BERKELEY -- After more than three years, 3,000 pages of city documents, many public hearings and even more bureaucratic red tape, the long-awaited West Berkeley Bowl was approved by the City Council early Wednesday.
But it will be at least two years before the 90,000-square-foot store is built at the corner of Ninth Street and Heinz Avenue, said City Councilmember Darryl Moore, who represents the district where the multimillion-dollar store will rise.
"I’m riding high today," Moore said. "There is still a euphoria. ... This has been nearly four years in the making."
Like the original store at 2020 Oregon St., the West Berkeley Bowl will include a massive market with bushels of fresh organic produce, an enormous wine selection, a bakery, butcher and fish market.
"The neighbors of West Berkeley have wanted a grocery store for years, and now they have a fabulous one," Moore said. "They have a homegrown, family-run local establishment that is willing to build a second store."
The west-end store will include a cafe, community room for meetings and events, storage space and office buildings. Plans call for an underground garage with 109 parking spaces and surface lot with 102 spots.
The council voted 6-0 to approve the project, with Councilmembers Kriss Worthington, Dona Spring and Max Anderson abstaining due to union and other issues. The project comes back to the council Tuesday for a second reading.
The new store will replace a prefabricated metal warehouse, and, despite rumors, the original store will remain open.
"Those (rumors) are absolutely false," said Berkeley Bowl General Manager Dan Kataoka. "We fully intend to run both stores. And I fully expect to have the same number of employees at thenew store."
About 250 people currently work at Bowl, Kataoka said.
Moore said West Berkeley city leaders have tried for 16 years to bring a supermarket to the area.
"Our seniors and our young people, for the most part, have to shop at liquor stores where there is not quality food," said Moore.
About 25,000 people live in West Berkeley. According to a 2005 city Health Status Report, premature deaths in South and West Berkeley are four times higher than in other parts of the city.
"There is more hypertension and diabetes," said Moore. "This (new grocery store) won’t solve the problem, but it will help to begin to close the gap."
Kataoka said Wednesday he had not yet announced plans for a new store to his staff. Tuesday’s council meeting bled into early Wednesday with several dozen people speaking for and against the project.
"It’s been a long process and I know a lot of people worked hard on this," Kataoka said. "We had hundreds of supporters, and we can’t personally thank each and every one of them."
There have been plenty of critics and opponents who worried that the massive store will clog their streets and detract from their quality of life.
Tuesday night, union members came out in droves to ask the council to support a union shop. There was a labor strife at the Berkeley Bowl two years ago that led to a complaint filed by the National Labor Relations Board. A settlement reached in August 2004 allowed employees to form a union, but employees say they don’t want to go through those channels again.
Although plans for the West Berkeley Bowl were approved Tuesday, the project nearly fell apart earlier this month when bowl owner Glenn Yasuda told City Hall he was dropping plans to build a new store, said Mayor Tom Bates.
"I’ve talked to him many times in the last couple weeks," Bates said Wednesday. "He’d come all this way and I could understand that he was frustrated. It was a long, hard process, and people fought it all the way. There were lot of people who did not want this kind of store in West Berkeley for a variety of reasons."
It has been more than four years since Yasuda bought the land for the project, and since then there have been myriad delays because of protests from residents and merchants who worried about everything from increased traffic to the future of light industrial businesses in the area.
Bates and Moore said there is still work to be done to ensure a union is in place and residents’ traffic concerns are addressed.
"There is still some work to be done," Bates said. "This was a hugely complicated project. There were 3,000 pages of city documents, there was a zone change, a use permit and an environmental impact report." |
