Someone awhile back posted about retiring and finding a place in downtown Berkeley. That might not be a bad idea as the city recently approved their downtown area plan. The city is going to look a lot different 5 years from now with new high rise development, the HELIOS buiding, art museum, and renovation to the BART plaza. Check out some of these renderings.

http://www.berkeleyside.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/2012-03-09_plans.pdf

Can you imagine this thing actually happening on Center and Oxford?

Images were too large so here's the link to the new art museum design:

http://www.berkeleyside.com/2011/09/16/new-berkeley-art-museum-mixes-old-with-eye-catching-new/

I for one am shocked that the COB actually has $90MM to spend on something like this.

Those renderings of downtown Berkeley are not realistic. To be believable, they should include homeless people, runaway teenagers with their dogs, and boarded up shops.

I noticed the other day that in front of the new Helios building there is the only bench in downtown Berkeley that does not have middle arm rests to prevent homeless people from sleeping on it. If any homeless people read this website, they should consider staking out that bench before it gets modified.

pingpong2;841905786 said:

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I for one am shocked that the COB actually has $90MM to spend on something like this.

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Uh, the Berkeley Art Museum is not City of Berkeley, it is UCB.

Now you may wonder where UCB will get $90M :p

buster99;841905876 said:

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Uh, the Berkeley Art Museum is not City of Berkeley, it is UCB.

Now you may wonder where UCB will get $90M :p

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Well the Capital Projects plan calls for a little over 2 billion in renovations/new construction within the next decade or so. Many of these project are already in progress or will be shortly.

$90 million for this design on Center and Oxford. Some are calling it the humpback whale meets the printing press design.

Crepes a gone gone

oskirules;841905884 said:

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$90 million for this design on Center and Oxford. Some are calling it the humpback whale meets the printing press design.

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Sadly, before the state economy went south, there was a truly grand design for the museum, which had to be severely scaled back, retaining much of the printing press structure:

http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/UC-Berkeley-must-scale-back-on-downtown-museum-3210352.php#photo-2352562

oskirules;841905884 said:

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$90 million for this design on Center and Oxford. Some are calling it the humpback whale meets the printing press design.

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I agree that it is far from the likes of the Bechtel building or Haas School of Business. But it looks a lot better than the ugly monstrosityof the prior design which looked like a the plastic wrapped appearance of a building undergoing asbestos removal.

But a more important improvement (both to beauty and safety) could be made just by removing (Street)People's Park and converting it into a real playing field for students and youths in and around Berkeley. Heck make it into a Little League and Youth Soccer field. That would raise the value of the entire surrounding neighborhood. (And this comes from a Cal Alum who arrived at Cal jsut about the same time as the Student Protests.)

Does anyone know what is going in place of the current ATO building on Fulton, if anything?