The Biolab Surplus in Berkeley

In, “Gigantic new life sciences campus in Aquatic Park is sitting empty,” Berkeleyside accurately reports the major surplus of lab space in the SF Bay area especially in Berkeley. But it never questions the suitability of these toxin-filled labs in West Berkeley. Geologists warn that earthquake induced liquefaction can occur west of San Pablo Avenue. The developers' rosy vision of these glass buildings doesn’t appear to be tarnished by this prospect. Even spared a major earthquake, there is the slow progress of sea level rise that within the lifetime of young lab workers will lap at their galoshes.

Let’s turn from these dark visions of bio-safety hazards, though very real and conveniently obfuscated for monetary reasons, to major misconceptions in this otherwise newsworthy piece. These misconceptions concern Berkeley’s West Berkeley Plan, developed in the 1980s and adopted by the City in 1993.

The West Berkeley Plan, though decades old, remains widely recognized as an example of successful community participation with a diversity of stakeholders ranging from single family homeowners, to manufacturers, to artisans, and realtors. The aim of the Plan was to preserve, with judicious zoning regulations, light industrial companies in specific areas a distance from homes. It also provided other areas where a mix of housing, craft workshops, retail and offices could coexist without disturbing the harmony of a thriving neighborhood.

The ideal was to preserve human scale with the expectation that when an industry wanted to expand it would seek affordable land outside of West Berkeley. It was the conscious choice in the West Berkeley Plan to encourage small enterprises, paying affordable rents and employing blue-collar workers with good jobs. (West Berkeley suffered, on a smaller scale, the demise that visited the Rust Belt when corporations outsourced US manufacturing in search of cheap labor.) The West Berkeley Plan was never meant to open the door to massive biolab complexes.

Last week, the City Council approved tax exemptions for R & D companies, including biolabs. Berkeleyside drew on Mark Rhoades of the Rhoades Planning Group who advised biolab developers. He opined that the exemptions constitute a recognition that life science businesses employ blue-collar workers, a demographic the original West Berkeley Plan was set up to conserve. Before entering the private sector, Rhoades was with the City of Berkeley Planning Department and would have been very familiar with the original intent of the West Berkeley Plan. Perhaps he might have considered: what percentage of biolab workers will be blue collar?

The high production value promo video of the massive lab campus, the Berkeley Commons, now sprawling along the banks of the Aquatic Park, depicting white-frocked "innovators" looking intently on scientific pursuits, suggests an answer: not very many.