Check out these photos of City Hall:

http://twitpic.com/19ercb
http://twitpic.com/19ep0v

Both are taken from public parks in West Oakland.

Both viewing areas are larger than any of the viewing areas along the lake.

Both are closer than lakeside views of City Hall.

Both would create view corridors that fall on top of many other historic structures that are already protected or should be.

Both view corridors require permanent downzoning of 4 blocks. Lakeside views require 6-7 blocks of downzoning each.

Both view points are in historic West Oakland neighborhoods, full of 1890s woodframed homes.

In short, protecting either one of these views would create more historic preservation than any of the views from the lakeside.

If we’re looking at view corridors, these need to be included. Lakeshore should not get more consideration than West Oakland. Very very not OK.

I tried to tweet the ZUC fairly. I might have inadvertently made it look like Doug Boxer and Michael Colbruno were more supportive of VC1 and VC2 than they actually were. Joe DeCredico’s review above is absolutely spot-on – they did have big reservations and were just saying they deserved more study.

Still, choosing the best two VC’s from a poor list may give them some unwarranted legitimacy. A few weeks back Max Allstadt had several comments on how strange ideas start seeming like good policies. Lauding the fastest snail in a race seems to fit within his arguments. Elsewhere, the decision is being spun as “the ZUC endorsed only two of the five views” – http://lakecoalition.blogspot.com/.

I was on the short-side of the vote and did not agree with many of my fellow commissioners arguments on this issue. However, people should not get the wrong idea about LPAB. My fellow boardmembers are an extremely thoughtful and accomplished group. Some of their input on projects, given on a volunteer basis, is truly fantastic. As Oakland grows and changes, LPAB helps to preserve what is unique and best about the city.

It’s also not easy to go against the views of the individuals & groups that show to many of the meeting. These groups do provide us with important information, viewpoints, and resources that help inform decisions. They are a valuable part of the process.

When they do push controversial positions, it really helps to balance the discussion when other members of the public write and speak at meetings. I’d like to thank everyone who came out to speak on view corridors on all sides of the issue. Hopefully even more people will present at Planning Commission and potentially City Council, so we can further add to the discussion.

At one time, there was a Beauxs Art axial relationship between the pier and City Hall. Patrick you are right. If views were going to be preserved of this axis, it should have been done long ago with a public park or a broad boulevard (as in the Austin example). Now, there are numerous buildings of varying heights that have obliterated any semblance of an axis. In addition, the argument that the 18th Street Pier is a gathering place is a fiction.

I attended the LAPB and several of the pro-view corridor members were not happy that anyone was challenging them in their own meeting. In fact, one committee member decided to chastise the public who spoke against the corridors. Not exactly the behavior we expect from commmittee members toward the public. I was happy to hear the 3 members opposed to the corridors express intelligent concerns and positions.

But the real point I want to make here is that this if far more than a discussion about a couple of view corridors. It is a continued effort to down zone downtown. One of the public speakers at the ZUC, well respected in the Historical Preservation Community, said loud and clear that they were not going to stop with these views, that these were just a start, and that they were going to go all around the City and find additional view corridors, even from the Oakland Hills. Funny, I don’t see people clamoring to buy houses in the hills to get that view of City Hall or the Trib Tower.

This is a slippery slope of continued down zoning being advocated by a small vocal and organized group privileged with the shield of historic preservation. I also enjoy historic buildings, but I don’t mind walking through the City to discover them and I don’t believe views of them should be preserved in a downtown business district slicing across private property from arbitrary viewpoints selected where a park bench happens to be located.

There actually could be a new highrise on Lakeside. Not soon, but in our lifetime, sure. Zoning updates are supposed to happen every decade. Oakland is late, but this update is still happening, and another one will happen a decade or
two down the road. By then the council will likely have 8 new
members whose sensibilities we can’t predict. Who knows? They might upzone the lakeside!

So a zoning update is a decade long commitment. A view corridor to a historic building is much longer commitment. You can change zoning, but politically, if we impose a view corridor to City Hall and then give it 20 years to become part of our city identity, we can pretty much consider it permanent. That means that we need to make this decision more carefully.

If we impose a view corridor, what will it look like in 100 years? 200? 400?

If our corridor is set at a 120 foot height limit, and over the next 100 years, the city adds several dozen 400 foot plus towers, what do we get?

The answer is Stonehenge! I we keep a narrow path low while everything else gets tall, what well have is a gap-toothed skyline. Go to the 18th street pier on the right day of the year, and the sun will set in the gap, creating a bizarre lighting effect.

That’s a long way off of course. The most likely thing to happen in the next decade is that someone will build a very tall building near the Tribune Tower or near City Hall, without obstructing the view.

But at 500 feet tall, you don’t need to obstruct th view, you still create radical change in the ciry’s identity. There are plenty of unobstructed views of historic buildings in Manhattan, for instance. But I remember the twin towers most. They were built shortly before I was born and because of their height, they became the icon of NYC. The same will happen the instant anything tall is built in downtown Oakland.

So yeah. A rather awkward plan.

That said, I would generally prefer a much taller, more dynamic skyline when I gaze across the lake toward downtown. The current skyline is pretty sad and stumpy, with little stubs like the Essex passing for tall buildings. I’d welcome some real skyscrapers on Lakeside Drive to liven up the view from Lakeshore, but if the powers that be settle on some middle ground which preserves one or two views from the E. 18th Street Pier, while not preserving other views, then that seems like a reasonable compromise to me.

Mostly, however, I agree with the other commenters who said that this is a waste of time.