After 23 Years, Emeryville's Consequential Community Development Director Retires

 

Retirement Journal:

Like What You See in Emeryville? Thank Charlie Bryant

Don't Like What You See?  Thank Charlie Bryant 

News Analysis

Lavishing praise on the outgoing Emeryville Community Development Director, Mayor John Bauters Tuesday night presented a plaque of appreciation to the retiring 23 year civil servant, Charlie Bryant, honoring his "service to the people of Emeryville".  Invoking the consequential nature of Mr Bryant’s tenure here as “the conductor of the orchestra” at City Hall, Mayor Bauters wished Charlie well on behalf of a grateful city noting he could make a “great history book of the city”.  

Mr Bauters' gushing commendation for Mr Bryant was not surprising given his vision of private development and the government's role that has dovetailed so well with that of several iterations of City Council majorities

Emeryville's Community Development Director
Charlie Bryant
2000 - 2023
He brought us what we see in Emeryville,
for better or worse.
August 31st, he's outta here.

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Charlie’s vision for Emeryville did represent a change towards accommodating real estate developers using the language of inclusion for residents versus the time before when City Hall operated in a less democratic manner when those kinds of decisions were more commonly made behind closed doors.  However it is also interesting to note the change in the tenor and the language emanating out of City Hall has resulted in very little actual change in how the City gets developed beyond the normal market ephemeralities real estate developers follow.  Whereas developers were interested in building shopping malls in Emeryville when Charlie came on board in 2000, after 2007 and the Great Recession, they’re now interested in building rental apartment projects.  During the intervening 23 years, the private development intensity, encouraged by a City Hall willing to stand aside and let the market run free, remained unchanged as the developers chased their profits as they saw fit.  The name of the game at Emeryville’s City Hall, then and now is for the government to get out of the way of private enterprise.  This is the culture Charlie Bryant encouraged during his time here.  

Developers & City Council Love Charlie Bryant

While Mayor Bauters gladly noted Charlie’s helpful six year involvement in crafting Emeryville’s General Plan update in 2009, he spoke of resident friendly infrastructure it brought such as the much loved Doyle Hollis Park and the Emeryville Greenway.  Acknowledging the good it has delivered for Emeryville citizens, Charlie noted how our General Plan received an award from the American Planning Association for how democratically vetted it is.  Then reminding the viewers and the Council, he said Emeryville must prepare to conduct another General Plan update after he's gone because the current plan will sunset in a few years.  Regardless of all the praising of the General Plan by Charlie and the Mayor, neither one mentioned the many times where refusal to follow our General Plan has failed us on Charlie’s watch.

Since Charlie Bryant arrived at City Hall and under his unchanging tutelage, Emeryville has seen tremendous growth. He has seen six City Managers come and go while the town has doubled in population.  Charlie has been very influential, as the Mayor noted, and his vision for our town has largely come to pass over the last 23 years.  So while Mr Bauters talked about bikes during the Charlie Bryant fete Tuesday night, efficiently moving cars to service the shopping malls and apartment towers has been the great project for Emeryville over the last 23 years.

Shopping Malls to Apartment Buildings  

By supporting developers as a modus operandi, Charlie ushered in Emeryville’s status as a rental apartment building city, moving from a town with a majority of home owners, 55% in 2000, down to 24% homeownership today.  During Charlie’s time renters, as a percentage of the total population in Emeryville, have increased from 45% in 2000 to 71% today.  The General Plan clearly says NO to this.

Mayor Bauters also praised Charlie’s work delivering family friendly housing during his time here.  But the number of families in Emeryville, the lowest among all East Bay cities, has remained virtually unchanged at 1.76 persons per household (it was 1.71 in 2000).  Emeryville, 23 years on, is still by far the worst city for families in the East Bay.

Where Are The Parks?

But where our Community Development Director has been the most at odds with our General Plan has undoubtedly been in parks and open space.  Emeryville has the fewest acres of park and open space per resident of any city in the East Bay, both before Charlie got here and now.  The General Plan calls for three acres of park space for every 1000 new residents.  But developers don’t want to pay for parks and so every year since 2000, Emeryville gets farther behind the goal.  As a result, Emeryville added almost 7000 new residents since 2000 but only about two acres of new park land (or about 3500 people per acre).  By the sunset of the General Plan in about 2029, we are supposed to have more than 50 acres of parks, no more than 333 people per acre, as the General Plan delineates.  The Sherwin Williams project will bring an additional 3.5 acres of park space but that is little help for such a park starved city.  Right now Emeryville has only about 15 acres and for our population, that totals more than 500 residents per acre. This all amounts to a kind of development but it’s hard to call it “Community Development”.

Empty Storefronts

Typical Emeryville Empty Storefront Story
San Pablo Avenue at West MacArthur
Since this apartment building was built 15 years ago,
the retail space here has never been rented.

Trees too, were never a priority for Charlie.  Developers want to cut our street trees but since 2000, Emeryville has drafted a tree protection ordinance.  Mr Bryant has fought the ordinance every step of the way, protecting an anemic 2.5% of trees developers wanted to cut on his watch.  While our public street trees keep getting cut by developers, the square footage of empty storefronts associated with the new apartment buildings keeps increasing since 2000.  Mr Bryant pushes the “mixed use” development best practices touted by city planning professionals.  But the will to follow through and force developers to rent out the street level retail spaces they are required to build doesn’t exist in the Community Development Department Mr Bryant heads.  So instead we keep getting boarded up storefronts and the community crushing climate they bring. 

'Memorable' City?

This is the kind of development 
Charlie Bryant says satisfies the requirement 
to create a memorable city.

But perhaps the most surprising delivery brought but ultimately ignored by our Director of Community Development is the General Plan’s provision to ensure Emeryville develops as a “memorable city”.  This integral part of the Plan was quoted by the Mayor Tuesday night.  Flying in the face of acres of baking parking lots fronting anonymous shopping malls, anywhere USA apartment buildings and multi-national drive up fast food chains, our General Plan's ‘memorability' clause represents a willful detachment from reality, now 14 years past the General Plan’s inception.  Neither Charlie nor the City Council majority ever has taken memorability to heart and what exists on the ground here serves as a testament to that failure.

It is unknown how much Charlie changed his community development ideas to accommodate Emeryville's elite over the years or how much the elite changed to accommodate Charlie.  We do know it became a near perfect match.  As he prepares now to take his leave, Mr Bryant told the Council Tuesday night his biggest point of pride is the General Plan update he worked so hard on.  But it is glaring that the thing he says he likes the most is the thing he has ignored. Indeed, this was the biggest question we had for Mr Bryant for this story but he refused to comment, allowing his injudicious record to serve as his legacy.