It appears that the crosswalk slated for Stargell at Webster Street is moving forward. At Monday night’s Planning Board meeting, City Staff announced that CalTrans has given preliminary approval for this plan and it will come before the Planning Board in January:
Tonight the Planning Board will have on its agenda the proposed Beltline design, which I have to say I do not hate at all. It’s not what I would have envisioned, but it’s fine.
It has a little bit of everything that folks said they wanted of the “passive” aka no sports fields park, the only thing I can envision the passive park proponents getting a little upset about is the BMX pump track, other than that it looks like something that should appeal to most people.
Tonight at the Planning Board there area few items, like the agenda item on the building of an assisted living home on the site of the old Chevy’s. There’s also a request for a use permit for a hair salon on Webster. Apparently this is to move an existing business but it’s still getting opposition because no one wants another hair salon to open up even though people seem to actually use these businesses. The big item will be the public scoping for Ron Cowan’s final chance at building more housing units. That should bring out quite a coalition of folks, but this is just a scoping meeting so, yes, make sure to submit your comments, but there will not be any action taken on this item tonight.
One thing that I did find interesting on the agenda but was shuffled under the consent calendar was a follow up on a request by Planning Board Member Lorre “you can’t go furniture shopping on a bike” Zuppan. During a routine follow up on how the food truck frenzy at South Shore was doing she volunteered the information that some Park Street restaurants had told her that the existence of the food trucks was hurting their businesses. Also Pearl’s — now turned into a Five Guys — claimed that the Food Trucks cut into their margin so much that was why they closed down. So Board Member Zuppan wanted some information around this.
Tonight, joint City Council and Planning Board meeting on the draft EIR. Can I just say that I am soooooo looking forward to this, and no, that was not sarcastic at all. Seriously it wasn’t. Here’s why…
City Council member Tony Daysog literally cannot stop putting his foot in his mouth these days. To cap it off he actually insinuated that a member of the Planning Board didn’t read the draft EIR documents. (FYI, the Planning Board member was correct that the consultant answered the question about there being built in capacity anyway, but Tony Daysog was also correct that some of the infrastructure would need slight tweaks for additional accommodation, but that would be a policy decision to make that call) This meeting should be ripe for some drama.
While Tony Daysog feels as though he is being ignored by the mainstream media (aka The Alamedan) regarding his comments on the Master Infrastructure Plan for Alameda Point — one of the topic at the last City Council meeting — it appears that the Alamedan simply didn’t cover the MIP at all. So perhaps he shouldn’t take it so personally. The MIP discussion is important because it is the framework on how to develop the backbone for Alameda Point, you know the stuff that is failing currently and probably why it’s been so difficult to develop anything out there. Anyway, what you missed from Tony Daysog during the MIP discussion was this that he alluded to in the comments section:
All right this post is going to be graphics heavy, you’ve been warned, because the remnant parcel tenants have shown their cards and now everyone has brand new designs — you’ve seen the ones for Chase Bank already — but Safeway went in a completely different direction as did In N Out for their building design. I tend to like a lot more modern looking buildings, glass and steel I love it, so when I initially saw that both Safeway and In N Out had went more historic, I’ll admit I was a little disappointed and expected to hate it so much.
And I did sort of hate the initial photos I saw of the In N Out design, mainly because they were flat and black and white and had all these measurements on them. Bring on the renderings! I also hated the Safeway gas kiosk because I thought they were going to go in the other direction which was to make the gas canopy as light and airy feeling as possible to make it almost disappear, but no, they decided to go heavy and bulky and, I have to say, it works. It works because it’s clear what the inspiration is and that is the Posey Tube.
The success of last year’s Park Street parklet (and the pains it took to get it there) has lead the City to consider adopting formal guidelines for parklets in the future. Parklets — which get commonly misused by people wanting some random park somewhere, such as the person who wanted to convert the whole of CVS into a “parklet” after Walgreens moves in — is a small park that is placed in a traditional parking sport on a (mostly) temporary basis.
The guidelines went before the Transportation Commission a few weeks ago and followed some serious smack down by the TC of CalTrans over the whole Tube beautification thing. If I have time maybe I’ll post about that because it was pretty interesting and a real incident of a public agency (CalTrans) getting little to no public input on a hugely expensive capital project with a limited goal for safety (handrails) and a major goal for beautification. But I digress.
So the TC added some conditions like no parklets in residential zones and in commercial zones it needs approval from 75% of the storefronts directly in front of the proposed parklet. At first I was a little confused by the no parklets in residential zones, because as someone who has an um parklet of sorts in front, it’s really nice. But then I remembered people’s obsessions with “their” parking spaces directly in front of their house as though they own the rights to the exact spot and realized the someone might pop down a “parklet” in front of their house that is conveniently rolled away when they need to park there. So no parklets in residential neighborhoods, I can understand that. But man oh man, Otis from Grand to 8th Street could really use some parklets to liven it up a little.
I had this whole post already written about parklets (also on the Planning Board agenda on Monday night) but I had to bump it for this set of graphics for the Gateway parcel. Just so you know, both the Chase bank design review and the In-N-Out design review will not be put to a vote on Monday night because the plans were not submitted in time for Sunshine Ordinance compliance. Although I think it might be under the Brown Act because of the weekend…anyway, not on the agenda for approval but review only.
However all the other use permit things will be on the agenda, the Safeway gas design review, extended hours of operation for the gas station and In-N-Out. Safeway has withdrawn their request for beer and wine sales after much indication from the Planning Board that they were not inclined to approve and In-N-Out has dropped their request for super extended operating hours. They are now asking for an closing time of 12:30 a.m. on Sunday through Thursday and 1:30 a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays. As a comparison, staff provided this in the report:
A survey of other restaurants in the area and in Alameda reveals that extended hours for restaurants are not unusual. For example, all restaurants at the South Shore Shopping Center have approval to stay open until midnight. A number of restaurants on Park Street have requested, and received, approval to stay open until midnight or 2:00 am. Spice I Am recently received approval to stay open until 2:00 am in response to customer demand. The Taco Bell on Webster Street closes its drive-through at 3:00 am on weekdays, and 4:00 am on Friday and Saturday. The Jack in the Box is open until midnight, and the drive-through is open 24 hours a day. Carls Jr. dining room and drive-through are open until midnight Sunday-Thursday and until 1:00 am on Fridays and Saturdays.
The Planning Board will still need to provide an okay to operate both the Chase and In N Out drive-thrus and the 24 hour operation for the Safeway gas station.
So here, I’m just going to say it. I don’t agree with anything that any of my Bayport neighbors said at the Planning Board meeting on Monday night. At all. In fact, I’m a little embarrassed by the xenophobic comments that elicited not one, but two Planning Board members to chastise the speakers. It saddens me more than anything else. I can handle concerns about traffic, I can handle concerns about liquor licenses, I can handle concerns about late night operating hours. But what I can’t handle are suggestions about “people from outside Alameda” as code for undesirables and disparaging remarks about homeless people. What I can’t handle is people who conflate a random crime spree with businesses that are in the nascent planning stages.
Also, I would appreciate if people from Bayport would stop talking about Bayport as though we are one monolithic unit that feels the same way, because I do not endorse what was said last night by my neighbors.
So I’m going to leave it at that, because, shit, I still have to live here.
I will make one comment though as to people who think that In-N-Out will not make an appropriate “gateway” welcome sign. Right now, it’s a weedy vacant lot. I think that is even less of an appropriate gateway welcome. But in general, there needs to be work on the screening through landscaping.
Today at 2:00 p.m. if you happen to be around you can watch the ceremonial handoff of Alameda Point from the Navy to Alameda. All the magic is happening with special guests Congresswoman Barbara Lee and Assistant Secretary of the Navy Roger Natsuhara. On the Alameda side will be Mayor Marie Gilmore and City Manager John Russo.
This is the Phase 1 conveyance and the handover should have much pomp and circumstance and probably a few long winded speeches as well.
If you go, here’s where you can park and stuff:
It’s official. It’s In-N-Out coming to Alameda Landing’s drive-thru parcel, I mean “entry site.” But in addition to In-N-Out the parcel will be rounded out with a Chase Bank and the Safeway Gas Station which we all knew was coming since there was that whole Safeway wants a gas station thing. Look, the whole entry site is turning out to be a little low rent, but honestly, given the difficulty of actually getting into that site, it’s amazing that they were able to get anyone interested in it at all. I mean, when Catellus first sold this as a drive-thru development they really knew their market. All of the retailers are of the drive thru variety, except I guess some people do actually eat at In-N-Out.
So here’s the general plan. Everyone knows where they are right? At the top is Webster, bottom is Stargell. In-N-Out will be at the, um, rounded tip. The Safeway gas will be closest to the Safeway.
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