The Oakland City Council gave its unanimous approval to a revised plan for a controversial Safeway project at 6310 College Ave. Tuesday night, a day after Safeway and neghborhood groups came to a final agreement.
Councilmember Jane Brunner, who represents District 1, where the project is located, said Safeway and representatives of neighborhood groups that opposed the project signed the agreement after a day of mediation.
The new plan calls for a one-story building with rooftop parking, an area for smaller retail shops and a plaza with bike parking and benches, accessible from both College and Claremont avenues. It will replace the existing Safeway market at the site.
The new project is definitely a compromise, with no one receiving everything they wanted, said Brunner and representatives of Safeway, the Rockridge Community Planning Council (RCPC), Berkeleyans for Pedestrian Oriented Development (BPOD) and Friends and Neighbors of College Avenue (FAN).
"Is it bigger than most people in the community want?" said Brunner. "Yes."
"But the community has been heard and this agreement has broad-based community support," said Zack Walton of FAN.
The RCPC, BPOD and FAN had planned litigation if the city approved an earlier plan for a larger project.
The two sides reached a tentative agreement on changes to the project last month after an earlier daylong meeting that was mediated by Brunner. At that time, the city council postposed a decision on the opponents' appeal of Oakland Planning Commission approval of the plan.
Todd Paradis, Safeway's real estate manager for the project, praised the project architects for "working every weekend for the past five weeks" to revise the plans. City planning staff "wrote a whole new report" in that same time period, he said.
A few people who spoke at Tuesday's meeting still objected to the project as a whole or to portions of it, while Safeway and the neighborhood group representatives asked the council to approve the new plan (and deny the groups' appeal as part of the approval process).
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