The new Safeway on College

So, I don’t think I’ve even mentioned the debate over the new Safeway on College. One of the things that delights me most as a blogger is when other people write about important issues so I don’t have to, and happily, the Safeway expansion has been extensively covered in the blogosphere even without any contribution on my part (see the list at the end of the post).

So, in case you live in like, a cave or the other side of the Lake or something, Safeway wants to tear down their Rockridge store on College and Claremont and build a new, bigger, fancier one in its place. Read more

What is the City of Oakland’s subsidy to Forest City’s Uptown project?

Somehow, the comments on my election results post turned into a discussion of City subsidies to Forest City and the Uptown Apartments. There seems to be a lot of confusion about our agreement, so I’m just going to explain the whole deal.

The City of Oakland’s total funding contribution to the Uptown Project was $60,031,057. Read more

Encinal Tower scoping session tonight

Remember the tallest building in Oakland? Well, it’s moving through the CEQA process right now, and will have its EIR scoping session at tonight’s Planning Commission meeting (PDF). This is where you go and tell them what issues you want studied in the Environmental Impact Report. If you can’t make it to the meeting, you have until November 17 to submit comments in writing.

In case you missed it the first time around, here’s a brief project description from the staff report (PDF): Read more

Delay everything a year and hope it gets better

My heart sank when I read yesterday that the Oak Knoll project is now on hold. Read more

Encinal Tower renderings

As promised, I now have fancy renderings of Encinal Tower to share with you guys, courtesy of the nice people over at SOM. Read more

City Council says no to Ada Chan

Last night, the Oakland City Council rejected Mayor Ron Dellums’s nomination of Ada Chan to fill the seat left vacant by Suzie Lee on the Oakland Planning Commission by a vote of 3-4-1 (Y: Quan, Brunner, Nadel; N: De La Fuente, Kernighan, Reid, Chang; A: Brooks). Lee’s term expired on May 5th. Dellums did not bring a nomination for a replacement Commissioner to the City Council until July 1st (PDF). When it became clear that the Council was unlikely to confirm Ms. Chan that night, the Mayor withdrew the item.

Chan was back on the agenda last night, at the first post-recess Council meeting. Despite having had two and a half months for the Mayor and Ms. Chan to persuade those concerned about her suitability for the position, both declined to make any effort to do so, instead using the time to marshall strident support from union and affordable housing advocacy organizations while shutting out the business community. Read more

The tallest building in Oakland! No, a new one.

OMG, folks. I know I promised to write about crime like a week ago, and I will, soon, I swear. I was going to do it today, but I am just way too excited right now to blog about anything but Encinal Tower.

Read more

Kaiser hospital at design review

So, after a somewhat longer than originally intended summer hiatus, I’m back at the Oakbook, with a report on the discussion of the new Kaiser hospital at Wednesday’s Planning Commission meeting. You should click through and read it, but if you’re too busy, the short version is that both the neighbors and the Commissioners hated the design presented (PDF), and Kaiser gets to come back for a do-over in mid-October.

Ann Mudge and Michael Colbruno got some pretty entertaining (and borderline cruel) digs in about the design (details here), to the point where I thought they may have gone a little overboard. I mean, I’m not in love with the design either, and I do think making Kaiser try again was the right call, but I don’t think it was nearly so awful as they seemed to. But I’m loathe to criticize the Commission for being too harsh, because on the whole, I think we need people in this town to be a whole lot more critical, not less.

Anyway, I was talking to an acquaintance yesterday about the meeting, and his assessment was that the building was just not that bad and that the Planning Commission was being ridiculous. I’m on their side on this one. The way I see it, I’m just happy that we get to build the it at all. If the neighbors are willing to take the damn thing and not fight it tooth and nail like it seems we have to with every other damn project (to be fair, that part did happen, but it’s over now), then the least we can in exchange is ask that the building be as pretty as possible.

I doubt I’ll ever like it all that much (I’ve already discussed how I feel about this particular form), but hopefully Kaiser will come back with something a little more exciting to look at than what they have now, which really doesn’t have all that much going for it beyond the fact that it’s an improvement over the huge concrete wall on the current hospital.

Unlike certain other projects, this is a case where the building is legitimately really big for the neighborhood, and so it seems fair to me to ask Kaiser to make every reasonable effort (demanding that the hospital not have signs, BTW, falls into the category of an unreasonable request) to put together a building that at least minimizes (to whatever extent that’s possible) the visual impact on the surrounding area. I do think that Kaiser should get at least some minor props for producing a much less hideous building this time around than they brought to the Design Review Committee in May.

Anyway, renderings below. What do you guys think? Read more

Good news about City Walk

Looks like downtown’s inventory of abandoned half-built buildings is about to be cut in half, with news in the Trib of construction restarting on City Walk.

The Trib’s story is weirdly optimistic, with lines like:

The framework of the building was largely completed when the work halted. City officials said they were dismayed at the halt in construction.

So…the framing on this building, I have gotten the very clear impression from a number of different people that there’s some kind of problem with it and will have to be removed and rebuilt for the third time. The staff report (PDF) for a Council discussion of the project last winter seems to concur:

Project construction was delayed several times due to problems with framing sub-contractors. The initial framers performed substandard work and had labor problems which required them to be replaced. Work had to be removed and rebuilt again. A third framing sub-contractor was later hired. Olson eventually wrote the general contractor a default letter regarding various construction defects and other problems on the site. Rather than correct the defects, the contractor vacated the site.

Anyway, at that December meeting, the Council amended their DDA with Olson Co. (I wrote about it for the Oakbook) to extend their completion deadline, which, under the original agreement, had been the end of 2007. The Council agreed to an extension for the project, giving them a new completion deadline of June 30, 2009 and conditioning that they restart construction by January 31, 2008.

As anyone who walks by 14th and Jefferson can tell you, construction obviously did not restart by that date. In fact, in today’s Trib story, we learn that Olson is hoping to resume construction by November!

Look…the City is in a really difficult position here. Olson has totally failed to meet their deadlines, which means we are entitled to penalize them. Of course, doing so will only compound their troubles and might make it even less likely that the damn thing ever gets finished, and of course, nobody wants that. The nightmare scenario (which could happen, though almost definitely won’t) would be the City itself getting stuck owning a partially built project with construction flaws. Nobody wants that. So the temptation to be accommodating and just give Olson whatever they need is understandable.

But it’s also not fair to everyone else. I’m, well, pretty pro-development for the most part, and most of the arguments I hear from anti-growth types give me a huge headache and make me roll my eyes. But when they complain that they don’t trust the developers will keep this promise or that promise or that whatever condition of approval will actually be met…well, I see where they’re coming from. It’s pretty hard to argue against that when the City just lets a developer violate their DDA and stick the community with a big hunk of blight for a year (or in the case of 14th and Jackson, let properties sit shrink-wrapped for years). I’m sorry that Olson had that long legal battle with their contractor and I understand times are tough for the building industry, but we can’t let our sympathy get in the way of good government, and we shouldn’t forget that times also got tough for the small businesses that had to live next to the abandoned construction site - until they closed!

At last night’s Planning Commission meeting, all these people from the neighborhood around the new Kaiser Hospital were like, completely freaking out over the idea that one of the three new buildings might not get built at the same time as the others. When the Commissioners asked why we couldn’t just require them to build everything at once, the response was that we have no way to enforce such a condition. They should figure out a way to enforce things, whether that involves writing penalties into the approval (That’s just an example off the top of my head, I don’t actually know if you’re allowed to do that, but I’m sure that there must be something) or what, because letting developers get away with not keeping promises only gives more fuel to the complaints of anti-development activists.

In this case, we have a DDA that gives us very clear power to extract penalties from Olson for failing to meet deadlines, and the City should absolutely do so, even if it causes more headaches on this particular project. It would suck to have City Walk sitting around abandoned even longer, and it would suck even more if the City ended up having to take it away and tear the damn thing down and start looking all over again for a developer (one hopes it things would not get to that point), but it would also establish a precedent that we do not consider it acceptable to violate the terms we set. And in the long run, that would be better for everyone in Oakland.

Tower and base

So the new CBD Zoning (PDF) is going to the Zoning Update Committee again today, and the recommendations continue to be completely bizarre, overly complicated, and completely unconcerned with the historic character of downtown (in fact, on Monday’s downtown walking tour, at one point someone asked strategic planner Neil Gray, who was explaining the code to the group, which of the 8 or so buildings we were looking at right then would be permitted under the new code, and he was forced to admit that not a single one of them conformed).

I’ve said all this before. What I want to talk about today is tower and base. The form being dictated by the proposed code is terrible. I’m sorry, it’s just awful. I simply cannot understand why anyone would think it’s a good idea in the first place, and I absolutely cannot understand why, after seeing this silly design model month after month after month, the Committee members have not asked staff to eliminate it.

So in case you haven’t been following the discussion, this is what the form-based aspect of the proposed new zoning code does: buildings have a maximum allowable base height and also a maximum allowable tower height. The idea here is that all new buildings will have a wide base on the street, but that the tall portion of the building will have a narrower tower. In the maximum height area, buildings are described as having “unlimited” heights. What is unlimited is the height of the tower - the base of the building has a maximum height of 120 feet.

On Monday’s walking tour, Gray pointed out the new Madison Lofts building as a “model” of what the new zoning is trying to achieve.

So you see how the bottom of the building goes all the way out to the sidewalk, and then the bulk of the building is smaller, so the upper floors are not flush with the sidewalk? Under the proposed code, all new buildings are supposed to look like that. And what I still cannot understand is why? Do people really think that this building is better because the tower is set back from the sidewalk? Unlike practically every other building in the neighborhood, the bulk of the building mass is not flush with the street - in what way does this improve the pedestrian experience? Who benefits from this? Is there really anyone who finds this shape aesthetic pleasing? I really, really, really just don’t understand why we would even consider dictating this very specific and very ugly form for every new building downtown. Who is benefitting? Who? And where in the LUTE is there any justification for doing this, because I sure as hell can’t find it.

The key to creating a pleasant streetscape and pleasant pedestrian experience is demanding quality ground floor treatments and design. I think, when you’re walking past the windows on the 14th Street side of this building, that it’s pretty pleasant. And I certainly don’t see how it would be less pleasant is the rest of the building was the same size as the ground floor portion. It seems to me that the only thing the tower/base regulations really achieve is a reduction of potential density, and I really don’t think it should be our goal to limit density in the Central Business District, home of 3 BART stations and most of the major bus lines in town, and Oakland’s best hope creating future employment opportunities and tax base growth. That’s like, exactly the opposite of what the General Plan says to do.

For a building roughly this size, the tower/base form is pointless, but relatively inoffensive. I mean, I think it sucks that the Madison Lofts are smaller than they need to be, but life goes on. But for larger buildings - well, frankly, it just looks stupid. For example, we started the tour at that huge surface parking lot at 14th and Jackson in front of the post office - the one where Chauncey Bailey was murdered. Gray explained that the proposed code for that lot would allow a base of 85 feet (the maximum base height for Height Area 4 has now been reduced from 100 feet to 85 feet for reasons beyond my comprehension), topped with a narrow tower of as much as 400 feet.

Again - why would anyone want to do this? Has anyone thought about what this is going to make downtown look like?

Think of the Trib Tower. Now imagine that the shorter part of the base was the same and the tower portion was like, twice as tall. That’s what we’re talking about. An exagerated version of what we’re talking about (nobody would build a tower so skinny now), but still, that’s the idea. Do people really think that would look good? I mean, I like the Trib Tower as much as the next girl - it’s fine to have a handful of buildings like that, they add some visual interest, I suppose. But do we really want every new building downtown to look like that? Do we really think that’s going “enhance” our skyline? Do we honestly think that this will make downtown a more pleasant place to be? Sigh. I just don’t get it.

Oh, and for those of you keeping score at home, the staff report (PDF) is once again wrong about the heights of existing buildings. On page 3 of the report, the description of Issue Area 1 claims that the buildings in the lakeside area south of 14th Street, like the County Courthouse and the Library, are between 40 at 87 feet in height. I swear, they tried to pull this with the Courthouse last meeting, too. Hi, folks - it’s a twelve story building. It isn’t 80 feet tall. In fact, according to CEDA’s own map (PDF), the Courthouse is 220 feet tall.

Related Posts:

• 07.16.08: An Alternative CBD Zoning Update
• 07.15.08: Can you make laws about building heights when you don’t know how tall buildings are?
• 05.21.08: CBD, back at ZUC
• 04.17.08: CBD Zoning Update Update
• 03.20.07: CBD at the ZUC
• 03.17.08: Zoning from Mars
• 03.02.08: Planning Commission approves new tallest building in Oakland - in December

Chris Kidd: Planning on the Estuary

ABO readers, do not adjust your computer screens. Chris Kidd here, that impertinent young scamp you often see shooting his mouth off in comments. I have to admit that I totally geeked out to V about the upcoming Estuary Specific Plan and she asked me to write up a post about it while she was taking the week off.

As mentioned above, I’m super psyched about the Estuary Specific Plan process. Most people give me blank stare when I mention the ESP, so I suppose I should give some background. It’d be best to start where all things start: the beginning.

This all started with the Estuary Policy Plan (EPP) (PDF), a project developed from 1997-1999. This was a update of the city’s General Plan designed to help transition land that was previously heavy industry into a mix of light industry, commercial, park land, residential, and mixed-use residential. The Plan was really forward-thinking in recognizing the value of Oakland’s waterfront areas, but the EPP sadly had no plan for implementation. It was only a suggestion for the city to follow.

The central area of the EPP is bound by 19th, 50th, the estuary and I-880. So far, the only sections in the central estuary closely resembling the EPP’s intent are Union Point Park and the Kennedy Tract neighborhood area (also known as Jingletown). Here’s the map (PDF) from the original project for the central estuary area.

Fast forward to 2005/2006. The EPP isn’t much closer to fruition than when its recommendations were first presented. I don’t know who thought of it first, but between developers and the city planner’s office, the concept of a specific plan for the central estuary region began to take shape. Carlos Plazola was part of a group that wanted to design a privately invested specific plan for this area in this time period. You can read his own words on the subject here. I don’t know what role Dan Lindheim had in killing the project (I won’t make those kinds of assumptions). I can tell you that when the proposal to initiate a specific plan went before the city council, staff recommended a city-run specific plan process over a developer run process. Read into that what you will.

This still brings us back to, “What the heck is a Specific Plan?” SPUR just had a great article in their July issue of The Urbanist which dealt with a similar specific plan process that took place in the Market/Van Ness/Octavia neighborhood from 2002-2007. It’s a great read (I <3 SPUR), and you can find it here. For those disinclined to click on the link, I’ll do a worse job explaining it right now:

A specific plan is broken up into two major purposes/points of involvement. The first purpose involves the creation of new zoning and building specifications for the area encompassed by the specific plan (in this instance, most likely zoned closer to the Estuary Policy Plan recommendations). The second purpose harnesses this change in zoning/specifications in order to secure fees from developers to improve the specific plan area.

To carry out a specific plan, the city completes an Environmental Impact Review (EIR) for the area the specific plan encompasses. The EIR explores the environmental ramifications of a range of building specifications and zoning changes. If a developer decides to build in this area, and the planned project falls within the guidelines of the zoning and EIR performed by the city, the city allows the developer to bypass the CEQA/EIR stage and streamline the project’s approach to the planning commission. This can sometimes remove a year or more from the pre-construction phase for a developer. For the right to cut costs, and especially for the right to shorten the time to get approval, the city will extract a fee from any developers building projects within the specific plan area. The fee is usually based on a dollar-per-square-foot amount for the property being developed. All of these funds extracted from new development go into a piggy bank that can only be used for purposes in the specific plan area.

In the central area of the estuary, these funds could be used to great effect. Improving waterfront access, roads and infrastructure, and sewer systems (some of which, I am told, still have wood-frame sections); putting Measure DD projects online; and increasing police presence–these potential improvements only scratch the surface of what could be accomplished in the area with funds gathered by the implementation of a specific plan.

What causes me to geek out about this specific plan is that the slate is almost currently blank. The decisions for what kind of buildings will be covered under the EIR is wide open; the uses of the funds generated from the specific plan are wide open. It’s all contingent upon the plans drawn up by the consulting company hired and the public input received. The city planner’s office is currently asking for RFP submissions (PDF) from consulting companies. The only current piece of direction is the old 1997 Estuary Policy Plan. It will need a serious updating, considering how the area has changed in eleven years.

The planning process is supposed to take 18-24 months. Hopefully we’ll be able to see concrete effects of this plan in the very near future. Personally, I would love to see the full implementation of the bay trail throughout the specific plan area (with the increase in waterfront access it would entail), encouragement of industry to develop towards biotech/greentech, creation of denser housing concentrations in an area in close proximity to a transportation hub, and the retention of high levels of work/live space (being that it is a zero-commute type of housing). But that’s the great thing about a specific plan at this stage: It can be almost anything.

I’d love to hear what everyone else thinks is possible. If you live in the specific area, I suggest you keep tabs on whomever wins the bidding for creating the specific plan. They will be required to hold at least eight public stakeholder meetings during the process. If you show up, you’ll probably have a great chance to create tangible change in your neighborhood. There’s a flip side to that, however: if you don’t show up, you can be sure there are a lot of other interests that will. This is a huge project that has the potential to generate substantial funds for a small area of the city. Myriad people will want to dip their fingers into that honey pot. It’s the responsibility of all of us to make sure that the type of buildings zoned in the EIR are acceptable and that the fees generated are spent in the best possible manner.

I’ll be out of town for the rest of the week, so don’t expect me to respond to any posts/questions. Corrections and scoldings are always welcome.

601 City Center

Shorenstein’s new building at 12th and Jefferson downtown, 601 City Center, has a flickr page, with cool renderings, if anyone’s interested.

Related posts:

• 09.26.2007: Journalism by press release
• 09.27.2007: Shorenstein building update

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