InBerkeley

A friend was complaining the other day about the experience of being in downtown Berkeley at lunchtime. It’s a madhouse with all those students milling about, she said. “And some of them are really not that attractive.”

Now, having a son who attends Berkeley High, and is of course very attractive, my immediate reaction was to go on the defensive. However I admit I have never actually experienced the lunchtime rush — I do know around 3,000 teenagers need to find a place to buy lunch and be back in their classrooms in about 40 minutes.

And I can appreciate that having huge numbers of big — for they are invariably big — possibly unruly, teenagers bearing down on you when you are just popping into town to get a replacement battery for your camcorder at RadioShack might be intimidating and a tad unpleasant.

But Berkeley High has been at its current location for 108 years. (The first public high school classes in Berkeley were held in 1880 at the Kellogg Primary School at Oxford and Center Streets adjacent to the campus. In 1901, construction began on the northwest portion of the present site of the high school.)

If anything, the rest of downtown has evolved around it and the UC campus. And, I ask myself, is it not healthy for educational establishments to be at the heart of cities? Or should they be banished to the outskirts so good citizens don’t need to encounter teen spirit up close and en masse on a daily basis?

Berkeley High School, Downtown

At this  time of year, when the veil between the living and dead is thought to be at its most diaphanous, the North Shattuck Association is holding a Dia de los Muertos mask contest to see who can make the most beautiful giant papier mâché skull. The skulls will be worn by their creators in a candlelight procession on Friday October 1. The first prize winner will take home $300. Runners-up will receive gift certificates from local merchants.

Giant papier mâché skulls are a traditional way to celebrate Dia de los Muertos in Mexico and they usually represent different types of people and professions. Often a dark sheet is worn below so as not to distract from the head itself.  Papier mâché hands are also sometimes part of the costume.

Those who would like to enter a head are asked to wear it to Grace North Church, 2138 Cedar Street at Vine at 6pm on  October 30. The judging will take place outside on the church steps. The judges are Suzanne Tan from Berkeley Art Center; Lisah Horner from ACCI Gallery; Heather Hensley from the North Shattuck Association.; and Lisa Bullwinkel from Another Bullwinkel Show.

As well as the procession, local restaurants will create special Dia de los Muertos dishes for the evening, so all are encouraged to stay in the district for dinner. For more information contact Another Bullwinkel Show at 510.548.5335 or msmoose1@anotherbullwinkelshow.com.

[Photo: www.statesman.com]

Arts, Downtown, Events, restaurants Dia de los Muertos, North Shattuck Association

Power blackout in parts of South Berkeley tonight.

Reports of a blackout affecting parts of the South Berkeley and downtown areas are filtering in from the Twitterstream.  alitheiaKu is experiencing the outage in downtown Berkeley. According to thisgirlelle, power is out where she is on Channing Way, while Matt3Boii reports are that at least half of the UC Berkeley campus has been affected. ptraughber tells us that Warring St. by the Clark Kerr campus is dark, too, and says he can see the outage extends up into the hill, to campus, and a couple of blocks south.

Berkeley Police Department reports the outage is in the area of Telegraph Ave. and Durant, extending all the way to the border with Oakland at Alcatraz.  The cause is a blown transformer, and power is expected to be restored in a couple of hours.  No report of crime or any other unusual activities in the area except for some folks who seem to be taking advantage of the dark to light off some fireworks.

If you are affected by the blackout, tell us where you’re located so we can gauge the full extent of the outage.

UPDATE: More reports from the Twitterstream.  sitek reports “manhole blown out of its place at Bancroft and Dana, most of Southside out of power.” kwen says she “Heard people yelling “OBAMAAA” and setting off fireworks.”

Downtown, Emergencies, South Berkeley

The locally all-powerful Michael Bauer, food critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, reviews the new Five restaurant in the Hotel Shattuck Plaza (introduced on InBerkeley here).  He rates it at two-and-a-half stars, which is midway between good and excellent, and pretty high praise from Bauer.

It’s clear Bauer likes chef Scott Howard’s work, but has some hesitations about the quality of the service. It’s worth reading the whole review.

Downtown, Food, restaurants

The second annual Downtown Berkeley MusicFest gets under way this week with a rich array of live, mostly free, kick-ass music performances at various venues throughout the downtown area.   Jazz, bluegrass, folk, country & western, reggae, world, tango, blues, Latin, klezmer and more.  While most of the action occurs between 5:00 and 11:00 p.m., performances begin at noon on Wednesday and Thursday, and 10:00 a.m. on Saturday.

The festivities begin at noon on Wednesday, August 26, and run through Sunday night.  Did we mention, most performances are FREE.

Get all the details at the Downtown Berkeley MusicFest web site.

Downtown, Events, Music

BeyondChron reports that the UC Theater, on University Avenue, is being transformed into a live music venue by David Mayeri, formerly COO of Bill Graham Presents, and Dawn Holliday, who runs Slim’s and the Great American Music Hall. The planned 1,000 to 1,500-seat venue will add to the burgeoning concentration of arts venues in downtown Berkeley.

The UC Theater is one of three still-standing pre-1920 movie theaters in Berkeley. The other two, the Elmwood and the California, both opened in 1914, have been extensively remodelled. The UC Theater, opened in 1917, is largely intact since it was the only one not to be converted into a multiplex. The redevelopment plans call for the interior details to be preserved.

Photo from Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association

Arts, Downtown, Music

Opponents of a downtown Berkeley development plan say they have gathered more than enough referendum signatures to force the City Council to reconsider the plan or to put it to a citywide vote.

City Councilman Kriss Worthington, who was working with Councilman Jesse Arreguin on the issue, said the group collected about 8,000 signatures in 30 days, far more than the 5,558 signatures needed and a good cushion to offset signatures that are invalid.

via Oakland Tribune/Inside Bay Area.

Downtown, Government, Issues, Politics

Pure democracy and representative democracy continue to duke it out on the streets of Berkeley as the petition drive to bring the downtown Berkeley development plan to a vote of the people approaches today’s deadline to reach 5558 valid signatures. Opponents to the petition include many political and business leaders, who have been unusually vocal in their support of the current plan and have mounted a strong defensive campaign against against the petition drive. Proponents of the referendum are reported to be paying some signature gatherers $2 per signature while complaining about tactics being used to deter signers.

Opponents of a downtown Berkeley development plan were still on the streets Wednesday gathering the 5,558 signatures needed by Thursday to put the plan to a citywide vote.

City Councilman Jesse Arreguin, 25, who is behind the campaign to overturn the Downtown Area Plan, which allows for taller buildings, more housing density, more open space and which imposes green building requirements, said he is “cautiously optimistic” his group has enough signatures to go forward.

via Berkeley Voice/Inside Bay Area.

Architecture, Business, Downtown, Politics

Looks like this local Berkeley story is spreading.  Now the San Francisco Chronicle is covering it.  What’s next, the New York Times?

“Sometimes democracy can go too far,” Councilwoman Susan Wengraf, one of the six council members opposing the petition, said of the proposed referendum.

State Sen. Loni Hancock, Assemblywoman Nancy Skinner and Mayor Tom Bates have appeared in glossy flyers urging the public: “Please don’t sign the petition.” There have been e-mails and, in some cases, people shadowing signature gatherers to discourage potential signers.

Wengraf and Bates said they could not recall another time in Berkeley history when so many elected officials campaigned against a citizen’s petition.

via San Francisco Chronicle/SF Gate.

Downtown, Politics

A federal judge has ruled the University of California cannot build a new computer research center near the Berkeley campus without further environmental studies.

San Francisco-based U.S. District Judge William Alsup said Monday the $113 million project is covered by federal law and therefore requires a new government study before construction can begin.

via AP/San Jose Mercury News.

Downtown, Environment, UC Berkeley

The operators of Slim’s and the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco plan to open a 1,500-seat concert venue in downtown Berkeley.

The application for the project in the old UC Theater building on University Avenue near Shattuck Avenue goes before the city’s Zoning and Adjustments board Thursday night. City staff is recommending the board approve the project. The project was approved by the city’s planning commission in May.

The project comes on the heels of the Aug. 27 opening of the new Freight and Salvage Coffeehouse just a block away on Addison Street. That venue, which will showcase folk and traditional American Music, will seat 440 people.

via Inside Bay Area.

8/14/09 UPDATE: Last night the Zoning and Adjustments board in Berkeley approved the zoning change that will allow this project to move forward. According to the San Francisco Business Times, the project still needs several more approvals and permits before it can start construction. The opening is targeted for fall of 2010

Arts, Business, Downtown, Government, Music, Politics, Property

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

It won’t officially launch until mid-August September 1, but The Hub—Berkeley’s new “habitat for innovators” in the David Brower Center—offered a taste Monday evening of the stimulating public events it plans to offer. A sold-out audience crowded into the center’s Richard and Rhoda Goldman Theater for “Money, Mobs, and Media,” a lively and candid discussion about mobilizing action for change. The panelists were the founders of three of the Bay Area’s most influential social-change organizations—Matt Flannery of Kiva, Steve Newcomb of Virgance, and Ben Rattray of Change.org—who shared stories about the challenges and rewards of blending entrepreneurship with activism.

“Tonight is the beginning of a seed sprouting,” said Alex Michel, managing director of Hub Bay Area, in his introduction. “People with ideas for change need a living, nourishing habitat, and we’re building that habitat upstairs.”

The Berkeley Hub, at 2150 Allston Way (less than a block from the Berkeley BART station), is the first U.S. location of a worldwide Hub network that was founded four years ago in London. (There are Hubs in 12 cities on four continents; a San Francisco Hub is in the works.) According to Hub “community builder” Meredith Walters, Hub Bay Area got its start when Tim Freundlich and Kevin Jones, co-founders of San Francisco investment firm Good Capital and creators of the Social Capital Markets conference, “realized that people in the Bay Area were itching for a place to come together to connect around social enterprise, social investing, and generally using business to create a better world.” They raised money and got permission from Hub World to launch at the Brower Center, itself a hub for environmental and socially conscious organizations. (The center’s other tenants include Earth Island Institute, Green Jobs Network, and the Redford Center.)

The Berkeley Hub will include individual petal-shaped tables, a communications station, a kitchen/café, a window workbar, and the “Hubble,” an enclosed meeting space for up to eight people whose frosted-glass walls can be written on. Hub memberships are available at various levels, from Hub5 (allowing five hours’ access per month) to founding member.

Hub Bay Area is also creating a network of mentors, sponsors, and people who can contribute professional skills to fledgling social enterprises. Find out more about joining or supporting The Hub; for information about attending or sponsoring an event, send an email to bayarea.hosts@the-hub.net or call 415-624-5881.

Business, Downtown Architecture, Business, Co-working, Downtown, Social Change

I was just making some additions to InBerkeley’s custom Google map when I noticed something strange about the block of Milvia between Allston and Channing. Where you should see Berkeley High School, Google instead has Armstrong University. Huh?

Despite budget pressures I’m sure Berkeley High hasn’t sold its property. Google, or more accurately its data supplier, Tele Atlas, just has it desperately wrong. It’s particularly odd that there’s such a prominent error on a major site in a city that has its share of employees that commute to Google in Mountain View.

What makes it stranger is that there once was an Armstrong University in Berkeley, but it was never on the Berkeley High site (BHS moved to its present site in 1901). Armstrong University was founded in 1918 by Evan Armstrong as the California School for Private Secretaries. It moved to a Walter Ratcliff-designed building on Harold Way in the 1920s and renamed itself Armstrong College. It mutated at some point into Armstrong University, but moved out in 1996.

Although it seems to survive in online directories, as far as I can tell Armstrong University no longer exists. Except in the wrong place on Google Maps.

Downtown, General

Freight & Salvage Coffee House is about to move up the street — literally — from 1111 Addison (off San Pablo Avenue)  to its new location at 2020 Addison in the heart of downtown Berkeley (rendered above).

A grand opening celebration weekend is planned for August 27-30 with performances from, among others, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott and the David Grisman Quartet.

August  27 sees the venue’s 21st Fiddle Summit with Alasdair Fraser, Liz Carroll and Darol Anger.

Visit Freight & Salvage’s website for details of the new building, the campaign for funds and the celebration weekend acts. And read this piece in The Monthly for a perspective on the venue which has been providing music and entertainment in Berkeley for 40 years.ome

Arts, Downtown, Events, Music

Catch some free jazz concerts in donwtown every Thursday, noon to 1pm, through the end of August.

Pictured above is trumpeter, and Berkeley High alum, Rafa Postel and his band who were playing today to a large, appreciative audience

The jazz series is sponsored by the Downtown Berkeley Association in partnership with Berkeley’s Jazzschool.

Arts, Downtown

A thought-provoking, and thoughtful, post this morning on Transbay Blog following Berkeley City Council’s decision to approve the Downtown Area Plan which allows for taller buildings in the heart of the city.

The presence of an anti-growth attitude in Berkeley has famously been vocal and insistent. And while this perspective may have once been deemed to be “progressive,” in a city that prides itself on setting the definition of that word, we now know better. What’s actually progressive is accepting growth that is dense and well-situated to avoid sprawl; reduce energy use and emissions; concentrate new development where it can utilize existing infrastructure; and encourage walking, bicycling, and transit use.

Read “Downtown Berkeley’s Growing Pains” in full here.

[Photo credit: Transbay Blog.]

Architecture, Downtown, Environment, Green living