Emeryville's General Plan Overturned to Bring Gay Hating Fried Chicken Fast Food

Do You Remember 'Memorability'?  

Emeryville's Planning Director Says 'Memorability' Is No Longer A Thing, Forgettability Is Much Better

News Analysis

After months of remodel construction and with a grand opening slated for early April, Emeryville’s General Plan is being used to facilitate another fast food restaurant by skewering its provision to create a “memorable city” regardless that the new restaurant is one of a chain of 2709 locations nation-wide. 

The new automobile centric, fast food, national corporate chain restaurant, the Georgia based, Christian, gay hating Chick-Fil-A will “contribute to the well-being of the surrounding neighborhood and community” and it will “create a sense of place, a memorable place” according to the City’s Planning Director Charley Bryant.  The buoyant language Mr Bryant is using for this restaurant is held over from the findings that permitted the building of the previous fast food chain, Panera Bakery with its 1562 world wide locations at the same East Bay Bridge Mall 40th Street site.

Workers were caught last week cutting
branches of off site public street trees
that were blocking the corporate logo.
Emeryville police were summoned but
there were no arrests or citations.

Back in 2012 when the Panera Bakery corporation sought approval from Emeryville to construct the building, the City had just recently finished its new General Plan that would protect against this kind of retail use owing to its “memorability” clause.  At the time however, Mr Bryant hurdled over that problem by insisting that a memorable mural would be painted on the south side of the building as reported in the Tattler.  

However, after the gay hating fried chicken corporation recently destroyed the mural as part of their remodel, citizen complaint again invoked the memorability problem.  How could a fast food restaurant with 2709 locations be considered memorable?  Mr Bryant explained to the Tattler the gay hating chicken place would still comport with the General Plan because the mural had been photographed before it was destroyed and it has been re-created on an ink jet printed banner.  The banner would be hung on the south side of the new building in the same area as the original mural he said.  That would take care of the memorability requirements he said....but not the incessant Tattler inquiry.

Since then, the Planning Director has retracted his earlier statement about the printed banner.  Now Mr Bryant is telling the Tattler, as it turns out, memorability is not really necessary after all, regardless of what the General Plan says.  This leads to questions about the hoops Panera had to jump through in 2012. 

Panera Bakery had to pay the artist to paint the mural at the insistance of the Planning Director in order to provide political cover because without it, a fast food building would have been seen as torpedoing the General Plan right after the Plan had been freshly certified by the City Council.  Ten years later, now it seems Mr Bryant is making a calculation the public doesn't care about trying to create a memorable city anymore and that love of gay hating fried chicken will make Emeryville citizens forget all about their General Plan.  Once this newest fast food restaurant opens, a precedent will have been set and the door will be open to all manner of forgettable national franchise chain retail stand alone buildings for Emeryville.  Ideas of creating a memorable city will become quaint, traded for gay hating fried chicken and other fast food restaurants waiting in the wings.  Wings?  How about another burger franchise? 

The memorable city idea was a noble idea, vetted as it was by the people of Emeryville in a series of public scoping session meetings years ago when we were collectively trying to imagine a city we wanted to live in.  The demise of the noble idea was not democratically vetted, rather, it was simply taken away by the Planning Director and the City Council majority.  Ultimately though, our city is becoming just like every other city because the people failed to keep a watchful eye out over their government.  The fault is ours.  All is not lost however.  We may not get a nice place to live but at least we're going to get some delicious fat and salt in the form of gay hating fried chicken in the deal.

The "memorable" mural that was offered up to get a fast food bakery restaurant for Emeryville.
Now it's no longer needed according to the City's Planning Director.  Memorability is no longer
a thing for Emeryville he says.  Why have memorability when you could have forgettability?

Emeryville Police at East Bay Bridge Mall Protests

East Bay Bridge Mall (Emeryville)
EPD / Alameda County Sheriffs Deputies faced off protesters earlier this evening before looting began at Best Buy.

Shop owners quickly boarded up at Hollis and 40th Street
waiting for darkness.

Emeryville police joined with Alameda County Sheriffs deputies
ready to face off protesters at the Michael's Craft
store at the East Bay Bridge Center. 

Alameda County Sheriffs Office Deputies formed a line facing off protesters.

Missing Trees At Target Store Site 18 Years Later, Mistake Is Perpetuated

This is what the East Bay Bridge Mall
was supposed to look like.

This is what we got and it seems,
all we're ever going to get.

Staff Makes Same Mistake Again; Can't Learn

 Emeryville: The Little City That Can't Seem To Do Anything Right

Opinion
The 1992 Environmental Impact Report for the sprawling East Bay Bridge Mall says it all:  The rows of parked cars there will be ugly and create harsh glare, lowering the quality of life; a "significant" impact for residents.  Fortunately for us the report also identified the fix: plant trees, lots of them and then the problem will become "less than significant".  Unfortunately for us though, Emeryville contains more than its share of pro-developer government officials that don't really care about the resident's interests.  So we didn't get the required trees.
Now years later, part of the mall is being redeveloped with a Target store moving in, and we've been given a second chance to get the landscaping right, but once again government officials can't or won't work in our interests so again we won't get our promised trees.

The Target parking lot has been reconfigured and they're planting new trees right now after having recently cut down the 1990's specimens.  The city says perhaps as many as 100 new trees in all will be planted by Target.  But as in the 1990's, the percentage of the parking lot tree 'canopy coverage', that is the percentage of the parking lot covered by trees when viewed from above, will not be close to the 25% required by the mall's environmental documents.  What percentage of tree coverage Target will plant the city cannot say since apparently only Target knows that; the city hasn't taken an interest.

Past Corruption
Back in the '90's, how we first lost the trees is a history of bad governance; essentially a primer on how not to do it.  A citizen prompted 2003 Planning Department investigation revealed certain rogue Planning Commissioners had 10 years earlier, unilaterally revised the contract with the developer of the mall, Catellus Development Corporation, freeing the developer from the large number of parking lot tree plantings mandated by the mall's Environmental Impact Report document.  The action was literally a back room deal.  The environmental document required a minimum of 25% tree canopy coverage, but the actual amount planted was about 2% according to the investigation.
The investigation fingered at least three Planning Commissioners and cleared up the question as to why the environmental document required 25% tree coverage but the final 'Conditions of Approval' for the mall ultimately showed no tree requirement at all.  The investigation revealed the Planning Commissioners in question never provided testimony as to why they had intervened and let the developer off the hook for providing the trees.  One of the commissioners reflecting on the contract revision from 10 years earlier, did indicate that Catellus simply didn't want to spend the money the larger number of trees would cost and they asked the commissioners for relief from the 25% tree requirement, a task the commissioners gladly, and out of the public spotlight, provided.  The Planning Commissioners must have felt Catellus' pain since the Planning Department's investigation found no evidence of bribes having taken place.

Ghost Of The Corruption
Today, the staff has finally given up on the idea of planning at the East Bay Bridge mall since they are content with letting Target decide how many trees it wants in its parking lot.  The 25% requirement seems to have been abandoned and deference has been given to an 18 year old back room deal between some former Planning Commissioners and the profit maximizing Catellus Development Corporation.  We're locked it would seem, into a place where we cannot honor the ethos of livability the city council keeps publicly hawking.  Nobody at City Hall seems to see the folly of this: it was the apolitical Environmental Impact Report, a scientific document, that ruled that the 25% tree coverage to offset the parking lot negative impacts was necessary, not any commercial interests.  Now it seems this random piece of bad government from a bygone era is going to continue to haunt future residents of Emeryville until a forthright leader steps up and disposes this ridiculous impediment.

A Tale Of Two J's

Two Measures Eerily Similar

Measure J? It's Deja Vu 
All Over Again

News Analysis
Quick: what do 1991 and 2010 in Emeryville have in common?
Answer: they where both election years that featured a highly contentious Measure J.

Perhaps it may be surprising to some new Emeryville residents but the Measure J we just voted on in November has a twin, at least in name, dating back to 1991.

Both campaigns shared much more than the title Measure J; both vastly outspent the opposition and used deception in the campaign.  Both had a phony grassroots genesis and both were funded in a subterranean manner by corporate concerns interested in profit maximizing posing as a bottom up genuine citizen originated process.

Measure J in 1991 was forwarded by an election committee called "Citizens For An Emeryville Grocery Store" and was advocating for building the East Bay Bridge mall (aka the Home Depot mall).  The idea of the measure was to disallow Emeryville's Planning Commission to independently decide about whether to approve the mall and instead have the decision made by a new government entity set up expressly for this, the  so called 'Joint Planning Authority' (JPA); a mix between some of our Planning Commissioners and some of Oakland's Planning Commissioners.  This was justified since a little of the land for the mall was in Oakland.  The Emeryville Planning Commissioners selected for the JPA would be hand picked by Mayor Nora Davis, a stanch supporter of Measure J.  She gave herself the capacity to select only those commissioners who wanted to approve the proposed mall, filtering out the independent dissenters, which constituted the majority.

The whole Measure J election came about because the Emeryville Planning Commission majority had earlier voted against the mall and Ms Davis and the majority of her colleagues on the council needed a way to go around our Planning Commission's vote of no confidence in the proposed mall.

The NO on J committee was called 'Residents For An Independent Emeryville'.

The grocery store the YES on J side was clamoring for turned out to be the Pak 'N Save now located in the East Bay Bridge center at 40th Street and San Pablo Avenue.

Catellus, a Denver based development corporation morphed out of the Santa Fe Railway reality company, was the developer that owned the land and that wanted to build the mall.

Highlights of the Measure J campaign, 1991 style:

• Citizens For An Emeryville Grocery Store had donations totalling more than $140,000, 100% of which came from Catellus Development Corporation.
• A vast campaign of color brochures and phone banking was featured.  The phone banking featured 'push polling' and a last minute negative campaign that called the other side "racist" because they were trying to deny black people a grocery store.
• The No on J side, Residents for an Independent Emeryville raised about $7000, all from Emeryville residents and mostly in $10 to $20 donations.
• The YES on J side had paid staffers but the NO on J was all Emeryville resident volunteers.
• Emeryville power broker and Pete Wilson (R) for Governor donor, John Gooding worked for both YES on J committees ('91&'10).
• The final vote was 50.8% YES to 49.2% NO.

It's Not That We Hate Gays, It's Just That We Don't Think They Should Be Granted Basic Human Rights

Target Targets East Bay Bridge Mall

East Bay gay bashers that want everyday low prices on quality home supplies are eagerly awaiting the opening of a new Target store in Emeryville's East Bay Bridge mall. With a opening date slated for March 2011, the store opening is part of a three store Bay Area expansion for the Minneapolis based anti-gay retailer. San Jose and Dublin are also on the list of sites the retail giant has selected for new stores.

Human rights watchers have long been agitated by Target's anti-gay culture nation-wide and the latest dust up has centered on CEO Greg Steinhafel's donation to an anti-gay Minnesota gubernatorial campaign.

Mr Steinhafel, a long standing Republican party supporter, recently donated $150,000 to rabidly anti-gay Minnesota governor hopeful and Tea Party favorite Tom Emmer. Elsewhere, MoveOn.org and other groups concerned with social equality have complained many top level managers at the Minneapolis headquarters donated large amounts of money to California anti-gay marriage Proposition 8 and other anti-gay political campaigns.

Government officials in Emeryville seemed unperturbed by the controversy, focusing instead on the benefits for the town. Emeryville's Director of Economic Development, Helen Bean told the Contra Costa Times last week, "The new Target will add to the retail selection available to Emeryville residents". Highlighting the economic benefits for Emeryville she added, "it's a winner in a number of ways".

The future Emeryville/Oakland store, located at the Home Depot Expo site near the 40th Street bridge, will expand from 117,000 to 140,000 square feet and will employ 200 to 250, mostly low paid workers.