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.