One motion, five separable decisions. The recommendation bundled the environmental finding, the plan itself, the General Plan amendments, the repeal of two existing plans, and a new zoning district into a single resolution and a single first reading, and that is how it passed. Council also made four changes from the dais, set out below.
Today the rules allow four stories and fifty feet for apartments over shops, and three stories and forty feet for apartments alone. The October 2025 public review draft proposed a tiered limit: eight stories at the biggest corners, six at the next, five elsewhere. The June 2026 final draft replaced the tiers with a single limit of seven stories and seventy-five feet the length of the corridor, for apartments over shops and for apartments alone. Shops or offices on their own stay at three stories.
The height limit is not the thing that decides how much gets built. The City's own March staff report says so: it is "unlikely that the number of units that develop in the Plan Area will vary much between the options, because developers' presumed use of the State Density Bonus would allow them to achieve the height and unit counts feasible regardless of the height and FAR standards that are in place." The plan's own buildout memo assumes the state bonus is used on every opportunity site, reaching about eight stories. Above roughly eighty-five feet a building can no longer be framed in wood, and the cost jumps. Cost is the ceiling, not the zoning.
This is the recommendation as it appeared on the Council agenda for September 29. Each line below was separable. All of them passed as one resolution plus one first reading.
The Council was asked to consider an addendum to the 2023–2031 Housing Element Environmental Impact Report and to find that none of the conditions requiring a new or supplemental report have occurred. There is no environmental study of San Pablo Avenue itself. An addendum can be the legally correct instrument. It is still a different thing from studying the street.
The seven stories, the sixteen-foot sidewalk, the objective design standards in Appendix E, and the plaza and open-space incentives.
Redesignate parcels and update land use designations so the older documents agree with the new one.
Two adopted plans are retired by the same resolution that adopts the new one. I have not yet worked through what commitments in either document disappear with them. Council voted on this line without that answer published.
A new Chapter 23.202.160 of the Municipal Code, plus conforming amendments elsewhere in the code.
After 53 public speakers, Council adopted Resolution No. 72,466-N.S. and the first reading of Ordinance No. 8,034-N.S., all ayes, on a motion by Councilmember Kesarwani seconded by Councilmember Taplin. The five decisions above passed together. The second reading is Item 2 on the October 13 consent calendar.
The staff version allowed 40 feet and three stories for non-residential projects. Buildings with housing stay at 75 feet and seven stories.
Staff’s supplemental material proposed a minimum of 145 homes per acre. The Planning Commission had recommended no minimum. Council set it at 100.
Section 23.204.160(D)(3)(c) changes from “Prohibited Uses” to “Residential Uses.” I have not yet read the rule closely enough to say what this changes on the street.
The ordinance creates an “Affordable and Family Housing Opportunity Area” inside the Mixed-Use Light Industrial district, mapped in Figure 23.206-1. Apartments and mixed-use buildings are allowed there with a use permit if the project either rents every unit at no more than 120 percent of area median income, with at least half at 80 percent or below, or makes at least 35 percent of its units two- or three-bedroom. MU-LI is West Berkeley’s light-industrial zoning, where the makers are. This is a change to industrial land, adopted inside the San Pablo motion.
Council referred options for businesses displaced by new projects: a business license tax waiver, marketing support through the Office of Economic Development, meetings between construction managers and nearby businesses, warm-shell standards for new commercial space, and other relocation measures.
Councilmembers Blackaby and O’Keefe moved the same package with residential and mixed-use buildings at 55 feet and five stories. Ayes: O’Keefe, Blackaby. Noes: Kesarwani, Taplin, Bartlett, Tregub, Lunaparra, Humbert, Ishii. Seven stories stands.
Nothing in the adopted motion adds a cost estimate or a funding source for the public-realm work, and the West Berkeley Plan and the San Pablo Avenue Public Improvements Plan were rescinded in the same resolution. Nothing in it removes the sixteen-foot sidewalk.
The September 29 annotated agenda (Item 34, both motions and their text), the staff supplemental material on minimum density, and the October 13 Council agenda (Item 2, second reading).
"This Specific Plan is limited in its ability to establish new funding mechanisms; rather, it can only identify potential tools and strategies that may be used to support implementation."
San Pablo Avenue Specific Plan, Final Draft, funding chapter.
That is honest, and I would rather have it than a promise nobody can keep. It also means the public-realm half of this plan is a wish list until somebody funds it. What the funding chapter contains is a table of possible sources with checkmarks in boxes: no dollar figure, no assignment, no schedule.
One thing is firm. Berkeley's code makes each development pay its fair share of the water and sewer upgrades its own project requires, one project at a time. That covers pipes. It does not cover plazas, sidewalks, street trees or crossings.
And the plan lost its own revenue in June. The Planning Commission removed the two revenue provisions it contained, the commercial in-lieu fee and the small business fund it would have paid for. What is left for the public realm is grants, Measure FF, the general fund, and a business improvement district that does not yet exist.
San Pablo Avenue is a state highway. It is State Route 123. Caltrans controls the right-of-way and has to approve any physical change to the street. A plan for a rebuilt corridor that depends on Caltrans should say so plainly, and Berkeley should have a written understanding with Caltrans before it starts promising sidewalks.
Item 34 adopts a plan whose street and utility work has no cost estimate. Item 26, approved on the consent calendar the same night, asks the City Manager to write the citywide infrastructure Program Plan and Strategic Asset Management Plan that would produce cost estimates and set priorities, at a cost of about $200,000, against roughly $1.5 billion in unfunded needs. Neither item mentions the other. The Specific Plan does not mention Vision 2050 anywhere.
That is the whole argument in one evening. Berkeley adopted the commitment before building the tool that would price it. The order should be the other way around, and where it cannot be, the plan should carry a placeholder cost and a named source that the new Program Plan then has to reconcile.
None of this was a reason to delay the housing, and the housing was not delayed. The zoning half of this plan was adopted on September 29. The public-realm half still needs a number.
Lighting, street trees, crossings, widened sidewalks and side-street plazas. One page, one total, and where the money comes from. If the answer is "unfunded," say that in the resolution.
The West Berkeley Plan and the San Pablo Avenue Public Improvements Plan were rescinded on September 29. List what obligations, standards and improvements end with them, and which are carried forward into the new plan.
The Planning Commission took eight separate votes on this package on June 3, including a standalone vote on retiring the two older plans. On September 29 the Council took the same package as one resolution. Five decisions in one motion is a procedural choice, not a legal requirement, and the body that reviewed it did not make that choice.
The Planning Commission put it in. It survives state housing law because it is an objective standard. Nothing in the motion adopted on September 29 took it out.
Homes permitted and completed, below-market homes among them, square feet of plaza, feet of widened sidewalk, trees planted. Against a target set in advance. The plan already promises annual reports; give them something to count.
San Pablo is State Route 123. Berkeley cannot narrow a lane or widen a sidewalk on it alone.
Public review draft published, with tiered heights: eight stories at the biggest corners, six at the next, five elsewhere. This draft is superseded.
Staff report to the Planning Commission. Some councilmembers had asked for seven stories everywhere regardless of location or use. Staff offer the Commission options built around five, six, seven and eight stories, and write that the number of units built will not vary much between them.
A motion to cut the limit from seven stories to five fails, two to five, with one member absent. The Commission votes 5–2 to send the plan to Council with three changes: drop the minimum density requirement, limit ground-floor retail to the front fifty feet at the main corners, and require sidewalks at least sixteen feet wide. The two revenue provisions come out. The Commission takes eight separate votes on the package, including a separate 6–0 vote, one abstention, on retiring the two older plans.
The Planning Commission adopts its 2026–27 work plan. The San Pablo plan is listed as an active project. The policy team is down from eight full-time staff to four, recovering to six and a half.
The Agenda and Rules Committee reviews the draft September 29 agenda. The Specific Plan is on it as a public hearing.
The final agenda is posted. The Specific Plan is Item 34, a public hearing. The Vision 2050 referral is Item 26, on the Council consent calendar.
Public hearing, 53 speakers. A five-story alternative fails 2–7. The plan is adopted 9–0 with four changes, and the new zoning district passes first reading.
Second reading of Ordinance No. 8,034-N.S., Item 2 on the consent calendar.
The election. Whoever is elected in District 1 inherits the plan's implementation, its annual reports, and the unfunded street work.
I have not read either document end to end. This is the largest open question on the page and I would not vote on Item 34 without the answer.
The staff report and its attachments were posted with the final agenda on September 17. I have read the recommendation. I have not yet worked through the addendum.
The plan says localized upsizing "may be necessary" and describes this spring's sewer work as maintenance with no added capacity. No location list, no cost.
The plan says wet weather flows "may also be accommodated" if the programs to keep rainwater out of the sewers are carried out. Those programs come from a 2014 federal consent decree Berkeley is still working through.
The plan estimates the residents and says nothing about any of the three.
It is not in the staff report, the options staff offered, the final plan or the buildout numbers. If someone has the work behind it, I would like to see it.
If a figure on this page is wrong, tell me and I'll correct the page.