Tell Berkeley not to landmark the entire Elmwood
Berkeley Landmarks Preservation Commission
As Berkeley discusses upzoning plans for its most exclusive commercial corridors, a well-resourced group of people opposed to the change has submitted an application to landmark the entire Elmwood district to prevent housing from being built there. The application is such a thinly veiled attempt to block housing, it even includes landmarking a parking lot and a 7-Eleven.
Berkeley’s Landmarks Preservation Commission deadlocked on this question at their last meeting; now it will be heard again on June 4th. This area of Berkeley is a high resource area that should have more inclusive housing for service workers, teachers, people of color, and other everyday Berkeleyans priced out of the neighborhood. Let’s build housing and not abuse the landmarking process.
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To:
Berkeley Landmarks Preservation Commission
From:
[Your Name]
Dear Landmarks Preservation Commissioners,
I urge you to reject the proposed Elmwood Historic District designation.
Elmwood has buildings and streetscapes that many residents value, but the current application is overly broad and lacks credibility as a preservation effort. It appears to be a thinly veiled attempt to block housing, submitted only after the upzoning process for Elmwood was already underway.
A parking lot, a strip mall, and a 7-Eleven are pretty obviously not structures worthy of landmarking. It would be better to more precisely identify specific historically-interesting buildings like the Mercantile Trust Company Building. A narrower and more tailored process would be more credible to the community and to state housing regulators. It would show that the goal is to thoughtfully engage with Elmwood’s history while allowing the neighborhood to evolve and not obstruct the zoning process.
The Commission should also be careful not to preserve the legacy of exclusionary zoning. The application’s repeated grounding in the 1916 zoning ordinance, the ordinance that first introduced racialized single-family zoning to Berkeley, is not something we should be embracing as an inclusive and progressive city.
Please reject the current Elmwood Historic District application. Any future preservation proposal should be narrower, evidence based, and a good faith effort to compromise with the parallel zoning process.