Simple answer: no money in the budget to train the planners how to do it. City estimated it would take average of 50 hours per planner to learn.

I offered Max’s services without his prior permission.

We hired a young architect to translate the proposals into graphics because we didn’t have time to do it ourselves and were told google map didn’t have most of the buildings here mapped yet. Some consequences of the city’s proposal were worse from the resident’s perspective and some were better. Regardless, it would have cut thru much wasted staff paid time and resident unpaid time if the city staff were given money to either learn how to do this or farm it out.

-len raphael
temescal

Your opinion matters to me, but an objective analysis of Uptown businesses would be more helpful to me.

Since you asked, no, I don’t shop in my neighborhood, because I’m never home. I work too much and it sucks, but that’s my problem. The places I mentioned are successes no matter if I shop, dine or attend functions at them are not and that success is worth taking note of considering the history of the neighborhood.

Anyway, we agree on one thing. The neighborhood needs a grocery store. Please feel free to call Gail Mackay of Safeway Customer Care at 1-877-723-3929 regarding reference number 15587450. They’re taking comments on the matter.

Max, your post to John -it’s a good one.

I’ve actually experimented with some building height sketches along lakeside, and there is some truth to the fact that thin towers won’t block downtown that much.

170 feet might be a little high, but 55 feet is definitely way too low. I sketched a 100 foot tower on lakeside, a few lots down from the Scottish Rite (which is way over 55 feet) and found that it was insignificant when viewed at eye level from the Cleveland Cascade.

I’ve also sketched what uptown would have looked like if it hadn’t been forced by activists to stay below 55 feet. Again, at 85 feet (another legal/code benchmark height) the difference did not seem disruptive at all.

As for Broadway: I concur with almost everything Dan Schulman has to say. would be happy to cede reasonable protections for the area I sketched if it allows the conversation to move on to more important things. I did, indeed, just want to point out that sloppy verbal descriptions of height limit policy are dangerous.

I would like to see, among other things:

Height limits pushed to at least 85 feet, if not 180 feet on a lot of broadway south of 27th. Possibly with an air-rights transfer scheme that creates a diverse array of heights.

A provision against developments that cover an entire block. Particularly in the Valdez triangle, a diverse array of scales is important. Disallowing consolidation of more than 66% of a blocks area would be a way to do that. I would also bar consolidation of parcels that led to more than two corners of a block being within the same parcel. That doesn’t preclude a consolidation that would run diagonal through a block, so long as the other two corners are separately developed.

I also am vehement that most of the old garage spaces should be allowed to be developed to tall heights, so long as facades are preserved. Any reuse of these spaces as-is would likely involve radical alteration of their interiors anyway, so there’s no reason to preserve the whole thing.

I think that City staff made a strategic decision early in the CBD rezoning to not use 3D imaging, both for resource reasons but also for political reasons. At least, I believe this was true for the debate about building heights at the edge of Lake Merritt. The City stubbornly stuck to its idea that it was possible to place 170-foot buildings along Lakeside Drive. They proposed the infamous ‘tower/base design’ and that this would not block views of downtown.

Of course, CALM thought this was preposterous and asked the City repeatedly to show it graphically. They never did, even up to the City Council where even Council members crabbed about the skimpy little 8.5×11” maps. I think the reason staff never produced 3D images is because they would have clearly shown that the tower/base design would not work.

This created a problem for us now because CEDA did not, and has not, availed itself of this imaging technology. They don’t have it now when they needed it – they outsmarted themselves. I am certain that an enterprising CEDA planner could quickly master the Google Tools 3D imaging technology. That employee would instantly become a more valuable and sought-after employee. Not to mention, they’d bring City planning into the 21st century.

It is a powerful tool, as you say. In your picture, it clearly shows heights that are too low for the area. It would work the opposite if you sketch in the tallest, desired heights. That might bring a similar but opposite response like, “Wow, that’s a lot of too tall buildings.” The next step is to finesse the sketches with placements of individual buildings, open spaces between them, parking lots, etc., rather than blocking in the entire area as shown.

About uptown: there has long been inconsistency and confusion about whether it was supposed to be an uptown entertainment district (the name of many official city reports) or a residential area (an intiative by Jerry Brown’s administration). No verdict was ever reached; the city went down both paths simultaneously. There are points where this got really awkward, for instance at the corner of 19th and Telegraph, and in not providing much neighborhood-service-related business, needed by the new and extant residents.

I hope enough small-scale development will fill in the holes that it will become a more cohesive neighborhood, and that in moving up Broadway we don’t abandon the effort to encourage building upon the already-huge city investment in Uptown.

The main reason I think it is important to show the historic area in relation to the whole is that in your desire to pick a fight with the OHA, I think you’re missing the big picture. You seem to want to squabble over some 10′s of feet by Harrison/Waverly when the real height problem is over by Broadway.

With the exception of 1 or 2 slender towers, all of the project alternatives envision top development of six stories. Further, this proposed height is fairly even throughout the project area resulting in a vision of Walnut Creek for central Oakland. If there were much much higher structures along Broadway, we would have an urban landscape, and obtain critical mass of retail square footage without compromising the historic area.

Small little fights among community activists just makes it all that much easier for the project team to ignore all input.

feet on the ground street safety: yes. high sales tax revenue: yes. pleasant place to live: no. i’m told residents who can, move out to lower density areas when they can.

-len raphael
temescal

Do we have ordinances to at least show a vestige of what SF has accomplished?

Look at all these big box stores, just waiting for a reason to lower their prices and give us a double benefit. Why not just “give” the land away to the firms with the right ideas, without compromising?

Time to dream.