The Berkeley City Council meets at 6 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 27, at the school district board room, 1231 Addison St., with a key housing vote on the Ashby BART station's east lot.
Ashby BART east lot
Staff recommend exclusive negotiations with a team of Satellite Affordable Housing Associates (SAHA), Habitat for Humanity East Bay/Silicon Valley and Deborah D. Matthews Consulting for the lot at Woolsey and Tremont streets, east of the Ed Roberts Campus. Related California and the Kelsey would be the backup team.
The city received six proposals, and a seven-member panel unanimously ranked the SAHA team first, the staff report says. The request required at least 35% of units to be affordable at an average of 60% of area median income and at least 300 bedrooms. The council would reserve $1 million in housing mitigation fees for predevelopment; the team could later be eligible for $7 million more. The team would pay a $100,000 exclusivity fee plus about $445,000 to cover city costs.
Also on the agenda
- Underground transformers: final approval of an ordinance barring above-ground electrical transformers on private property for new residential, commercial and mixed-use projects. It passed first reading 7-0.
- Park name: a proposal to rename the park at the north end of the Berkeley Waterfront "Si Se Puede Park."
- Safety grants: a $200,000 state traffic enforcement grant and an application for a Caltrans grant to upgrade 30 signalized intersections on Shattuck, University, Bancroft and Oxford.
- Contracting: an ordinance requiring competitive bidding for city service contracts over $100,000.
Residents can watch on B-TV Channel 33 or join on Zoom.