{"id":311888,"date":"2026-05-12T12:17:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-12T12:17:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/311888\/"},"modified":"2026-05-12T12:17:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-12T12:17:09","slug":"berkeleys-quaint-shopping-strips-could-soon-look-very-different","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/311888\/","title":{"rendered":"Berkeley’s quaint shopping strips could soon look very different"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Sunday afternoon stroll along Solano Avenue in Berkeley might involve a stop at Andronico\u2019s Community Markets for groceries. You might grab a cup of coffee at Peet\u2019s,<\/a> peruse the fiction aisle at Pegasus Books and then stop at the eclectic artisan gift shop Fern\u2019s Garden to pick up a greeting card for a special occasion in a single trip.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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In 1925, Oaks Theatre<\/a> opened along the strip of road, which runs between Curtis Street to the Alameda, with a showing of the silent comedy film \u201cSteppin\u2019 Out.<\/a>\u201d It shuttered in 2010 and is now a climbing gym<\/a>, but its vintage fa\u00e7ade and Spanish Colonial-style building still remain. Since 1974,<\/a> residents of Berkeley and neighboring Albany have gathered for community events like the Solano Avenue Stroll, which now includes music, crafters and food booths. The one- and two-story buildings have largely looked the same since the shopping district\u2019s founding in the early 1900s.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But big changes may be coming to the charming district and two other similar low-rise commercial corridors in the city. On May 6, the Berkeley Planning Commission voted 6-2<\/a> to advance plans to upzone portions<\/a> of Upper Solano, North Shattuck (north of downtown Berkeley) and Elmwood (just south of UC Berkeley) to increase the availability of housing in these wealthier areas. These plans\u00a0would increase height limits from two up to seven stories and potentially result in about\u00a01,700 new housing units<\/a> across the neighborhoods. The City Council has the final say on\u00a0upzoning.<\/p>\n

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\"Small<\/p>\n

Small businesses and shops along\u00a0Solano Avenue in Berkeley, Calif., on Dec. 7, 2018.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Tomsmith585\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

The potential transformation, first devised on a larger scale in the city\u2019s 2023-31 state-mandated housing plans<\/a>, is difficult for residents and local business owners to stomach. At the May 6 meeting, shouting erupted when the commission limited public comment to one minute per person due to an influx of speakers. One woman told the commission it would need to drag her out of the meeting to get her to stop talking. There were nearly 163 pages\u2019<\/a> worth of written remarks submitted on the topic.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Save Berkeley Shops<\/p>\n

A group of residents have gone beyond protesting. In November 2025, they started a nonprofit named Save Berkeley Shops<\/a> to fight the developments. In March, they founded a political organization to raise money \u2014 nearly $76,000 as of April 30, documents show \u2014 to fund a referendum to undo any ordinance to upzone the areas.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThis City Council appears to have an ideological prerogative that they are going to basically turn Berkeley into Manhattan,\u201d said the group\u2019s president Donald Simon, who is an\u00a0Elmwood resident, in a phone call with SFGATE. \u201cThere is just no concern for these shopkeepers that are Berkeley residents that support the community. We realized [that] we\u2019re going to have to fight them politically at the ballot box.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

He\u2019s worried his district could go the way of downtown Berkeley, where there are a number of empty, boarded storefronts<\/a> after developments went on hold because of the construction costs and high interest rates. And with state density bonus laws<\/a>, the buildings could theoretically be taller.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

A view facing south down Solano Avenue in Berkeley, Calif., on Dec. 18, 2018.<\/p>\n

Gado Images\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Fern Solomon, the\u00a0owner of Fern\u2019s Garden<\/a>, said her store is thriving because of its proximity to nearby businesses.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIn retail, they call it \u2018location, location, location,\u2019\u201d she said in a phone call with SFGATE. \u201cPeople just come in to take a look, and then they remember me at Christmastime. They remember me when Aunt Harriet has her birthday.\u201d<\/p>\n

Save Berkeley Shops has 30 days after any local ordinance\u2019s adoption to collect over 5,000 signatures from Berkeley voters to place the referendum on the ballot, according to city documents<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ways to mitigate changes\u00a0<\/p>\n

Berkeley Mayor Adena Ishii acknowledged that change can be really hard.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThese neighborhoods have been the same for a really long time,\u201d she said in a phone call with SFGATE. \u201cThe reason why we\u2019re even looking at corridor upzoning is because of equity. Because around the city, we have upzoned other neighborhoods, particularly in the south and the west, and so it\u2019s important that we are also looking at neighborhoods that have not had an increase in housing.\u201d<\/p>\n

The idea of upzoning commercial districts is not new to Berkeley. In 2020<\/a>, the City Council voted to do so on Adeline Street in South Berkeley.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe understand our businesses and shops are so important to our Berkeley culture and neighbors, so we\u2019re really trying to make sure our shops are protected as well,\u201d Ishii said.<\/p>\n

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\"An<\/p>\n

An aerial photo of a neighborhood in Berkeley, Calif., near the traffic circle called \u201cThe Circle.\u201d<\/p>\n

JasonDoiy\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

There are several tactics that the city may employ to mitigate the effects of construction.\u00a0<\/p>\n

One is providing business owners with so-called \u201cwarm shell<\/a>\u201d storefronts that are usable right when the initial build-out is completed. The city could also include a business license waiver for a fixed number of years for businesses forced to relocate because of housing development. To preserve anchor tenants like grocery stores, the city could require that if a building is bigger than 18,000 square feet, it will need to be replaced with at least a 10,000-square-foot space.<\/p>\n

The commission also recommended a set of design standards to improve commercial storefronts and enhance the pedestrian environment at the ground-floor level on May 6.<\/p>\n

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Daniel\u00a0Swafford, the executive director of the\u00a0North Shattuck Association<\/a>, supports including design standards in the plans. He has faith that Berkeleyites can provide \u201ccreative and innovative feedback\u201d in the spirit of the city.<\/p>\n

Older folks living in hillside homes who want to downsize could benefit from new types of housing along the corridors, he noted.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey don\u2019t want to move to some weird suburb, right?\u201d he said in a phone call with SFGATE. \u201cThey love their city, so give them a condo or something just like a first time homebuyer.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018They\u2019re talking about market rate\u2019<\/p>\n

Solomon, the owner of Fern\u2019s Garden, said she wants her employees to be able to live in this area but that the housing being proposed is not affordable housing.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\u201cThey\u2019re talking about market rate [pricing], which is crazy money,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

A view down North Shattuck, the main road in the Gourmet Ghetto (North Shattuck) neighborhood of Berkeley, Calif., on Oct. 6, 2017.<\/p>\n

Gado Images\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Proponents argue<\/a> that adding housing in general helps bring rent prices down overall. The average rent price for an apartment in Berkeley is $3,395 as of April 2026, which is about a 3% increase compared with the previous year, according to RentCafe<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Mayor Ishii noted that recent state mandates aimed at increasing housing in California have helped a lot of cities create more housing that otherwise might not have been previously built.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\u201cThere\u2019s still a housing crisis here [in the Bay Area],\u201d she said. \u201cThe cost of housing is just still too high, and so it\u2019s really important that we are continuing to build housing and especially affordable housing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Oakland resident Pat Schwinn wrote to the Planning Commission that adding residents above and adjacent to the corridors will help sustain small businesses. Voters spoke when they installed a pro-housing City Council, Schwinn noted.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are some of Berkeley\u2019s highest-resource neighborhoods: areas with excellent schools, safe streets, good air quality, strong transit access, and abundant parks and amenities,\u201d Schwinn said in a May 4 email to the commission. \u201cThese are precisely the enclaves that California\u2019s Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing law is meant to open up. For decades, exclusionary zoning pushed disadvantaged residents towards the freeway and out of Berkeley in general.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Berkeley flatlands have a history of redlining and housing covenants<\/a>, which \u201creinforced racial inequalities, the effects of which persist today,\u201d according to a report prepared by planning firm\u00a0Raimi + Associates for the city of Berkeley.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Zachary Russ, a Berkeley resident and the East Bay leader for\u00a0YIMBY Action<\/a>, said in an email to SFGATE that \u201cMorally, every unit of housing that is built and occupied is a home created for people in the community. Integrating these homes with the needs of daily life, like supermarkets and third places, is how we maintain and grow a vibrant Berkeley.\u201d<\/p>\n

But those like Simon of Save Berkeley Shops said that the city should hit the pause button on the upzoning.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s got so many\u00a0projects in the pipeline<\/a>,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s no demand from developers saying, \u2018We\u2019ve built everything, we can give us more.\u2019 We\u2019ve got 17 stalled projects<\/a> in downtown alone.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Others, like Berkeley resident Carol Gross, said the city\u2019s priority should be to end restrictive housing. \u201cThe NIMBY\u00a0movement originated here\u00a0\u2014 let\u2019s end it here right now,\u201d she wrote<\/a> to the Planning Commission, referring to the \u201cNot In My Backyard\u201d<\/a> movement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Sunday afternoon stroll along Solano Avenue in Berkeley might involve a stop at Andronico\u2019s Community Markets for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":311889,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[143,145,144,925,1693],"class_list":["post-311888","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-sfgfreelance","tag-sfglocal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311888","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=311888"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311888\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/311889"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=311888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=311888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=311888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}