Many of you have expressed to me your desire to ensure that the development at the N. Berkeley BART station fits the scale of the neighborhood. After listening to your concerns, asking questions of BART, and re-reading AB 2923 carefully, I made the decision to co-author a letter with Mayor Arreguín addressed to the Assemblymember who sponsored AB 2923.
Our two-page letter, which you can read in full below, seeks clarification from Assemblymember David Chiu on the flexibility afforded by AB 2923 on the building height for each “place-type designation” specified in the transit-oriented development (TOD) Guidelines report prepared by BART staff. The zoning guidelines and place-type designations specified in this BART staff report are important because they will serve as the minimum density and height to which BART must adhere in developing its zoning standards for BART stations.
We write in the letter:
“We [are] seeking clarification on the flexibility afforded by AB 2923 on the building height for each place-type designation specified in the TOD Guidelines staff report. We note that the TOD Guidelines report only created three place-type designations for 48 BART stations and did so without public input. Therefore, it is our strong belief that local jurisdictions and BART should be granted some flexibility in adhering to these development standards. It is our desire to meet or exceed the minimum density requirement specified in the report (minimum of 75 units per developable acre) in a manner that provides for flexibility in the height of the approved development.”
We received the following response from Assemblymembers Chiu and Grayson:
Final-Legislators-Letter-to-Berkeley-re-AB-2923