Robert Lauriston: Question 1. Would your plan suffer if the city did not declare a transit village development district at Ashby BART, and if so, how? (Note that Berkeley zoning code section 23E.52.070.D.5 already allows approval of mixed-use projects on that site of any height, density, and lot coverage, and waiver of any or all off-street parking and open-space requirements.)
Ed Church's response: There has never been a desire to pursue Transit Village designation for the site. It would seem that there has been confusion between the term "transit village," simply used to denote a group of buildings close to transit, and the regulatory term Transit Village as defined in Assembly Bill 3152 of 1994. The concept for the Ashby BART site is the former. AB 3152 offers only two potential advantages: access to transit funds, which an Ashby BART project could access without the designation, and a 25% density bonus for new housing in the area. In Berkeley, any developer doing multi-family housing would be subject to the 20% inclusionary ordinance, meaning that 20% of the units must be affordable to low-income households. Providing affordable housing automatically triggers the 25% density bonus, which means that designation as a Transit Village would be no additional advantage. It is also important to note that, while AB 3152 offers the 25% density bonus, it does not have a provision for general upzoning in the Transit Village area.
I have also seen assertions that Assembymember Hancock's AB 691 could facilitate Transit Village designation in the South Shattuck area. AB 691 provides that existing specific plans could qualify as Transit Village plans, and the argument goes that South Shattuck Strategic Plan could qualify as a suitable existing specific plan. However, the South Shattuck Strategic Plan's southern boundary is Ashby, and it specifically excludes the Ashby BART station from the Plan. Therefore, there is no Transit Village site included in the South Shattuck Strategic Plan area, and it would not qualify under AB 691 as a Transit Village area Plan.
So, there is no existing plan that would permit Berkeley to pursue Transit Village designation under 3152 or 691, no advantage to pursuing it, and no desire to do so. AB 3152 does not mention upzoning and there is no desire to pursue it. The assertions about creating a Transit Village area of ¼ mile around the BART station seem to have caused fears about creating a Redevelopment Area and eminent domain. Both Mayor Bates and Councilmember Anderson, in public statements, have also specifically excluded the possibility of eminent domain or Redevelopment.
Robert Lauriston's reply (no answer received to date):
You're right about the South Shattuck Strategic Plan, but the Ashby BART station *is* in the South Berkeley Area Plan. And I don't see anything in AB 691 that says the station has to be within the plan borders, so I think the council could declare portions of both plans to be a TVDD.
Given that the mayor wrote the TVDD law and his wife wrote the amendment that gives a one-year window to convert specific area plans into TVDDs, I don't think many neighbors are going to find reassurances from the mayor or Max that they have no intention of using the law very credible, especially given (among other things) the way you all sat on the grant application until it went to Sacramento.
If there's really no TVDD in the works for Ashby BART, Max should put forward a City Council resolution that it would be bad policy. That would go a long way toward making up for the politically tone-deaf way this project was brought to public attention.
Unfortunately (as Kriss Worthington pointed out at the City Council meeting on your grant proposal) the inclusionary ordinance does not result in units that are more affordable to low-income renters. For example, last I heard the official maximum rent for an "affordable" studio in Berkeley was $863 (may have gone up); ads for Berkeley studios on Craig's List right now range from $595 to $860.
Robert Lauriston: Question 2. How did you come up with the figure of 300 units?
Ed Church's response: In order to achieve the desired goals of increased housing for teachers, fire fighters, police officers and other public sector employees, people walking neighborhood streets to enliven the area and patronize local businesses, etc., we looked at a base of 50 units per acre. (For local comparison, the Lorin Station building is 47 units per acre.) This was the base we used to describe a potential development for submission of the Caltrans planning proposal.
We were given an estimate for the total acreage of the site which included the assumption that the sidewalks above the BART station would have to be reconfigured for the project, which in turn raised the acreage to 6+. 50 units per acre x 6 acres = 300 units. As I indicated in my remarks at the City Council meeting December 13, we have subsequently re-measured and changed our assumption, putting the developable acreage closer to 4. If the public process proposed by the South Berkeley Neighborhood Development Corporation and authorized by the Council indicates that 50 units per acre is a target, this would yield 200 units. This number of units also depends greatly on public feelings about amounts, placement and types of open space and community gathering areas, building heights, etc.
[Note from Robert Lauriston: I am not sure that funds from Caltrans could be used to plan a project of less than 300 units, since Church's application says that's the minimum number. The application refers to the 2004 feasibility study, which discusses scenarios of 482 and 553 units.]
Robert Lauriston: Question 3. Assuming 300 units, retention of all BART parking, and provision of all off-street parking required by the zoning code (1 space per dwelling unit, 1 per 500sf of commercial):
Obviously at this point the answer would be a very rough estimate and might be multiple scenarios.
Ed Church's response: No one who I know that is connected with this project has a pre-conceived notion about the issues you raise. These are precisely the kinds of issues that need to be taken up in the public process, since they are key to how the development integrates with the existing residential, community and commercial uses.
Robert Lauriston's reply (no answer received to date):
If you can't provide a rough size/height envelope for 200 units on 4 acres I'll have to calculate it myself using other projects / proposals as a baseline. My guess is with a plaza between two buildings we'd be looking at 3 stories at Adeline / 4 stories at MLK plus 1 underground parking level.
[Note from Robert Lauriston: The 2004 feasibility study (which I was unaware of at the time of this discussion) in fact addresses all of these issues in detail, and could easily be extrapolated to a 200-unit building.]