Nathaniel Solley/Staff

In an effort to improve access to key business districts, the city of Berkeley will implement changes to its parking policies Tuesday.

The changes include varying meter rates based on the demand for parking in particular areas and raising time limits for street spots. The city seeks to address frustration over congestion and businesses’ concerns that customers don’t have enough time to shop.

Parking meters Downtown, in the Telegraph area and in the Elmwood district will use a demand-based pricing model, said Matthai Chakko, a spokesperson for the city.

“By increasing the price in the high-demand areas and then lowering (it) in places where parking is more ample, you hope to encourage people to be parking in different places and to not have as much congestion in one spot,” Chakko said.

Parking in popular areas near shopping destinations on Southside and Downtown will cost $2.25 per hour, while parking in less frequently used areas will cost $1.25 per hour, said Matt Nichols, principal transportation planner for the city.

Current parking rates across the city are $1.75 per hour Downtown and $1.50 per hour elsewhere, according to Nichols.

Elizabeth Deakin, a UC Berkeley professor of city and regional planning and urban design who appeared before the City Council as long ago as 2006 to discuss demand-based pricing, emphasized the importance of promulgating information about the new prices and time limits. It could take several months for shoppers and visitors to adjust to the new system, she said.

“If it works well, it will be a little easier to find a parking space if you really want one and you’re willing to pay a little more,” Deakin said.

In the Elmwood district, near College and Ashby, one-hour street-parking limits will increase to three hours, with an increasing hourly rate.

That came as a relief to Melissa Hatheway, the director of marketing and communications for Rialto Cinemas, which operates a theater in Elmwood. Patrons often struggled to find sufficient parking for two- or two-and-a-half-hour films, she said.

“We’re delighted,” Hatheway said. “We’re hoping this parking solution takes off a layer of anxiety and stress from everybody so they (can) come and spend money.”

UC Berkeley senior Max Jason said he would pay more for parking if it resulted in longer time limits and better availability.

“When I’m going and driving around the city, it’s been pretty difficult (to find parking),” he said.

The new rates are the latest in a series of projects in a three-year transportation pilot program funded by federal and regional grants called goBerkeley, Chakko said.

Nichols said it is unclear how the program will affect city parking revenue, but officials will present a detailed revenue report to the City Council in March.

Contact Connor Grubaugh at cgrubaugh@dailycal.org.

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“So how long does it take you to get to school?”

I get asked this more often than what my major is or what my plans are after graduation. When I tell people I live an hour away, they usually guess that I drive and park somewhere near campus. I don’t drive. I take BART and the bus every day, in differing proportion to each other, based on how much money I have.

I live an hour away from campus for a few reasons. The first is that rent is cheaper outside of Berkeley, and Fremont is even cheaper than Oakland. The second is that I live in a communal household whose members commute to San Francisco, Santa Cruz, Corte Madera, Newark and Berkeley. Simple math: Traveling from Fremont BART to Downtown Berkeley and back every day costs $8.70. With class every day of the school week, that’s $43.50 per week — or $174 per month. This is cheaper than the combined costs of gas, parking, insurance and vehicle maintenance, but let me be frank and tell you that there are times that I just ain’t got it.

Enter the life-saving Class Pass. Most Cal students use the card to get around town, to catch a quick ride to class and to make those trips out to Target and Ikea a little cheaper overall. For some of us, however, the Class Pass makes the difference between getting to school and missing out. There have been quite a few days so far when I’ve traveled 60 miles for $0, paying only in lost time.

Riding BART is a mixed bag. Sometimes it feels luxurious and urbane. Everyone is quiet — headphones in and books on their laps. Every morning, I see people praying or meditating. In the afternoon, I see people nodding off or taking off uncomfortable shoes to switch to sneakers at night. Sometimes it’s chaotic, with drunk Raiders fans or gaggles of kids on field trips. Sometimes there are ranting crazies or people vomiting, and the ride hardly seems worth what I’ve paid for it.

Long bus rides are entirely different. The bus lines that snake down the East Bay pass through a dozen school districts in six cities and towns. Teenagers are on and off at every corner. The homeless pile on quietly, tucking their carts and bags away, meekly seeking passage or a place to sleep for a while. The glass and aluminum bus rattles and beeps and thumps over roads in poor condition, and we lurch and careen across country roads as we crawl through downtowns and in and out of BART. It was hard at first to train myself to read, to concentrate, to block it all out and to focus on something to not only pass the time but to make use of it. After a year of commuting, the bus could catch fire before I put down my book. I can sleep through three towns with my bag wrapped around my knees to protect my laptop. This road is mine; we know each other.

Last semester, I was having a conversation with a new friend. He and I came from very different places, and the more we talked, the more apparent our differences became. He asked the constant question: How do I manage to live so far away, and how do I commute? I told him that I normally took BART but that I was flat broke that particular week and had to ride the bus to and from school.

“Wow,” he said. “How long does that take?”

“Three hours each way,” I told him, breaking off eye contact. “But I get all my reading done for class, and there’s not much there to distract me. It’s not so bad.”

He laughed a little and made a small, futile gesture. “There’s no way I would do that. It’s not worth it.”

I didn’t know how to respond at the time. All of my experience flooded into me: dropping out of high school when it wasn’t worth it and working retail, year after year, on my feet and without a voice. I thought about the sacrifices I made to go back to school and the years in community college spent working full-time and hardly sleeping at all, fueled by the promise of transfer. I thought about the hours I’ve spent waiting for buses and trains to come, counting the hours and minutes before I’ll be late to class; I thought about the winter mornings when I leave the house before dawn and get home after sundown and the summer days on buses with no air conditioning and tiny, scummy windows.

I wish I had told him then, and I hope that he reads this now. This is my story. This is how I get to school every day. This is not a complaint, because attending this school is worth it. If I had to walk, if I had to camp out in People’s Park, if I had to ride the bus for twice as long, it would be worth it.

Meg Elison writes the Monday column on financial issues affecting UC Berkeley students.Contact Meg Elison at melison@dailycal.org.

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Belli is set to open to the public Oct. 16 at 2016 Shattuck Ave. The new gourmet restaurant serves Italian-inspired food, with an emphasis on raviolis. Using pasta made fresh every day, Executive Chef Paul Oprescu said the restaurant “gets creative with the filling” — some of the headlining new menu items will include black raviolis with seafood and freshly made raviolis stuffed with pork belly or salmon.

Gelateria Naia closes

After a 10-year run on Shattuck Avenue, Gelateria Naia closed its doors Sept. 22. The gelateria ended its stint on the street after its lease ran out. Co-founder Trevor Morris said the environment of Shattuck Avenue was too different from when the store first opened. Gelateria Naia has plans to open another store, maybe even two, within the next year, Morris said. The chain store has not decided on a location as of yet, but Morris said that another store in Berkeley is not out of the question. Gelateria Naia maintains two other retail locations — in Walnut Creek and North Beach — as well as many wholesale locations through the Bay Area.

Great China Restaurant to reopen

Great China Restaurant has made plans to reopen next spring after a kitchen fire shut down the business in January. The restaurant has moved locations from 2115 Kittredge St. to its new location at 2190 Bancroft Way. City planning documents show the restaurant should be approved or denied by the city within 60 days of Oct. 15.

Contact Lindsey Lohman at llohman@dailycal.org.

The post Weekly business rundown: Week of Oct. 8 appeared first on The Daily Californian.

Gracie Malley/Staff

After seven years of extensive planning, Berkeley City Council reviewed Tuesday the latest version of its contentious Downtown Area Plan, which aims to provide guidance for revitalizing that part of the city.

The Downtown Area Plan has been in the works since at least 2005 and looks to bring new economic life to Berkeley’s Downtown. However, community members have been arguing about — and thereby stalling progress of — the plan since its inception, and Tuesday’s meeting was no exception.

At the public hearing portion of the meeting, members of the public debated the plan’s allowance for certain tall buildings in the downtown area, as well as the effects of increasing the population density of the area.

The new plan allows for the construction of four buildings that are up to 120 feet tall, two of which are reserved for UC Berkeley, and three other buildings that can be up to 180 feet tall.  It dictates that the city’s tall buildings must provide “significant community benefits,” such as affordable housing, supportive social services, green features and employment opportunities, according to a presentation by the city’s planning commission. They must also meet certain green development requirements.

But some members of the community who spoke at the public hearing said that even this limited number of tall buildings is out of scale with the rest of Berkeley.

Tom Hunt, who spoke at the hearing, described the proposal for tall buildings as “outrageous.” Hunt also expressed his distaste for the high density of people the plan could bring to the Downtown area, which includes the geographic area generally bordered by Hearst Avenue on the north, Fulton Street on the east, Dwight Way on the south and Martin Luther King Jr. Way on the west.

The version of the plan Tuesday actually has fewer tall buildings than previous iterations of the plan, aligning with guidelines from Measure R, which was approved by voters in November 2010. The ballot measure came about after the initial version of the Downtown Area Plan was approved by the council in July 2009, but was rescinded the following year after a referendum campaign against it garnered 9,200 signatures. As an alternative, Measure R put suggestions for how to proceed with the plan up to a vote from the public.

In addition to a limit on the number of tall buildings, Measure R calls for green development standards and parking and transportation management measures.

City planner and Berkeley resident Erin Rhoades said the plan’s alternatives to single-family housing are “good for younger generations who want to live in cities and do not want to drive cars.”

Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates said the council will hear more input from the public next week, , and the council members will vote on whether to approve the plan at their March 20 meeting.

Councilmember Jesse Arreguin, who was against the  initial 2009 plan, said he will not oppose this version of the plan, although he submitted a list of questions and amendments to be addressed, including the prohibition of smoke shops and “adult-oriented businesses,” the provision of bike parking for new buildings and ensuring that tall buildings are held to high environmental standards.

A critical component of the new plan is the implementation of fees from new development to fund affordable housing and the creation of parks and recreation facilities, Arreguin said.

“We want to make sure it’s a neighborhood,” he said of the Downtown. “(But also) make it a place the entire Bay Area wants to come to — the country, the world — and make it a destination.”

Annie Sciacca covers city government.

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