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?