Retooled Safeway Expansion to Include New Signals, Lanes

The Rockridge Safeway store may be within Oakland’s borders, but the effects of its proposed expansion could wreak such a devastating impact on Berkeley traffic that plans came to a standstill until the company satisfied the city's demands for adequate mitigations. 

The Berkeley City Council Tuesday is expected to give its blessing to the latest proposal.

The 25,000-square-foot market has been doing business for 40 years on a 2.1-acre site at the junction of two heavily trafficked streets -- College and Claremont avenues. The parcel includes 96 parking places and a shuttered gas station. Motorists waiting to turn left into the parking lot from College Avenue can bring traffic to a standstill.

Safeway plans to demolish the existing structures and replace them with a two-story, 62,000-square foot building. The size of the market would double, and the company plans to add 11,500 square feet of retail space -- eight stores or restaurants -- and a 173-space parking garage.

Motorists could enter and exit from College and Claremont.  

“Safeway is fully prepared to ‘make Berkeley whole’ with respect to these intersections and has met with Berkeley staff several times to determine what approach would work best for the city,” says company executive Steve Berndt in a letter to Mayor Tom Bates dated July 2.

The plans also call for a loading dock on the upper level of the garage.

The expansion would impact four intersections:

• Ashby and College avenues
• Ashby and Claremont avenues
• Alcatraz and College avenues
• Alcatraz and Claremont avenues

Mitigations include a combination of added and coordinated traffic signals, reconfiguring lanes, moving an AC Transit bus stop and replacing diagonal parking with parallel parking. The city would not bear the costs; rather, Safeway would have to put the money into an escrow account. or various mitigations, including additional traffic signals, reconfiguring lanes, into an escrow account. 

In a memo to Oakland city administrator Deanna Santana, then-Berkeley city manager Phil Kamlarz raised numerous concerns about Safeway’s initial proposals in an October 2011 memo:

“Do not approve the project or certify the (environmental impact report) until the Safeway store itself is altered to minimize traffic congestion, reduce parking demand, and contribute positively to the already successful Rockridge shopping environment and community,” Kamlarz writes.

“All of the alternatives to the proposed expansion listed in the (draft report) have been rejected by Safeway as not sufficiently meeting their objectives," the memo says. "A project of this significance in such a unique area must give more weight to the desires and concerns of the community as well as the ability of the project to serve its own parking needs.”

The Berkeley City Council meets at 7 p.m. Tuesday, July 17 in the second-floor council chambers of the Maudelle Shirek building, 2134 Martin Luther King, Jr. Way. 

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