Safeway Design For Rockridge is Terrible; Out of Scale With Surroundings

One good thing about being around here for awhile with an active memory is history. I remember when Dreyer's Ice Cream proposed its giant facility for Rockridge, and many, including for a time me, were against it. One reason for this was that the original plan called for a visible College Avenue presence that was just too out of scale with the neighborhood. I say that's true for the Safeway proposal before us.

This is one of those stories that needs a video and one will be up soon, but for the present, what's neat about Rockridge is that there's not one long wall of building walls hugging the street. It's a parade of structures of varied heights, allowing Sun to reach the street and giving a small-town-in-Oakland feel.

But Safeway's current proposal will destroy that feeling in my view. It calls for a building that does what's not cool: hugs the street and looms over it. It would drastically alter Rockridge and make it seem more like a retail downtown suburb in Oakland with constant traffic problems.

That's my view. More later.

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