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Let's talk about the city of Berkeley's planning and land use priorities as they relate to this nuisance business, a repair shop that allows hippie pastoralists to pretend it's 1970 forever.
A nuisance? Yes, because their broken junk is stored on city property. These wrecks are all parked in spaces that are intended to serve retail businesses on this block, which is in the historic Lorin District and BID, but instead they are just warehousing.
There is 1 acre of parking on Adeline between Alcatraz and 62nd. Land in Berkeley costs about ten million dollars per acre. In the Adeline Corridor Plan, passed last night, the city did not even consider eliminating this parking. They only moved it around, despite the waste.
Buslab also occupies about 500 linear feet of curb space for dozens of other wrecks, many of which are not roadworthy, not registered, or both.
Surely this successful junkyard brings in the bacon for the city, right? Well, not exactly, because the property, owned by a Moraga retiree, is Very Prop. 13™, and classified as "vacant commercial land" despite its manifest occupancy. Annual ad valorem taxes? $880.
This "vacant commercial land" has acquired not just one but two structures in recent years. The red building appears at some point during 2018, and the additional white building on the left appeared this year.
All this construction is a little surprising considering that this parcel is the only parcel in the entire city that has NEVER pulled a building or planning permit for ANY purpose.
So why am I so upset about this? We've got a city that just went through a decade-long process, bending over backwards for the appearance of protecting sensitive small businesses, but what it's actually doing is subsidizing the climate arson hobbies of white hipsters.
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