Marina Plan & WaterfrontOverview

Administrative Draft - 12/17/99
1.0 SUMMARY AND INTRODUCTION

1.1 Plan Concept and Vision

The Berkeley Marina is a valuable community resource offering recreational opportunities and open space amenities to the community and visitors from throughout the Bay Area. It is one of the largest marinas in the Bay Area and also one of the most beautiful containing extensive plantings of trees and lawn areas. The Marina is the focal point of the Berkeley Waterfront and Provides the primary public access to the San Francisco Bay shoreline. In addition to the boating and recreation facilities, parks, and open space, the Marina includes a variety of commercial uses: boat repair, boat charters, ship chandlery, bait and tackle shop, sailing schools, restaurants and hotel. Commercial uses are intended to support the overall marina function and be compatible with marina use. The Marina Plan and Waterfront Overview (the Plan) seeks to build on its San Francisco Bay setting and magnificent atmosphere to guide Marina development to the year 2019.

The purpose of the plan is to provide a blueprint to direct change in response to future conditions and trends. The focus of the Plan is to offer a variety of recreation, educational and commercial opportunities balanced by the need to protect and enhance the open space and natural resource value of he Marina and Berkeley Waterfront. The Plan is intended to strengthen the role of the Marina as a major public amenity and add to the vitality of the City and region. The Plan presents a comprehensive recreation and open space program that will ensure the Marina continues as one of the premier marinas in the Bay Area.

The Plan does not propose land use changes at the Marina. Existing recreational facilities and open space areas will be maintained and enhanced. The majority of existing commercial uses are under long-term lease arrangements and, therefore, do not offer potential for significant change. The primary focus of the Plan is to direct future growth and change within a framework of conservation and environmental quality. The Plan identifies necessary facility improvements as well as appropriate new uses and facilities that will reinforce and strengthen important Marina features.

The Plan will be adopted as an implementing tool of the General Plan. The bulk of the Marina Plan will consist of policies affecting boating facilities; infrastructure and programs rather than land uses, and, therefore, should be considered an implementing plan rather than an Area Plan. The Plan goals and land use designation will be included in the new General Plan to provide the broad policy framework for the separately adopted Marina Plan and Waterfront Overview.

The best thing that can be said about this plan is "spineless."

It fails to acknowledge the major factors that led to the lack of any substantive outcome as a land use plan - i.e., the City Council's directive to summarily rule out any significant commercial development.

It also fails to acknowledge the economic infeasibility of the plan as it is now constituted. Public workshop participants called for a plan based on economic reality - but the result appears to be a plan that exists in a financial dreamland.

And it fails to incorporate programmatic planning elements, specifically in the form of guidelines for the role of non-profits. These elements were repeatedly brought up at the subcommittee meetings, met with favorable response from all present, including staff, but continue to be omitted from the Plan.

Here area some specific wordings from the "concept and vision" that cause concern:

"The purpose of the plan is to provide a blueprint to direct change in response to future conditions and trends."

Where are these "future conditions and trends" discussed? I can find no analysis of changing conditions in the document. It seems to work from the premise that conditions driving waterfront planning decisions will remain static. This is probably a valid assumption, but it makes the above wording superfluous, if not misleading.

"In addition to the boating and recreation facilities, parks, and open space, the Marina includes a variety of commercial uses: boat repair, boat charters, ship chandlery, bait and tackle shop, sailing schools, restaurants and hotel."

Why are the non-profits left unmentioned? In a red ink environment, non-profits and cooperatives have a critical role to play. One gets the strong impression that only the municipal and commercial models for water-related activity have been considered as serious players here.

This point has been raised repeatedly at subcommittee meetings. Planning staff agreed to develop and incorporate this programmatic element - but it's still absent from the Plan, aside from an occasional vague mention in passing. Clearly there was no planning effort expended in this direction (probably because programmatic planning is relatively abstract, and does not lead to a "pretty picture").

"Commercial uses are intended to support the overall marina function and be compatible with marina use."

This has never been achievable in practice, unless one uses an unrealistically broad definition of "support the marina function." Very few revenue-generating businesses at any urban waterfront are water-related. Hotels and restaurants may be "compatible," but they certainly do not "support the marina function" in any meaningful way other than by providing a revenue stream. (and by contributing to the mixed-use social character of the waterfront, a contribution that seems to go largely unrecognized). If the marina relied on truly water-related businesses (boat yard, chandlery, commercial sailing school, yacht brokerage) then this revenue stream would be non-existent.

The point here is that limiting commercial uses to those that "support the overall marina function" is an extremely unrealistic limitation that has never been achievable without massive subsidies, in Berkeley or on any other modern urban waterfront.

"The focus of the Plan is to offer a variety of recreation, educational and commercial opportunities balanced by the need to protect and enhance the open space and natural resource value of he Marina and Berkeley Waterfront"

Where is the "balance?" The City Council, on May 11 1999, unanimously directed all planning efforts to exclude any significant commercial development. This action was taken despite considerable support for appropriate forms of such development from public workshop participants and from a number of Waterfront Commissioners, and even from the off-the-record preferences of Marina and Planning Department staff.

This is the single most important defining event in the development of the Plan in its current form, yet it is entirely omitted from the narrative of the history of this document.

Interestingly, other bits of enabling legislation are included as appendices to the Plan. Why not also include item 20 from the May 11 1999 council agenda?

"The Plan does not propose land use changes at the Marina."

This is very much at odds with the original intent of the planning process. By what authority has the land use aspect of the Marina Plan and Waterfront Overview been deleted?

"The Plan identifies necessary facility improvements as well as appropriate new uses and facilities that will reinforce and strengthen important Marina features."

But says nothing about how these things are going to be paid for. Without the economic analysis, the proposed site plans are worth about as much as my four-year-old's finger paintings.

As noted above, programmatic planning via non-profits is one answer to economic constraints, but this strategy gets no ink at all in this plan.

"The bulk of the Marina Plan will consist of policies affecting boating facilities; infrastructure and programs rather than land uses, and, therefore, should be considered an implementing plan rather than an Area Plan."

This makes sense, but in order to be an "implementing plan" it has to say something about how these things are going to be paid for. Where is the economic analysis? And, where do the "policies affecting programs" actually appear in the plan?" (Answer: they don't.)

"The Plan goals and land use designation will be included in the new General Plan to provide the broad policy framework for the separately adopted Marina Plan and Waterfront Overview."

A good ploy, taking the land use issues out of the Marina Plan and burying then in the highly controversial General Plan for the entire City. Probably not deliberate, but it will have the practical effect of keeping the basic issues of land use and development far away from the public eye.

What remains is a "mom and apple pie" approach to planning. The Plan includes a lot of nice graphics of attractive physical improvements and amenities - paths and park benches, open space and wildlife habitat. There are good words about enhancing water-related recreational and educational resources. But none of the hard choices have been made. There is nothing in the Plan to take serious issue with - and no way to pay for what's shown.

Where do we go from here?

This planning process is out of time and money. It has fallen dramatically short of its goals, but fortunately it will probably not do very much harm. There may even be some useful aspects to the documents produced, as outlined in my comments posted in June '99. But without significant funding for the projects proposed by the Marina Plan, it will go on a high shelf. And, for all practical purposes, it will stay there.