North Berkeley Safeway given green light to remodel

January 21, 2011 3:00 pm by Tracey Taylor

Design rendering for the remodeled Safeway on Shattuck Avene, which should be completed by summer 2012.

By summer 2012 North Berkeley should be sporting a new-look Safeway at its Gourmet Ghetto location after the City Council voted this week to support the zoning board’s approval of the store’s expansion and remodeling plan.

The renovations have been a long time coming, and, as councilmember Laurie Capitelli put it, the end result will not please everyone. Quoting Abraham Lincoln he said: “You can only satisfy some of the people some of the time.” However the remodel, based on a design by Oakland architects Lowney Architecture — and which includes noise, graffiti and traffic reduction elements –ultimately met with approval from the North Shattuck Association and from many neighbors.

In a statement on its website, Safeway said construction could begin as soon as  June and the process should take about 10 months.

Interested in issues surrounding doing business in Berkeley? Be sure to attend Berkeleyside’s first Local Business Forum on Monday January 24, 7-9pm at the Freight & Salvage. Doors open at 6.30 and it’s free.

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  • Stephanie

    FINALLY.

  • Ephemerol*29

    I would be very interested to know if this corporation has also rethought it’s business plan for this store as well as it’s demographic neighborhood needs, wants and desires. I say this as I have been boycotting this store even for late night emergencies as its wretched, filthy, broken, run down and gone ghetto with fully disengaged and sadly half awake near zombie like employees. What I mean to inquire is that — is all of this noise all going to be about returning with the same Jello, junk food and pink bathroom scales mentality and box store business model that has prevailed at this location for how many years and generations? Any flicker of an eyelid or hope for ‘real change’ vs. just a hussied up rework of what we painfully know all too well of.

  • Alan Tobey

    When this suburban-dream store (single purpose, space-wasting surface parking to cater to drivers afraid of garages, turning a cold shoulder to the streetscape) is in place, we’ll be able to compare it to its alter ego, the urban-friendly Trader Joe’s complex on University (mixed use to also provide needed housing in a walkable neighborhood, indoor parking to make better use of the lot, open to the sidewalk rather than just to parking) and decide which one is the evil twin.

    Which will get our vote for “let’s build another one like this?” Place your bets . . . .

  • Nicole

    @Ephemerol*29 & Alan, I shop at this Safeway often, and I can tell you the employees you describe aren’t the ones I see! If YOU’D make the effort to say hello and smile at the employee, you’ll find that you get the same in return. And yes, by all means, compare the BRAND NEW building downtown to this neighborhood location. Did you consider that the neighbors didn’t want a massive structure where the parking lot is located? I’ve been in that Trader Joe’s and it’s SMALL! Good for the residents there, yes, that housing is a great idea. Can’t we just be happy that Safeway is going to put some effort into this location?

  • Eric Panzer

    No project < This project < pedestrian-oriented project < pedestrian-oriented project + housing

    Yes, it's worth some celebration that it's better than nothing; and I certainly wouldn't have advocated obstructing it to hold out for a better project that was unlikely at best. Nevertheless, I share in Alan's disappointment that we couldn't have had something better here.

  • Robert Collier

    Agreed, it’s better than no project, even though it is distressingly suburban. I shop there regularly, and will appreciate the extra space and services. Eliminating the Shattuck setback and bringing the building line to the sidewalk is a real improvement. Let’s hope those strange, shaded little niches along Shattuck are actually used by real people for seating, rather than becoming chilly wind eddies where only debris collects. And let’s hope the whole design winds up being more attractive than the Trader Joe’s building — which, despite being nicely pedestrian/urban in concept, was marred (at least to my eyes) by the garish, tacky design and colors.

  • Ephemerol*29

    @Robert Collier, thoughtfully comments on the obvious pink elephant in the room and I put on my trench coat and make some phone calls:
    “Let’s hope those strange, shaded little niches along Shattuck are actually used by real people for seating, rather than becoming chilly wind eddies where only debris collects.”

    I paced a delicate phone call to someone I know whom I will just say is well placed tonight on this very issue and it’s implications starting on day # 1. if not earlier e.g. lying crack addicted street people chained to the benches and tables on that particular Eastern panorama. After my source yelled at me that she could not talk to me and hung up, I thought back to when I used to sit at the glorious European dessert shop directly across the street from this aging squalor of a nearly abandoned and windswept landscape. It was also just after the former owner of the pasty shop had had their final and horrific third armed robbery. It was then that I remembered this man yelling something from across the street at this very geographical location as he kept repeating it, over and over again. As I stepped out onto the sidewalk things became more clear as he was actually yelling as loud as he could to “Stop that man!” “Stop that man!” as this hardened black juvenile had stolen his wife’s purse as she had come out of the store and was fleeing at very leisurely pace on the sidewalk with his bicycle with her husband running after him in vain.

    As I was pondering my past memories of that era my phone rang and it was my source again. After apologizing profusely she told me in a very cautious and guarded and carefully balanced low tone of voice, that “S” corporation is “considering” hiring armed former Backwater employees to “Provide security, essential for a healthy and productive shopping experience while at store” and that “Any and all drug dealers, cracks addicts, and street thugs would be quietly and carefully as well as legally relocated from the premises and sent by Amtrak to as of now, an unspecified series of locations for rehabilitation, detox and whole life transformation etc.” She had to end her call abruptly as her partner was arriving back and I was unable to ask any more questions or obtain any future information. Let’s see how this all plays out across time. I see the City of Santa Barbara just took these curious steps even with all of it’s billions in wealth via it’s general population that could provide all of those very same ‘service resistant’ street people with the correct care options for a more productive life off off the streets, crime and drugs.

    http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-santa-barbara-benches-20110121,0,7575749.story

    Let’s see how this plays out across time, all over again. I was going to suggest to her to consider ‘paying’ such unwanted visitors not to occupy the benches and tables as some merchant attempted in New England, however in fully honesty, I just fully avoid the neighborhood now as do many others. The cost to benefit ratio is just way too high and the new TJ’s is just great as is the new Berkeley Bowl West. Talk about undergound parking!

  • Norman

    I shop often at Andronico’s & Safeway; Andronico’s because they have a more sophisticated selection of things I cannot find at Safeway & Safeway because they have easy underground parking & the prices are much better on the “standard issue” items which is their specialty. It’s hard to fathom the peevish elitism that underscores some of the comments here. I have never been treated with anything but helpful courtesy (a store policy) & respect. People routinely offer their assistance when I’m shopping & always offer a friendly greeting.

  • Name Withheld

    Can someone explain how the new Safeway remodel will turn this into a store that’s “not pedestrian oriented”?

    Are they going to put up some sort of barricades that will block those on foot from entering the store and only allow folks who bring cars with them to shop there?

    The NIMBY whining in these comments is ridiculous. It’s not like they’re adding a new business, the Safeway is ALREADY THERE, and this is an improvement over the building that is currently at that location.

    Is it perfect? No. But if you can’t understand why Safeway wouldn’t want to be involved in the housing rental business in this city then you need to do some reading about the ridiculous Renter’s Rights around here.

  • Name Withheld

    What will happen to the well?

  • DC

    Renters rights or no renters rights – specialty retailers and grocers are NOT involved in building or leasing housing. It’s in no way part of their core mission, or their core competence. Might as well ask why clothing boutiques don’t go into the medical clinic business.

  • Mike Farrell

    A pity that this discussion takes place without any reference to Safeway’s early proposal, which is well described by Elizabeth Jewell here: http://northberkeley.blogspot.com/2008/06/safeways-latest-proposal.html

    This proposal carried the street frontage north, to a point midway between the northernmost and middle driveways, with street level shops and a main entrance fronting a widened sidewalk.
    The Safeway would be located on a second floor.

    With the potential to carry pedestrian interest north of Vine it was a superior proposal to the remodel that was just approved, and had the strong support of many neighborhood residents.

    Very early in the neighborhood outreach Safeway made it clear that is a retailer and not a housing provider. A housing component has never been a possibility for this site.

    I have heard from sources I trust, but I cannot confirm that certain highly placed “public servants” were determined to block Safeway’s proposed re-build unless it included housing.

    Safeway’s response was to pull their more urban and more appropriate proposal off the table, and apply for a remodel permit, which is much easier to obtain.

    Oh well, another 50 years of a suburban supermarket on an oddly suburban stretch of Shattuck.

  • Name Withheld

    Great comment, Mike! I was unaware that Safeway had offered such a forward thinking design on their own instead of just starting with the simple remodel. It’s really too bad that our public officials here in Berkeley are so short-sighted in their refusal to compromise that they hurt the best interests of Berkeley residents.

    SIDE NOTE: Looks like someone is hijacking my nom de plume for making strange comments. I’m not sure who made the post on January 22, 2011 at 8:28 am about the well (or what the well is?) but it certainly wasn’t me.

    SUGGESTION: Perhaps Berkeleyside should allow users to make accounts? But I don’t know if that kind of thing is easy to do with the software setup they have now.

  • http://www.preservenet.com Charles Siegel

    I would rather have housing above, both because the housing is needed and because it is better urban design to have a taller building on such a wide street.

    Nevertheless, this does make Safeway more pedestrian friendly and a bit more urban by bringing the storefront up to the sidewalk. I am sure that the seating will be used, because I see people sitting on the ledge of the bank next door, though that it obviously less comfortable.

    Next step toward undoing the damage done to this shopping neighborhood by the auto-oriented development of the 1950s and 1960s: that bank should be replaced with something more like the older buildings in the neighborhood, housing over storefronts that face the sidewalk.

  • Alan Tobey

    Safeway has managed to produce highly-urban mixed use developments in other green-oriented cities such as Portland, with excellent contemporary architecture. But this project was under the wing of the company charged with upgrading existing stores to the current corporate — highly suburban, as we have seen — standard.

    If this effort had instead been assigned to the “development” division — which has learned to partner with other private builders — we’d likely have had a more interesting project to evaluate.

    Even the concurrent remodel of the Solano Safeway will be putting all the parking below grade level (while not proposing any housing on the site).

    When we revisit this in another 20 years we’ll certainly favor a different result.

    Now maybe Andronico’s could be emboldened to do something more competitive with its money-losing Shattuck Ave store, since the competitive bar will be far lower than if Safeway had done the right thing. Maybe a Berkeley Bowl West kind of thing, but with housing?

  • Name Withheld

    @Alan Toby – I believe that the City of Portland has a very different set of Tenant’s Rights than the City of Berkeley. That could have something to do with why businesses are more willing to involve themselves in the housing rental market in Portland than they are in Berkeley.

  • marc weinstein

    nobody mentioned what a companion piece this is to the NEW WALGREEN’S going in at Shattuck and Cedar . . . Safeway and Walgreen’s are both stores thoroughly worth boycotting, if it weren’t for the fact that they have systematically destroyed the competition- which WAS neighborhood serving small businesses—> the “zombie-like” employees mentioned above are all you’re going to get when you are one of hundreds-of-thousands of humiliated employees wearing that corporate uniform. Sure, some DO manage to enjoy and appreciate their work, but it is SO far from an ideal working OR shopping environment… the NIMBYs should REALLY BE COMING out to yell about that damn Walgreen’s . . .

  • ladypants

    Happy to see that this is finally moving ahead, with or without housing.

  • AlterEgo

    Safeway and Trader Joe have more in common than you think; TJ food has the more trendy packaging that makes it all look “green” and “natural”. Both stores carry “dead” food that is industrially produced and overly packaged in containers that often cannot be recycled; in brief, none of it is sustainable; local fresh produce can be found at farmers markets, Berkeley Bowl or Monterey market, not Safeway, Andronicos or TJ whose produce quality is abysmal. This is not an elitist position as we are eating food that is killing us (watch the obesity, heart disease and diabetes rate)– what extra you may spend on food that is non-industrial you will surely save on health care costs in the long run.

  • Ephemerol*29

    @ Alan Tobey asks a very important as well as nearly incomprehensible and fully near impossible question to answer about the N. Shattuck Andronico’s store and it’s future:

    “Now maybe Andronico’s could be emboldened to do something more competitive with its money-losing Shattuck Ave store, since the competitive bar will be far lower than if Safeway had done the right thing. Maybe a Berkeley Bowl West kind of thing, but with housing?”

    Briefly, from my inside sources, I learned that Whole Foods has offered to buy them out repeatedly in the past and that they have refused. They did hire a new corporate manager and all that was done was to rearrange the deck furniture in the store. I do not shop there anymore either and have shopped with my feet as per the $7.00 boxes of cereal and all of the other over priced things. Employees are jumping ship and or being let go with hours cut back and the usual corporate machinations as the death spiral begins. The deepest tragedy is that it has people still working there that are priceless ( if they have not left for safer waters already ). I Have heard some very dark things about the goings on behind the scenes that are into the surreal, however it’s best not to go into detail here as to protect those who are still working there if they are still doing so. I want people to know how fully “horrid” it is to have the write things like this. One knows something is massively wrong with *any* company when it takes them over a full 2 years to replace their broken security lighting in the back of their own store there. Let’s pray for something much better and healing as well as life giving and reaffirming.

  • Name Withheld

    @ marc weinstein – What’s “humiliating” about a Safeway employee uniform? Polo shirts and slacks are pretty common attire these days.