In Praise of the Facts

As mentioned earlier (see posts from Nov. 16th), last Wednesday’s stakeholder meeting was a dismaying one, on many levels. The primary reason was Todd Paradis’ bombshell that they would not consider a rebuild of less than 50,000 sq. ft.

However, that did not come until the end of that meeting. By that point, the group had sat through a presentation of six slides of landscaping and public plaza options that were not connected to any design. No mention was made of either the community’s input or the proposed program (see post Oct. 1) offered from the prior two meetings. It was an insult to the group’s time, efforts, and intelligence, and portrayed the stakeholder process as a manipulative tactic on Safeway’s part. But rather than being honest with those who have given very careful thought and input to this project, and acknowledging the group’s frustrations, Paradis chose to be evasive and rude.

The following are excerpts from an email thread that began on Thursday, Nov. 13, voicing disappointment in the turn the meeting took, and in the realization that this process may have been no more than a sham. As always, Safeway PR continues to claim sensitivity toward the neighbor’s concerns, but as noted below, denigrates such concerns as “complaints” and “attacks” whenever they are raised.

Adele Crady of Claremont Ave wrote first:

It was very sad and unfortunate that Todd found it necessary to communicate his anger so inappropriately by insulting one of our chosen representatives at last night's meeting. While I understand why tempers are beginning to fray, it also seems obvious to me that much of this could have been prevented and the process accelerated if Todd had been willing to communicate (as he was so frequently asked to) the MINIMUM square footage that Safeway would find acceptable.

… If Todd had been forthcoming, if the process had been more transparent, we could all have started talking - a year and ten meetings ago - about the parameters that a 50,000 square foot store would entail.

We could have been discussing and designing a potential store that met Safeway's needs and could conceivably be made aesthetically and environmentally acceptable to the majority of the neighborhood. Failing at that, we could have arrived at an earlier agreement to suggest to Safeway that they simply repaint and clean up the existing store.

… The lack of transparency, the apparent lack of honesty on Todd's part, the pretense that our concerns were being weighed and our chosen representatives were being considered as spokespersons for hundreds of other individuals, the failure on Safeway's part to honestly engage in a dialogue with full disclosure of Safeway's imperative and non-negotiable agenda - these factors have engendered distrust and ill will.

Elisabeth Jewel, whose comments often seem to create larger barriers to progress with their tone and obfuscation, replied by saying:

Todd and I share your sadness that last night’s meeting was marred by unacceptable personal attacks and negativity. Last night, after months of listening to those who choose to speak at the meetings, we presented some design concepts hoping to receive helpful feedback about how you felt about the look and feel of these concepts. We realize now that many of you could not react without knowing the size of the store.

…We had hoped that during the meeting we could get helpful comments that reflected what you did and did not like about the drawings. We were frustrated by some in attendance who chose to complain rather than offer useful comments that could help us move forward. We were gratified that some people took the time to share their thoughts in the spirit of working together toward a common goal of improving the current situation at the site.  

…We are buoyed today by the numerous emails we received from people who attended the meeting asking us to press on and build a new, larger store. We will continue to move forward to come up with a plan that does the best job of addressing Safeway’s needs, city requirements, immediate neighbor sensitivities, traffic impacts, and neighborhood aesthetics.

Todd Paradis followed up with excerpts from five emails supporting the project (see Nov. 16 post). Joe Pasquariello of Hillegass Ave replied:

I know that you have a job to do and it's convenient for you to believe you're struggling against a vocal minority, but it's just not the case. Your consultant has done an admirable job of designing a process that lets you treat the community as if it consists of 7 or 8 people. I understand the value to Safeway of minimizing the input of the neighborhood residents, but you need to accept that there are hundreds of actual people standing behind these representatives. I'm not surprised there are 5 people with other viewpoints, but don't do yourself the disservice of thinking that these people represent a silent majority who are too busy to attend meetings.

Ricardo Hofer of 63rd Street also observed:

First Elisabeth says: "We are buoyed today by the numerous emails we received from people who attended the meeting asking us to press on and build a new, larger store." Her "numerous" turns out to be a grand total of FIVE, as quoted by Todd, not very impressive when compared to the hundreds of signatures that Concerned Neighbors has gathered and the dozens that have spoken up at meetings.  

Cheri Hickman of Alcatraz Ave added the following:

We don't say you don't have any support for a large-scale store. We say that -- as ever -- you seem to actually hear and privilege the few voices in "agreement" with your vague goals and unstated objectives … There is no evidence for wide neighborhood support for your project, most especially because you've yet to come clean with any vision for the store -- its scope, scale, or size. What is it exactly these five people are fully behind in their e-mails?

… You continue to look for some generalized, non-specific expansion agreement, and it has been this way from the beginning. If you find our exasperation, frustration, and suspicion surprising, I can only wonder at your innocence.

That said, I'm sure every neighborhood association and a good many residents who actually live in these neighborhoods will gladly make themselves available to once again express the contents and limits of their support for the transformation of the current site.

…If you wanted meaningful dialogue and actual support around your own goals, it would have been appropriate to state your real goals and work with this community to find ways to make those goals palatable and livable.

…At our last meeting, when you delivered the 50,000 square foot minimum, you also said this would mean rooftop parking, all operations-related functions against the property lines, as well as entrances and exits on Claremont. What room for the community is there in those statements? … Why have you not been developing various visual models for such a store and working with the community, including its architects, to establish viability, common ground, and good will for your goal?

For me, personally, Safeway has yet again demonstrated its inability to be a good neighbor, to understand what that even means to this community, and has hidden its motives and objectives behind a facade of process (& more meetings), undermining -- once again -- our efforts to engage with them toward some mutually beneficial goal. I only hope you have some idea of just how counter-productive and destructive your methods have been.

And finally, Ken Alex followed up by saying:

Cheri's e-mail is nicely stated, and I add my voice to hers. Safeway's proposal violates the zoning for the area, the sense of the community, the flow of the neighborhood, and the needs of the public. The mediation process has been designed by Safeway from the beginning to result in a 50,000 square foot complex, regardless of the input of local architects, merchants, neighbors, and shoppers. The process has been a cynical manipulation. It is unfortunate because Safeway had some amount of goodwill here, with the neighborhood supporting a viable and appropriate remodel on something like the existing footprint. Safeway has squandered that and has signaled that it seeks a fight. That's too bad. I urge Safeway to reconsider.

But if you really want to know what people think

Here are some comments from the last Stakeholders' meeting about the proposed public plaza, the lack of response to the community input, and the continued lack of engagement on Safeway's part with the real wishes of the Rockridge and Elmwood residents.

Overall, the themes that are reiterated again and again include concern that a large-scale store will adversely impact traffic patterns, local businesses, neighborhood atmosphere, and neighboring residents. There is a consistent refrain that Safeway does not understand the neighborhood. In fact, when a comment was made to that effect, Todd Paradis abruptly responded "I'm not hearing anything useful. All I hear is blah, blah, blah."

You can decide if the following is the blather of a "vocal minority" or not:

No one is willing to say what the size would be – what will be the range of the size of the Safeway store? It has a lot to do with how many years we’ve spent – that would help us to join with you – what’s the range of size for this idea here?

How can you present something you are not allowed to do? You don’t own the sidewalk or the street.

We need to see the scope of work – we want limited expansion, a satellite store to 51st St.

There is consensus that we do not want other retail stores – give the neighbors a buffer – we are not interested in other retail stores other than the Safeway store.

I’m a big fan of the trees and landscaping, I like a little bit of the look that you brought in, much better than the previous large faux-mediterrean design we saw. However, I’m concerned that the look of this is all predicated on going into public space, getting permission from the city of Oakland – a lot of things we can’t depend on. There might be problems in getting that permitted.

The façade is much nicer than the huge monolithic façade but the basic conception seems to be the same...it looks like there’s a second floor, a lot of the concerns that have been raised previously seem to still be there.

(This is) a great example of how Mr. Paradis and his troops do not understand this neighborhood – you rob us of 10 on street parking spaces for cars ...you are destroying our neighborhood with your beautiful landscaping, that’s nonsense, those bulb-outs. We insist on our small businesses surviving – they are more important to us than what Safeway brings to us . Why can’t you and the architect get together and tell us what size the store will be? If you want to build small stores that serve the community, the only way we’d ever be convinced is on the deed of trust is that there will be no relationship between Safeway and the local store – it would have to be on the deed of trust and stay there forever. My last point, why can’t you commit to size? Mr. Paradis – in that you are from Hayward – you don’t get our neighborhood. Want to have this studied in the EIR – more studies of the economics of the community and we’ll protect it no matter what.

That although on 4th street there are similar plans and bulb-outs, in that location I like them but in this location I don’t. One of the things I like about this corner there’s a certain fluidity from one store to another – people who go to Cole Coffee go across the street to Yasai – they treat the multiple businesses as if they are a whole – symbiotic relationship – don’t involve clear divisions and we all feel like we’re a part of the community. One of the things in this design, you’ve created a wall between the store and the street – my guess is that is the intent, Safeway’s space is for the store and ... it has created a very nice space that ignores there are other stores in the neighborhood. 

With the landscaping, there’s a drought and it looks like it involves plants that take a lot of water – lack of recognition of what we want – feature in front is a water feature, we don’t do that – it doesn’t fit here – that’s important. I don’t understand why we were invited to look at six slides and bike racks – it feels disingenuous – there could be ideas about size, statement of options you are willing to consider – I don’t know what you are willing to consider – it’s frustrating to sit here and feel like I’m talking into a void.

Clearly this has a lot of water over the dam and a lot of heartache. There’s two approaches, one is to look at it from the overall planning or look at the architecture detail. Strategy here is to try and soften the architecture rather than big box approach ... Fundamentally it’s important for the community to bring a business plan forward – big scale/medium scale/small scale possibilities – representation of their retail – willing to do within the context of this site – what’s viable in terms of size...Fundamentally it goes back to you to present the thresholds for this site, make that case.

I would caution that eliminating any such thing (landscaping), even for architectural detail,  would amount the same thing as a blank wall – huge dead space. We need to think of other creative ways to use that space – kiosk types of things, newspaper stores, shallow, institutional community control over the renting and design of those stores – without somehow separating it from Safeway. It may well be there’s some kind of non-profit type of arrangement that could be made with Safeway that could shift control of the usage of the storefronts . If you eliminate the storefronts entirely, it will feel like a big dead zone, would leave more emphasis on Safeway, a Safeway wall.

We have to assume that all the cars will come in off of Claremont – I think we’ll need access to the site from College Avenue. You spend a lot of time showing landscaping and not showing the building – it’s like putting lipstick on a pig. You are coming into city property – set everything back further – go back that amount, we’re not losing any cars – in fact even further back – additional lane of traffic – a bus isn’t being held up. One of our problems with a bigger store is the increase in traffic. All of these should be put on the website so that everyone who isn’t here can see them and be outraged.

How can we discuss certain issues without reference to size or height of building? Who doesn’t believe that size isn’t the major issue, I don’t know what planet they are on. These concerns are secondary issues it’s not important to us – start with scope of the store, otherwise this process end in a very unfortunate way – we’ve moved in that direction tonight unfortunately.

All I ask if for Safeway is to be honest, Stop this dance that we’re going through. If 95% says something, you need to listen to it... We are going back to square one, I’ve seen this before – we should know what we’re talking about. It’s about size. This is nice, but it doesn’t apply to what the various meetings or committees have discussed. These architects keep on putting the major entrance right by us – we want a buffer zone, keep it away from the neighbor. If you look at the plans that Safeway has, it’s a total disregard from the what the neighbors have to say.

You know you're in trouble when your supporters call your store "gross"

Safeway continually falls back on the argument that because they have a modicum of support for a greatly expanded store, they should be allowed to go forward with their plans.  In a rather McCainesque manner, they have denied over and over again the fact that the community is strongly invested in preserving the quality and unique atmosphere of the College Ave neighborhood between Alcatraz and Claremont.  The opposition that Safeway runs into results from this denial, from their complete lack of understanding about the neighborhood and the people who live there.  Instead they trot out a total of five anonymous emails that voice support for their project.

It is almost absurdly funny to read these emails.  One is not much more than a sales pitch for the person's consulting services, one describes her refusal to shop at the current store because it is "gross", and one refers to the neighbors as crazy.  If this is what Safeway has going for it, one has to wonder when they'll start featuring photos of Todd Paradis field dressing a moose.

Here are the excerpts.

From Todd:

"Here are all the emails (not the ones we liked, but all) I received since yesterdays meeting.. I will not disclose the names because we do not have expressed permission. Please understand, we are telling the truth when we talk about the support that exists in the community."

And from the emails themselves:
2.
I am continually embarrassed by my neighbors who want to keep this city as it has been for 40 years or take all of us out of our cars at all costs. I LEAVE Oakland BY CAR to grocery shop now. I hate going to mulitple places w/my 2 small kids in tow to get everything I need. Sure, I walk to so much here in Rockridge but if i need to do all my shopping at once, I will need to drive there to get it home and tote my kids and I want to get it all at once. Somewhere clean, nice and updated. I stopped shopping at both Safeways in my area b/c they are so gross. I would LOVE a new, improved, large, beautiful place to shop and it would probably mean I would give MORE business to the merchants nearby who I never frequent at the moment. I don't actually know 1 person that thinks otherwise.

3.
I really, really support your project. I grew up in Rockridge, my parents live very close to the store and use it all the time. They also strongly support redesigning the store to be larger and more urban.
I think you guys need to realize that your proposal follows all of the city's new rules for retail and transit-oriented development, and not give into to crazy neighbors who think that a gas station is the best use of a major corner. Developments in Oakland are not approved by a vote of the neighbors.
If you want to talk more about people and policies that support your vision, drop me a line. I'm a real estate and marketing consultant who has worked on controversial developments, and I'm also Chair of the City of Oakland's Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee.

4.
I appreciate the lengths that the developers are making to fit the new design into the community. It is a true shame that the voices of the vocal minority in Rockridge may spoil the needs of the much much larger silent majority. I hope you are able to build a bigger store, one that helps with traffic, and that looks better than the current location, which means ANYTHING rather than what currently resides there. Believe me, most of Oakland and Berkeley wants a new store built. 

50,000 Square Feet!

At the end of a contentious Stakeholders' meeting, in which Safeway once again disrespected the time, efforts, intelligence, and wishes of the Rockridge and Elmwood communities by neither responding to the Proposed Program put forth by the Stakeholder reps (see blog post, Oct. 1) nor offering any feedback on the suggestions submitted by the community at the last Stakeholders Meeting, Todd Paradis, Safeway's real estate manager finally gave some indication of Safeway's bottom line:

50,000 square feet, with rooftop parking, and loading docks in the neighbors' backyards.

In his words, taken from meeting notes:

"The idea of doing a 20-25k square foot store... that’s not an option for us, that’s not a concept that HQ wishes to advance at this time... We’d like to do a store around 50,000 square feet... Look at loading dock and driveway issue. I run into a problem with contiguous neighbors at that point. I am committed to come back to the next meeting that shows a size store – I won’t bring back 25k-35k square foot store – that project wouldn’t be viable – I don’t want to show you that. I think the magic number for me is about 50k square feet. ....In a scheme like that, the parking would be on top – I’m not saying there would not be a way to figure out how to do underground parking, that’s a lot of excavation. Store at ground level would end up with parking on the roof..... If we didn’t do a grandiose plan – we would do a paint and patch."

Interestingly enough, this corresponds to the site plan submitted to the public in June 2007.  Apparently, wiping the slate clean had nothing to do with gathering community feedback. 

Finally, it is interesting to note that what was presented at the meeting on Wednesday evening were six slides showing a public plaza option that would actually take over the sidewalk and part of the street, eliminating parking for local merchants.

They paved paradise, put up a parking lot

As we consider the proposed program and the community-submitted plans (such as those listed on Safeway's website), there are several components—especially traffic and parking— that must be viewed not only from the perspective of zoning regulations, but the impact they will have on the neighborhood. While size and appearance has dominated much of the discussion, and for good reason, it is worthwhile to think about such things as driveways and traffic signals. Below are comments from one reader:

"I have to admit that I find it troubling that all three of the posted "plans" deal with the main entrance in precisely the same way: one auto entrance, on Claremont. The plans are imprecise relative to how many lanes of traffic Safeway expects to funnel into this one auto entrance but it will (obviously) require a four way light and—if it is going to be the only auto entrance—it will most likely be four lanes of traffic.
Hasn't ANYONE noticed that the idea of only one auto entrance has been mentioned REPEATEDLY and is a VERY BIG issue?"

As a followup to that, comments from another reader:

"It is important to me to keep multiple entries & exits on college and on Claremont.   Multiple entries make exiting Safeway easy without a wait.   But more importantly,  multiple entries slow traffic down which puts the pedestrian in charge of the street. Thus, the multiple entries actually add to the quality of our lives on that street by letting the pedestrian control the street."

Note from Elisabeth Jewel about this evening's Stakeholders' Meeting

As a followup to the agenda for tonight's Stakeholders' meeting, Safeway's PR representative Elisabeth Jewel sent the following in an email on Nov. 11th:

"There has been a change in the purpose of our meeting Wednesday night. There is no formal presentation or architectural plan at this point – the community architects have met twice and are meeting with Safeway’s architect tomorrow – so it’s too soon to present any formal ideas. The purpose of the meeting tomorrow is to have the key themes presented and have the community be able to dialogue with Safeway’s architect regarding a sampling of ideas. We are hoping that the meeting in December will be more formal with the community architects and Safeway’s architect presenting plans together."

Agenda for Tonight's Stakeholder Meeting #5, Nov 12, 2008

AGENDA
Section I. Introduction/Context 7:00-7:15
• Welcome, introduction, agenda review
• Review overall project objective and today’s objectives
• Review of Groundrules
• Review process for tonight’s meeting

Section II. Reflection of ideas generated during Meetings 1-4 7:15-7:30
• Review areas of agreement and open items
1. Interior
2. Exterior
3. Landscaping
4. Contiguous Neighbor buffer
5. Parking
6. Traffic

Section III. Open dialogue with David Blair (architect) 7:30-8:45
• Todd Paradis – opening and purpose
• David Blair presents a couple of ideas for each program element – a sampling of some of the important aspects related to landscaping, buffer, exterior, parking, etc.
o Stakeholder reps/community members share what they like about the ideas, ask questions for clarification, offer additional suggestions

Section IV. Close of Community Session 8:45-9:00
• Review plans for next meeting – community architects and David Blair to present ideas and sketches to the group
• What additional resources are needed for December meeting?
• Other?