Follow Up Friday: EBI Pedestrian Path

EBI Path Traded Away, Nothing Gained

City Hall Promises Forsaken

Introducing a new Tattler feature: Follow Up Friday.  We look back on previous stories; what's happened after our spotlight shined on it?  If there was a problem identified, has it been solved?  Has there been no change and the amount of elapsed time made the issue newsworthy again by virtue of that fact?  Look to Follow Up Friday to wrap it all up or to highlight for us all how lame our city can be.

The City of Emeryville has reneged on its own requirement to spend $525,000 to build a replacement pedestrian amenity, money made in trade for removing a developer's requirement to build a bike path at a San Pablo Avenue construction project in 2016.  The EBI pedestrian path, a General Plan mandated pedestrian corridor would have connected 45th and 47th streets and helped pedestrians in the Triangle neighborhood make north/south connections in that notoriously disconnected neighborhood.

  

Last year at this time, we were informing readers about the folly of trading one pedestrian path that was to be built and paid for by a developer as part of a development agreement with the City with another much more expensive path close by that would cost the City more than $1 million more.  

The EBI Path was "in the can", all the details worked out and ready for construction.  Residents in the Triangle neighborhood would now be using the path except the City Council in April of 2016 voted to amend our General Plan to remove the path at the insistence of the Escuela Bilingue Internacional, a private school on San Pablo Avenue.

At the time, the City Council told Triangle residents they needed more exercise and the removal of the short-cut path would force them to walk more, a good thing.  Providing other reasons to remove the pedestrian amenity, the Council also stated the path would be a safety risk and asserted gang rapists would be lurking there.

Nonetheless, after giving away the path, the Council told Emeryville residents they would use the in-leau fees paid by EBI to instead make a replacement path connecting the same streets but further east.  The Tattler reported that switch would cost an additional million dollars at least but the City officially continued to work towards that goal.

Until recently.

The mid-block replacement connection nixed, City Hall has now also ruled out using the EBI money to open the long lost "Pickle Works" path connecting Doyle and 53rd streets, long a source of frustration for bikers and walkers seeking convenience in our town and once talked about as an alternate thing to spend the EBI money on.  High costs associated with seizing the property from a private land holder is cited as the reason.

Any replacement path would cost more than the $525,000 the City got from EBI and the budget being in turmoil at City Hall such that it is, it appears pedestrian needs, once traded away, will not be addressed by Emeryville. City Hall has no plans whatsoever to replace the lost EBI pedestrian path, the money remains unspent and pedestrian needs unmet.

Long Awaited Pickleworks Path May Finally Connect Neighborhoods in East Emeryville

Use EBI Money to Open Pickleworks Path

Opinion
The single most widely recognized barrier to walkability in Emeryville has long been seen as the ever anticipated but never arriving 'Pickleworks path' proposed to connect the Doyle/55th Street dogleg with 53rd Street.  If the path was open to the public, as backers are wont to say, a six block detour for north/south traveling bikers and pedestrians would be removed and Emeryville would move a click or two towards validation for its claim of being "a connected place".
The path, starting on the north end between two buildings at the Doyle/55th corner and opening out into a parking lot off 53rd Street connecting north Hollis area with the residences at EmeryBay Village, was formerly accessible but closed when a private developer acquired and rehabbed the 'Pickleworks' building in 1999.  At the time, the City neglected to require the developer to open the path as a condition of approval for the Pickleworks project bringing howls from residents after the popular cut through was closed and gated. The developer has since resisted all attempts by a chastened City Hall to buy the land and re-open the path.  Calls have been made from residents, including from the Tattler, for the City to acquire the land by eminent domain but where City Hall once entertained the idea years ago, the latest Emeryville Capital Improvement Program didn't even list Pickleworks as a consideration.

Looking south through the normally closed
Pickleworks gates.

This ped/bike neighborhood connection path at Pickleworks is even more important now.  With the building of the Center of 'Community' Life on 53rd Street and Emeryville children from the North Hollis residential area detouring east to busy San Pablo Avenue to get to school, the City of Emeryville, who's General Plan cover page refers to the town as "a connected place" must finally open this vital neighborhood connection.

In another area of town, Emeryville fans of walkability lost another big battle a year ago.  That's when the City Council majority amended the City's General Plan to remove a required pedestrian path connecting 45th and 47th streets east of San Pablo Avenue, after a new private school, EBI on San Pablo Avenue, appealed to be let off the hook for building the required path as a negotiated part of their Planning Department approval process for their campus construction. At the time, EBI agreed to spend the money it would have spent on the 'EBI ped path' instead on some other unidentified pedestrian improvements along San Pablo Avenue.

We say EBI should instead pay for the connection at Pickleworks.  The City has a chance with this to correct a past mistake made by the City Council when they voted to reduce pedestrian connectivity by killing the EBI path and now move to greatly improve pedestrian and bike connection in our town at Pickleworks.  Let's finally bring this important neighborhood connection.

Eminent Domain In Emeryville Works For Developers, Not Residents

More Than 10 Years

Residents Still Wait For Pickleworks Connection

Call it another case of 'who does the City of Emeryville really work for?'.
More than 10 years after city officials, under pressure from residents, announced they would use eminent domain to re-establish a public walkway between 53rd and 55th streets if they had to, residents are still waiting.

Now dubbed the 'Pickleworks Path,' it was once a pedestrian short-cut connecting EmeryBay Village, Novartis and the Child Development Center on 53rd Street with the small businesses, and the CoHousing project on Doyle and 55th Streets along with the rest of North Emeryville. The once 300 foot stroll is now blocked by two padlocked fences and requires pedestrians to take a lengthy six block detour.

The city's newly approved general plan calls for the restoration of this pedestrian connection.
In 1999, developers added padlocks to two gates, severing the walkway as a new building went up behind the old Pickleworks facade.
Residents inquiring about the path a over a decade ago were told by officials that the pathway was privately owned and the property owner barred access fearing that pedestrians would vandalize the building. Officials said their request for a public easement was declined as was daytime access to the pathway.
Residents were told that the only way the path could be restored, owing to the recalcitrance of the landlord, was by seizing it through eminent domain, a process the city of Emeryville is very familiar with.

This path now private and blocked by this gate,
connects 55th and 53rd streets and would help
shave blocks off north and south bound
pedestrian's travels if made public.  

Eminent domain has been used by local and state governments for decades as a tool to promote the common good. Private property owners are awarded fair market value for their property and the land or structures are conveyed to government entities---typically to make way for new highways, schools, reservoirs or hospitals.
Recently however, eminent domain has morphed into an entirely new form: the conveyance of property from one private owner to another private owner, with a public entity only involved as a middleman of sorts. This new version was recently and controversially ruled constitutional by the Supreme Court in the infamous Kelo vs City of New London case where people's homes were seized by a Connecticut city and then given to a developer who planned to construct a shopping mall.

Emeryville has been a pioneer in the private to private use of eminent domain.  A recent example was the seizure of the so-called Alder property on the Northeast corner of Hollis and Powell Streets. Michael Alder, the owner of a century-old, seismically retrofitted brick building housing a law office, an architecture firm and firm that converted cars to operate on electricity, had no plans to sell his building. That didn't matter to Emeryville officials who used eminent domain to seize the structure and convey it to Wareham Development and its multimillionaire CEO, San Rafael's Rich Robbins.  Wareham bulldozed Alder's historic structure for a planned project dubbed 'Emery Station Greenway.'  Robbins received almost $2 million in subsidies from the city for his efforts (please see January 25th Tattler story).  Council watchers noted that the city made Robbin's needs a top priority, completing the entire process in barely a year.

This trend has been repeated throughout the city; lightning fast turn-around for favored developers, while eminent domain projects that would improve the quality of life for ordinary residents like restoring the Pickleworks path limp along at a glacial pace.