Lab Update: RSVPs Requested, Meeting Place Changed, Sierra Club Dissents and More

The Berkeley Lab , to discuss the possibility of the facility's proposed second campus coming to Albany, has been moved to the in case of crowds.

said officials wanted to "make sure there is ample space for anyone interested in attending." 

Earlier meetings in Alameda and Richmond drew hundreds to presentations by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory officials and developers about plans and ideas for the second campus. 

Several community meetings hosted by the city will take place before next week's meeting with the lab. Albany residents are individually to attend one of these. There are four time slots available from Saturday through Monday; residents are asked to attend only one. 

LOCAL ENVIROS BALK AT MEETING REQUIREMENTS

Some Bay Area activists have criticized the city for the meetings, saying they are being "excluded from debate at City workshops paid for by the developer." 

(A press release detailing the issue appeared in the Berkeley Daily Planet on Monday.)

An attorney affiliated with the above effort wrote to city attorney Robert Zweben earlier this week to object to the "closed Lawrence Berkeley Lab community meetings."

The attorney, Kelly T. Smith of Sacramento, said the city-sponsored meetings are unconstitutional in that they exclude non-residents, which "frustrates my clients' strong desire to fully participate in this important public debate." 

Smith represents the Sierra Club and , along with former Albany Mayor Robert Cheasty, former El Cerrito Mayor Norman LaForce and a number of other parties.

Smith also criticized the "pre-registration requirement" in the city meetings, saying it would stop people from attending or actively participating in the sessions over the weekend.

(Smith's letter is attached above as a PDF. Click to read.)

SIERRA CLUB CALL TO ACTION

The San Francisco Bay Area Chapter of the Sierra Club also reached out to its membership this week, in an email sent Tuesday. 

The email opens with a call to action for "Albany Open Space," stating that "Developers are back with a proposal to ignore the wishes of the Albany community and develop Golden Gate Fields racetrack in a way contrary to the Voices to Vision plan." 

The email continues that "developers want to include a shopping mall in the plan at the expense of the open space and parks the Voices to Vision plan requires. Instead of the planned 75% park and open space, the new proposal has only 35%."

In an carried out by Fern Tiger, no mention is made of a shopping mall, and a number of commenters on Albany Patch have reported that a mall in Albany simply isn't part of the plan.

RACETRACK DEVELOPERS: "OPEN CAMPUS, OPEN SPACE"

Though there are plans for the second campus, "commercial labs, a hotel, some retail, and possibly housing" in Berkeley and Albany, "We see this project as an opportunity to deliver open space, to improve existing open space, to maintain open space, to generate revenues to the City that will allow it to maintain its budget after the track is gone," say the developers.

(The Golden Gate Fields property spans both cities.)

The interview, which was published in July says, says, regarding open space, that "the current thinking is more than 50 acres, creating a large waterfront park." The lab campus also would be an "open campus" to the public, and would include "very large plazas" that "will flow directly to the public spaces."

The Sierra Club email encouraged recipients to call and write the Albany City Council and to "attend one or more" of the city meetings scheduled from July 30 through Aug. 1.

Fern Tiger and other officials have said the goal of the meetings, as with the Voices to Vision process in recent years, is to find out what Albany residents believe and hope for about the Albany waterfront.

Read more about the process for selecting the second campus of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory on Albany Patch here.

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Everybody makes mistakes ... ! If there's something in this article you think should be corrected, or if something else is amiss, call editor Emilie Raguso at 510-459-8325 or email her at emilier@patch.com.