If their retail space is priced anything like their apartment space, the reason that 4th & U is having trouble finding business tenants is that they’re just plain overpriced.

The last time I checked their apartments were priced over 50% more than the average for other units in the area.

Bruce Love says “Characterizing Berkeley Bowl West as purely a service sector play is rather false.”

I don’t see that they did that at all. They mentioned Berkeley Bowl, and then made a comment about service sector employment. They did not link the two.

@John, thanks. Here is an example of WEBAIC’s side. I think that this does suggest a bias in Berkeleyside’s reporting on this issue (intentional or otherwise). Emphasis added:

Throughout this process a narrative has continuously arose minimizing and misrepresenting West Berkeley’s robust industrial and arts economy and culture. A simple calculus is at work here: if something and/or someone can be described as non-existent, implementing policies to remove these “non-existent” entities is not only harmless, but requisite and good. Conversely, if the reality of low vacancy rates, productive activity, and good jobs is acknowledged, the logic behind radical proposals to rezone large swaths of West Berkeley evaporates and is revealed as socially and economically destructive (if not moderated and re-tuned to the existing dynamic). Some existing misinformation is simply due to very few of our citizens, staff, and politicians not knowing much about an area of the City they have little interaction with. For those without this familiarity, a “blank” spot on Berkeley’s map creates susceptibility to the “there be dragons there”, or “not” there, tales. Some misinformation is due to less neutral factors.
Two recent, unfortunate examples are detailed here, not as personal criticisms, but to demonstrate how critically important your presence, a reality that can’t be denied, is, on February 8 th at City Council: 1.) An architect working with several of the largest developers in West Berkeley, stated during his testimony before Council on January 25th: “Your traditional blue collar jobs don’t exist anymore”. The disrespect to the almost 7000 “non-existent” West Berkeley blue collar workers contained in this statement consists not only in the denial of their existence, but a denial of the dignity of their work and strenuous efforts to provide a good life to their families and children. 2.) Until removed yesterday (though still cached on the City’s website), a City Council web page highlighted an “Industrial West Berkeley” link leading to an official page containing the statement: “Traditional industrial jobs are going overseas, en masse, leaving industrial West Berkeley a virtual wasteland”

One of your captions had total employment in the area at 3600. WEIBAC claims nearly twice that many in blue collar jobs.

Uh, John, you seem to be doing a good job of keeping your source for the employment numbers secret.

Here is some of the city’s work:

http://www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/uploadedFiles/Planning_(new_site_map_walk-through)/Level_3_-_General/06112008_Item9_WB_COMPLETE-original-packet.pdf

Am I reading this right?

Looking at exhibit C there we have 16,454 West Berkeley employees in 2006. Not 3,600 but 16,454.

Of those, construction, manufacturing, and wholesale trade amount to 6,450 of those jobs. So, according to the City it would seem that those blue collar sectors employ many more people than you say are employed in the district. And that number from 2006 makes WEIBAC’s claim of around 7000 sound pretty plausible.

You said Bayer employed half the people in the district. “[...] Bayer employs 50% of the district’s estimated 3,600 workers.” Where are they at, now, 1,500? 1,600? 1,400? West Berkeley in 2006, according to the city had 16,454 employees. So, really, you are saying we’ve had 10,000 or so lay-offs in West Berkeley since 2006?

I’m guessing that you are looking at how employment didn’t grow as much since 1991 as hoped back then (though it did grow, at least through 2006).

John, re: “Bruce, you’re looking at total employment, not manufacturing.”

Uh, kind of. I explained pretty directly what I was looking at and why. The “light industrial” job category accounted for 6,450 jobs in 2006 and plausibly around 7,000 now. The service sector, including restaurants, is another couple of thousand or so jobs and certainly a significant segment of that (difficult to quantify) wouldn’t exist without the light industrial jobs.

Let’s look at a project like the fourth and university “mixed use” development you took a photo of and captioned. It’s pretty easy (look around downtown) for economically anemic development of that sort to enrich a few developers while leaving behind stagnation. In the case of West Berkeley, the plausible threat here is nudging away 7,000 plus jobs – most of them quite good – and leaving behind a sea of fourth and university projects plus some over-priced office parks in a Bay Area characterized by a huge surplus of R&D and “new urbanism” mixed use junk.

@ Bruce Love ––– What jobs were nudged away with the building of 4th & U?

@Bruce: AFAIK, no jobs were displaced when 4th and U was developed. Brennan’s moved to the train depot adjacent to their old location which had been vacant for several years. Brennan’s customers can park at the Spenger’s lot if they get their parking receipt stamped. Celia’s Mexican Restaurant, which is part of a Bay Area chain, moved to Euclid Avenue north of the campus to a vacant space.

That lot was mostly a large paved parking lot with two moderately sized food establishments on it.

@ Bruce ––– You asked us to “look at a project like the fourth and university “mixed use” development you took a photo of and captioned” as an example of “economically anemic development of that sort to enrich a few developers while leaving behind stagnation” that could “nudge away 7,000 plus jobs” in West Berkeley.

Since the 4th & U building is located in West Berkeley and you told us we should look at it as an example, I asked what jobs it displaced. I don’t see the red herring there.

And 4th & U isn’t an example of a “lack of demand” for mixed use buildings, it’s an example of owners asking too much for their space in the midst of an economic downturn. And if you want to talk about red herrings, trying to say that a mixed-use retail/residential building is an example of what one could expect from mixed use R&D/light industrial is a bit bonkers. Maybe I missed it, but I don’t recall anyone on either side clamoring for more apartment buildings in West Berkeley.

One thing I definitely agree with you about is the transportation angle. Aside from the inflated cost of their units, the biggest problem with 4th & U is the public transportation in this city. If it was easier & faster for students to get from that complex to campus, or if commuters could quickly get from that complex to BART, the apartment units would suddenly get a lot more desirable and the influx of tenants would attract businesses for the ground floor storefronts.

Right now 4th & U is reminding me a lot of what’s happening at Jack London Square, and nobody wants that.

@Name, I understand the confusion (I think). I tried to clear it up and I’ll try once more and point out how I only half agree with you about prices at 4th and U. Sorry, this is a little wordy.

Zoning liberalization promotes real estate and development speculation. The resulting development projects do not have to “succeed” for those driving them to profit; people make plenty of money off of projects that lose money. When unchecked by careful planning and zoning, it is very easy for development projects to go off the tracks and build environments that are very harmful to the economy (see, for example, the “exurbs”). When this occurs as a result of abrupt, large zoning liberalization, it tends (for a period of time) to increase real estate prices and rents, dislocating existing economic infrastructure (farms in the suburbs, light industry in West Berkeley).

All of this is likely – both sides seem to agree – as a result of the proposed changes. Raising the market value of the real estate is inherent to the plan changes. What is at issue is whether or not the resulting built environment will be good for the City’s economy or not. Can Berkeley develop its way to a healthier economy? Can we build our way out of malaise? I don’t think so:

4th and U. highlights the dubious suitability of West Berkeley for some of the uses encouraged by the plan changes. It also highlights that ambitious and expensive development is not much hindered by the lack of any well grounded plan for making the resulting structure thrive. I’m sure plenty of folks made good bank making sure that project happened.

I would argue, incidentally, that you see the very same mistake downtown. There, lots of new housing was created and retail space created and/or improved – but the elements of the development is all at odds with itself. To work well economically, the resulting retail landscape mostly needs to command quite high rents most likely as a “destination” area. To make the housing an attractive “new urbanism” success, the retail landscape needs to host low-rent, locally-serving businesses. We lost the nice office supply store. We lost Comic Relief. We lost cinemas. You know all that.

Single handedly, I’d bet, Berkeley Bowl has done much more good for economic development in Berkeley than all of the development downtown and, by making its neighborhoods more attractive residential areas, has helped expose the bogosity of the past couple decades of downtown planning. Let’s please not rush to repeat the mistakes of downtown in West Berkeley, even if it sounds sexy to toss a few more big offices and labs into the mix.

About 4th and U. lowering their rents. As to retail: almost anywhere else in the city has better foot traffic, accessibility, and complementary attractions. The Bay Area as a whole has many, many better options. It’s plausible to me that they couldn’t much rent those units but at a loss. As to residential rent: some people dig the place (per yelp) and in a been-there done-that sense I can understand that. Corporate management. Few hassles. Nice enough. Whatever. It also has a lot of negatives (see Yelp). To really fill the place, though, rents would have to be so low as to dramatically change the economic profile of the people who live there – which wouldn’t exactly help their retail rent prospects or their property values.

In other words: why should they lower rents? Do they actually care if there are all those vacancies? Why should they? That’s a half decent long term real estate investment, from some perspectives. Either the title holder or the title holder’s priority creditors are sitting pretty, just as dead in the water as it appears to be.

I agree with Charles RE: charging for parking. I think the real problem with 4th & U is that they charge prices that are high enough that you expect them to come with free parking, and then charge for parking on top of that.

But it’s interesting to note that the arguments against subsidized parking are essentially the same arguments used against universal health care or social welfare programs. I’m not trying to equate the luxury of owning a car with the basic necessities that social welfare programs provide, I just find it interesting where different people draw the line between acceptable/unacceptable subsidies.