Both the City & the Bay Street Mall Claims Ownership of Emeryville Street

Showdown With City Looms as Bay Street Mall Claims Ownership of Street

Mall Reversal: Citizens Ok'ed to Park on 'Their' Street 
(For Now)

Who owns Bay Street?  The answer to that straight forward question depends on whom you ask.  If you ask the City of Emeryville, they'll say the people own the street but if you ask the owners of the Bay Street Mall, they'll tell you it's private property; they own it.
As a result of a story the Tattler reported last Monday regarding the Bay Street Mall issuing tickets to overnight parked cars on Bay Street, the corporation that owns the mall has taken down signs disallowing non-shoppers from using the street but is asserting this has been done only as a act of good will and that they are under no legal obligation to allow non-shoppers to park on the street because the corporation owns the street.
In a stunningly bold May 24th letter to Emeryville's City Attorney, the Bay Street Mall is asserting since they are "paying property taxes for the ownership of the streets", they own Bay Street, not the City of Emeryville, a claim refuted by City Attorney Michael Guina.  The mall is also asserting their right to disallow parking after 10 PM, the cut off time for metered parking, a direct conflict with what Mr Guina says.

Jen Nettles
Manager Bay Street Mall

The conflict of ownership claims promises a showdown; mall manager Jen Nettles maintaining they will continue to disallow cars from parking after 10 PM while the City of Emeryville guarantees drivers the right to park there overnight.  The conflict also has ramifications that will echo to the incipient Marketplace development on Shellmound Street with its similar arrangement of public streets and private sidewalks hammered out between that developer and City Hall last year.

The divergent assertions between the private corporation and the City have come as a result of an unusual agreement made in 2000 as the mall broke ground.  The mall requested and was granted ownership of the sidewalks along Bay Street while the City retained ownership of the street itself, according to the City Attorney.  Madison Marquette Corporation, the owner of the mall at the time had interest in assuring its tenants that protests or other civil actions would not be possible as a result of the corporate ownership of the sidewalks.  This arrangement has proved valuable to the mall owing to the high level of national chain stores located there, with their often dubious labor and environmental practices.

The letter to the City Attorney included
an Alameda County Tax Assessment map as
proof of corporate ownership of the street.

Ms Nettles refutes claims the mall security officers are issuing 'notices to pay' for after hours parked cars on Bay Street, stating instead only warnings are being issued.  The Tattler reported Monday that tickets are being issued (by either security officers and/or Emeryville police) based on interviews with Tattler informants and ticket writing security officers themselves.
Ms Nettles agreed to remove signs stating parking on Bay Street was for "customers only" regardless of her claim of property rights inherent with the corporate street ownership only as a good neighbor gesture to the City.  The signs were taken down on Tuesday.

In the meanwhile a line is being drawn in the sand; the "Bay Street [Mall] is the present title owner of record for the property and the street" Ms Nettles informed the City in her May 24th letter, a contradiction of what has been directly asserted since 2000 by former City Manager Pat O'Keefe, former Chief of Police Ken James, former City Attorney Michael Biddle and current Attorney Michael Guina.  However, regardless of the numerous claims of City ownership of the street and any documents the City might have to satisfy such claims, a legal construct known as adverse possession could grant the Bay Street Mall ownership of the street by sheer dint of its (uncontested) possession over time.

The Tattler will closely follow this inauspicious evolving story.

Family Friendly Housing In Emeryville: No Longer An Opinion

November 2nd, We Set Our New Course

Now We Will Remake Emeryville 

News Analysis / Opinion

The voters spoke on November 2nd and what they said will reverberate for generations to come.  The voters said in a loud and very clear voice; they expect Emeryville to be recast.  The game changing  Measure J vote, passed by some 72% of voters, mandates that our town will be completely remade with a whole new guiding vision.  Emeryville will morph from the existing auto dependant loft & condo commuter burg filled with single or childless couple professionals and Cal Berkeley students into a new city brimming with young families living in a new type of housing scarcely recognizable by current standards.

Emeryville residents of the future

Just how we're going to get there is unclear but get there we must since residents are now committed to a nearly $400 million new public school rebuild that requires attracting a minimum of 700 new Emeryville students, according to the school district.  Critics of Measure J , including the Tattler, called attention to this glaring problem of a lack of existing family friendly housing in the run up to the November 2nd election while proponents of the measure devoted no time to explaining how the lack of housing problem would be resolved but residents threw caution to the wind and voted to move forward regardless.

Epic in it's scope, Measure J represented a vote of NO to the status quo and YES to a complete make-over for the town.  Now, it's up to the city council to deliver family housing; lots of it and really fast, to support the new school and make sure the voters will is assuaged.  We mustn't fool ourselves; this would not be easy in the best of times let alone during the current economic morass.

Nevertheless, Measure J will usher in a whole new development paradigm for our town and our aging council members must radically change to meet the new demands; a difficult task given their specific personalities and their overall conservative nature.  Now, city leaders must actively and aggressively seek out new housing options.  The old way, waiting for developers themselves to make development proposals won't deliver the family housing that we need.

Not Open For Interpretation

Up until recently in Emeryville, the phrase 'family friendly housing' has been an imprecise term, even as many sectors have clamored for it.  It's been one of those things that everybody seems to want and yet we still can't seem to get.  The city council members have been liberally using the term of late and developers have noticed the change in rhetoric emanating from the council dais and they have provided assurance to the decision makers that any housing proposals they champion can be considered family friendly.  Some decision makers have gone out of their way to let everyone know that they know just what this new type of housing is.

Meet your new neighbors

Planning Commissioner Frank Flores, for one chastised the council in a sharply worded November 18th letter for even discussing whether a development proposal under consideration was family friendly and whether to require appropriate adjustments from the developer.  Mr Flores, who works for the developer in question, told the council members the loft/condo housing development proposal at 3900 Adeline Street is already in fact family friendly and no improvements need be made on that account.  Mr Flores would have us believe what constitutes family friendly housing is a matter of personal opinion and the developers for their part no doubt would like us to leave it at that.

Unfortunately now in Emeryville, we don't have that freedom anymore.  We must bring families to Emeryville to support the voter approved new school investment and families won't listen to Mr Flores or developers or even the council for that matter; they'll decide for themselves what constitutes family friendly housing and unlike the developers, their decisions will be based on if they actually feel comfortable living there as a family with their children.  Hubris from developers or the council and their sycophants will be exposed immediately by actual families in the marketplace.

Going Backwards

Up til now,  Emeryville has been going backwards; we've actually been losing families over the last twenty years even as our population has risen dramatically.  The lack of family housing has exacerbated the situation.  Council member Ruth Atkin recently complained developers, left to their own devices, have only provided eight three bedroom units in the last ten years in Emeryville.  Ms Atkin is correct; we can't afford to go down this path anymore.

Quaint old Emeryville; so very 2010

Against this bleak backdrop, the city has accepted the offer of local planning firm MIG & Associates to define what exactly constitutes family friendly housing in an urban context with a power point presentation made expressly for Emeryville.  This firm has shopped their presentation around town, and so far they've made their presentation to the School Board, the Housing Commission and the City Council.

Luckily for us, MIG has agreed to help us with our lack of family friendly housing.  We no longer need to guess about what it takes to bring families to Emeryville; no longer do we need to listen to opinions from those with hidden agendas to maximize profits for shareholders who might try to fool us.  No longer do we need to listen to ideologues that would help those seeking to maximize profits claiming to want to help build family housing and all the while working to subvert that effort.  Now we have MIG & Associates, a real independent arbiter that is a professional in the field and highly respected among their peers.

You won't see many of these anymore

Bay Street Site Up For Grabs

Given the limited geography of Emeryville and the pressing timeline, every piece of land freed up for possible redevelopment must now be put into play toward the goal of bringing in the 700 new students.  The first on the docket is the large piece of empty land along Shellmound Street directly to the north of the Bay Street mall and coveted by Bay Street developer Madison Marquette.  This land has sat idle for five years, waiting for Madison Marquette to make up their minds if they really want to do a Bay Street mall expansion.  The council has granted the developer exclusive rights to this valuable piece of Emeryville real estate for expanding the shopping mall five years running.

Now the council must expand their thinking and figure a way to build family friendly housing on the site, even if Madison Marquette demurs.

This is what the new Emeryville will look like

Indeed, the council must now be thinking in terms of building family friendly housing on every piece of land until we bring the 700 new students to the district.  Every development proposal must now be considered a contested site.  The past high profit margins from lofts and one bedroom condos developers have enjoyed in Emeryville are at an end.  Now, the profits will be much slimmer.  The council will have to learn how to say NO to developers as they make their claims that family housing developments "won't pencil out", like they always do.  They'll have to hold fast when the developers threaten to leave Emeryville if they don't get everything they want, like they always do.  The council will have to learn to bring a new kind of development to Emeryville.  These old dog council members are going to have to learn some new tricks.  The bonds proscribed for Measure J are being prepared for sale right now and the clock is ticking.  We need family friendly housing now in Emeryville.

Emeryville will be lousy with these

MIG is here:

http://www.migcom.com/

Racial Discrimination Alleged

Racism At Bay Street Apartments

A local fair housing agency has disclosed allegations of racial discrimination at the Bay Street Apartments, the Tattler has learned. Wanda Remmers of Berkeley based Housing Rights Inc said details cannot be released at this time due to possible legal constraints during an ongoing investigation, but made reference to "a number of complaints" at the for-rent apartments located at the Bay Street Mall.

Ms Remmers indicated that the alleged discrimination has been occurring in association with the below market rate rentals, the set-aside units developers must provide in large scale housing properties in Emeryville. The City has been notified of the allegations according to Housing Rights Inc.

Ms Remmers said that her organization has been "very active in Emeryville" and included information about a 'child discrimination' case that involved a family being evicted because they had a baby, at another, undisclosed Emeryville apartment unit.

The owner of the Bay Street Apartments, General Investment & Development, a Boston Massachusetts concern, and the City Attorney's office, both didn't return calls about the allegations.