman

You can read more about the referendum campaign here. Kriss Worthington, who represents District 7 on Berkeley’s City Council, voices his Top Ten Super-Sized Flaws of the Downtown Area Plan.

Business, Downtown, Government, Issues, Politics

If all goes according to schedule, the Freight & Salvage Coffeehouse will have a new home starting August 27 — its third one since opening 41 years ago — in the downtown Berkeley Arts District at 2020 Addison St., across the street from the Berkeley Repertory Theater. The new state-of-the-art facility cost $11.5 million, and can seat as many as 440 people, double the capacity of the current venue, and about five times the size of the original site on San Pablo Avenue.

But as the Oakland Tribune cautions:

Bigger, however, doesn’t always mean better, and there are some definite risks to this endeavor. Notably, longtime fans are hoping that the things that make the Freight’s earlier incarnations so special — the down-home charm, the intimate atmosphere and the willingness to book less commercially viable acts — survives the move.

…

“The truth of the matter is that most of the music I love is really not commercial — and I don’t know if it will ever be able to attract large crowds,” says Berkeley bluegrass fiddler-vocalist Laurie Lewis, who first performed at the Freight in 1974 and has maintained a steady relationship with the venue. “What will happen to those kinds of artists? Will they have a place to play?”

Like its former home, the new location was also once a garage, but it will have a completely different look, with ultra-modern chairs by Berkeley-based Swerve, stadium seating arrangement, new sound system and other enhancements.

The Freight hosts its Grand Opening Celebration Aug. 27-31.

General

We’ve already mentioned the federal Recovery Act funding that will directly and indirectly benefit the City of Berkeley. Now, it seems, the State of California will be taking some of that back.

As this report in the Contra Costa Times points out, the city will lose between $6 and $10 million from its $333 million budget due to state funding cutbacks enacted in the new state budget. Berkeley public and mental health programs will bear the brunt of state funding cutbacks, according to the report.

Public and mental health programs and street paving could be cut because those are programs that receive money directly from the state, not from city taxes, [Deputy City Manager Christine Daniel] said.

But the city is in good enough shape financially that it can move money around or delay less important capital projects to make up for the loss, said City Councilman Kriss Worthington.

“Berkeley has adopted a relatively conservative budget for the last few years,” Worthington said. “We made a rainy-day fund in 2003, and that has helped us to weather the cuts last year and this year.”

General

Vintage Berkeley on College Avenue

If you stop into Vintage Berkeley, the new wine shop on College Avenue near Ashby, and pick up some wine, say from Spain, you can use your receipt to get a discount on that movie you rent from Videots down the street.

In August, that same purchase will get you a cut rate price on a ticket to see the new movie Julie & Julia. A few months ago, it was a discount at Mrs. Dalloway’s bookstore.

It’s all part of an effort among Elmwood merchants to encourage their customers to shop in the neighborhood. “There is a lot of new energy in the Elmwood,” said Ann Leyhe, a co-owner of Mrs. Dalloways. “There are lots of new vendors and we’ve said “Let’s cross-promote.”

The bookstore has taken to displaying books that are linked to the movies being show at the Elmwood Theater. Right now, Food, Inc. is on the marquee and in the window.

On August 7, there will be a neighborhood merchant party to celebrate the opening of Julie & Julia, a new film about Julia Child and Julie Powell,  a New York blogger who cooked her way through Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

The movie will play at the Elmwood Theater. Vintage Berkeley will be serving wine and cheese at a 5 pm reception. And Mrs. Dalloway’s will be at the reception, selling Child’s biography, My Life in France, Powell’s book, Julie & Julia, and the memoir by the editor who first published Childs, The Tenth Muse by Judith Jones.  Child’s cookbooks will be for sale as well.

Liam Reilly and Matt Stevenson sell wine at Vintage Berkeley

Books, Business, Food, The Elmwood

Man browses UC Press books at annual sidewalk sale

As university presses around the country struggle in this declining economy, UC Press has raised more than $5 million to expand its digital outreach, both into the world of the Internet and into the role of becoming a major provider of digital research books.

“Over the next five years, we will launch a program of comprehensive digital reference resources, which will be developed in collaboration with research centers, institutes and libraries both within and outside UC,” Anna Weidman, chief financial officer for UC Press, told the Daily Californian.

UC Press saw its sales drop 22 percent in 2008, a year in which book sales in general went up 10 percent.

The press has already started to increase its online presence. It recently started a blog, where it details news about authors and publications, and is sending out e-mail newsletters tailored to subscribers’ particular interest. The press is also stepping up its presence on Facebook and Twitter. (@UCPress)

“The notion that ties a book to a printed object has been blown to bits,” Dan Greenstein, vice provost for academic planning for the UC system, told the Daily Californian. “A book is now a body of information that can be presented many different ways.”

But the digital initiatives don’t mean that UC Press will abandon its traditional publishing. Last year, it published more than 200 books. In fact, the press just scored $722,000 from the Andrew Mellon Foundation to enhance its California-related material. That initiative will start a new academic journal focused on California, and an online spot where scholars can post papers in progress.

General