City of Emeryville as Successor Agency to the Emeryville Redevelopment Agency - Regular Meeting

The time is 07:50. This is a regular meeting of the city of Emeryville as successor agency to the Emeryville Redevelopment Agency. Madam clerk, the role.

Council member Prifouris is absent. Council member Solomon? Here. Council member Welch? Here. Vice mayor Carr? Present. And mayor Mora?

Present. Thank you. Members, do we have a motion to approve the final agenda?

Motion to approve the final agenda. Second.

Madam clerk, the roll.

Council member Priforce is absent. Council member Solomon?

Aye.

Council member Welch? Aye. Vice mayor Carr? Aye. And mayor Mora?

Aye. Motion carries. Next, have ex parte communications. Members, do you have ex parte communications to report? Seeing and hearing none, now is the time for public comment on the consent agenda or items not on the agenda. Members of the public, you'll have two minutes. Please come to the podium. Welcome, Fran.

Thank you. I'm Fran Fran Quitel. I live at Watergate. I serve on two committees in the city, but I'm here, as a resident of Watergate and on Powell Street. About 2,000 people or 15% of Emeryville's population live at Watergate, a 1,249 unit condominium complex located opposite the Powell Street Police Station And Firehouse.

This is an arterial road. They're running east and west. There are no public north or south roads. There's a constant constant flow of pedestrian bike, car, and truck traffic on this interior in arterial road, including the go round, fire engines, ambulances, paratransit vehicles, trash trucks, construction trucks, moving vans, regular vehicular and bicycle traffic, and a convenient and well established casual carpool location. The road seems to function very well and is often lifesaving in an emergency.

The complex is located opposite the Emeryville police driveway. The accident rate is minimal, and safety improvements are welcome, particularly for pedestrians. I attended the October 8 public works Powell Street presentation. This program appears to be a costly plan that decreases safety for visitors and residents, the 2,000 people who live every day and night on this peninsula when some simple changes could be implemented now, improving the area at minimal cost and adding greater safety. Safety studies show that angled parking is far more unsafe as drivers need greater visibility and more time to back out of spaces safely.

Changing Powell Street par parallel parking to angled parking would not only decrease the ability for large vehicles and the go round, for example, to navigate the street on a daily basis, but also increase problems in an emergency.

Thank you Fran. And if there's a member of the public who'd like to see their speaking time, go ahead Fran. You'll have two additional minutes.

Thank you. So what I spoke about was parallel parking is less is much safer than angled parking as especially as cars pull out of spaces. And also for pedestrians, it's much harder to see somebody, behind you. Putting all of the parking on the north or residential side of the street also increases noise, emissions, and lights for Powell Street residents, the people who live there day and night. On my way over here, a neighbor asked me, in the new configuration with two bike lanes next to a car lane, will they all stop for a pedestrian they can't see?

In summary, if you want to improve Powell Street and serve the entire community of bikers, pedestrians, visitors, commercial and emergency traffic, and the 2,000 citizens who live on this street, please fix the area that floods, install flashing yellow lights at crosswalks, and make city resources available to work on two aspects of life in the marina that could use your immediate help, evaluating and if necessary, remediating marina soil stability and getting control of the rats and raccoons nesting under the public boardwalk. These are things that really need your attention now. Thank you.

Thank you, Fran. Any other members of the public? Welcome, Brooks.

Good evening again. Mayor Mora and members of the city council, my name is Brooks Jessup. Many of you know me as a as a transportation nerd, but I also co own a small design business in Emeryville with my wife, Enzi. She's the creative and much less nerdy side, of the equation while I handle the business. About a year ago, we set up our business in a live work space at the Emery, and our experience there has taught me a lot about both the importance of live work the live work program here in Emeryville and some of the issues that are threatening it.

So before I moved into a live work unit myself and did a little bit of research, I hadn't been aware of the central role that units like mine have played in our city's remarkable evolution from a noxious industrial zone into a vibrant residential community. From the nineteen eighties up to the present day, one of the major ways former industrial sites have been redeveloped into residential buildings has been to convert them into live work lofts. What's more, this abundant and affordable stock of live work housing has attracted waves of artists to Emeryville over the years and put this city on the path to becoming the central hub for dedicated makers and innovators that it is today. The benefit that this vital artist community brings to the city is on full display right now during our inaugural art and culture month. It feels like the whole city has been brought alive and activated by art.

However, it wouldn't be an overstatement to say that none of this would be possible without a live work program committed to specifically fostering our artist community. Unfortunately, the other thing I've learned from our experience as live work tenants is that this precious resource is now actually in danger of being undermined. Recently, there's been a push to start using live work for other kinds of business that are more customer facing like restaurants. I know this comes from a good place. We all want to promote more small business and active and activate the streetscape in our mixed use neighborhoods, definitely. But encouraging restaurants to take over live work spaces.

Would anybody like to cede their time? Go ahead. You have two more minutes.

Thank you very much. Encouraging restaurants to take over live workspaces raises some serious issues. First, it conflicts with the city's stated commitment to use live work primarily to support and continue to grow our artist community, to make restaurants the priority for these units is to take them away from artists. Second, the live work units like the one that we live in were simply not designed to house a restaurant. There's no openable windows for ventilation, no convenient access to trash disposal, and no dedicated outdoor space.

Encouraging a restaurant to move into a space like that is like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole, and it sets that business up for failure instead of success. Third, using these units for restaurants is inherently incompatible with using them for art. Restaurants tend to be boisterous and noisy, and often spill out of the unit into the surrounding space, but artists need tranquility in which to ideate design and make their art. So while I fully agree that we should try to activate our streetscapes, I don't believe this should come at the expense of our valued artist community. That's why I want to urge the council to create a special committee to reexamine our Live Work program, whether it should be expanded to new uses like restaurants and how that could be accomplished without displacing our local artists from their homes and livelihoods.

This special committee, it seems to me, should be comprised of representatives from a combination of three of our existing advisory bodies: housing, economic development, and most critically, public art. Thank you very much for your time and consideration.

Thank you for your comment. Welcome. You have two minutes.

Thank you. Hello, mister mayor and members of the city council. My name is Angie Chu. I'm a creative explorer and textile artisan based here in Emeryville. I have an Atelier studio space in one of the live work units at the Emery.

My design education spans from AU in San Francisco, FIT in New York, to Saint Martin in London, where I focus on network textile and and its machine technology. I returned to the Bay Area after graduation and settled in Emeryville for its creative vibrancy. Emeryville is one of the few cities that understands and values artists and our unique lifestyle, how live and work seamlessly unfold and intertwine. We breathe in and out with observation, emotions absorbed in sleep, maybe a thought awakes, an idea lingers as we draw a sketch rubbing a thinner fabric, cut through a wood ply, clicks down that shutter release button of our camera. The unintelligible process infiltrated with uncountable attempts to touch that intangible moment of being a creative It's a rather inward journey first, often unnoticeable to the outside world, fragile but genuine.

My personal artistic endeavor finally became achievable after I moved into our current live work unit at the Emory. After years of balancing a day job with my creative project on the side, for the first time after graduation, I'm able to focus on my own creative work effectively within the same space as I live in. It's a beautiful one bedroom live work apartment with a wall of window grids facing the South Side of Sherwing. Two bay laurel trees sitting outside extend their branches into the view of our window as I sit behind my desk to do concepting work in the mornings when it's most quiet and tranquil. In the afternoons, I usually move on to the technical work where I measure and draft pattern blocks, illustrate out other iterations of design ideas, cut and sew prototypes, and dwell onto handcrafted details.

Over this past summer, new neighbors moved into the units next to ours, a photographer, a sculptor, and to everyone's surprise, a restaurant. We didn't think much of it at first until a constant barrage of loud music.

Would anybody like to cede time? You'll have two more minutes.

Thank you. We didn't think much of it at first until a constant barrage of loud music, parties, and pop ups completely changed the atmosphere and have made it increasingly difficult for me to do my work. So I also urge the council to create a special committee to examine the way live work units are being used in the city and to preserve them as spaces for nurturing true creativity and innovation. Thank you, city members for your time.

Thank you for your comment. Are there any other members of the public? Seeing none, we will now move to the consent calendar. Members, do we have a motion? Move approval.

Second.

Madam clerk, the roll.

Council member Pryfors. Aye. Council member Solomon. Aye. Council member Welch. Aye. Vice mayor Carr. Aye. And mayor Mora. Aye. Motion carries.

We have no action items. The time is 08:02. This meeting is adjourned.