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El Cerrito Historical Society Meeting Summary
Saturday, July 21, 2007

The President reported on the status of the Oishi/Sakai nursery area redevelopment. The Richmond Redevelopment agency refers to this project as the “Miraflores” project. About two months ago, the Redevelopment Agency and Eden Housing brought a proposal for redevelopment at Miraflores to the Richmond City Council. The proposed plan was based on input gathered at public meetings. The task for the City Council was to accept or deny the request of the Redevelopment Agency and Eden Housing to move forward by developing several alternatives based on this plan and then performing a full CEQA analysis on each alternative.

The City council accepted the proposed plan, which meant that the CEQA process could begin. Once the CEQA process is complete, a preferred alternative will be developed from among the alternatives, based on the results of the analysis. Part of this process has included the creation of a “Statement of Guiding Principles” to help in the analysis of the alternatives that will be created. The #1 item on the list is “Historic Preservation”. The CEQA process is expected to take at least six to nine months. Even though it is not designated as a local landmark, the CEQA process will proceed as if the site is a landmark since a prior analysis indicated that it is significant at the State if not at the federal level.

Regarding the Rodini property redevelopment in El Cerrito, it has been heard that the developers decided to go forward with an environmental impact report since the site appears to be significant at the state level. This will likely take several months and explains the lack of any noticeable activity at the actual site.

The President also discussed the status of the effort to name the various creeks in El Cerrito. The primary reason this activity is occurring is because various entities have created maps and arbitrarily assigned names of their choosing to creeks in El Cerrito . The city staff has invited the Historical Society to propose names for the creeks. On that basis the President distributed some naming suggestions to the membership and solicited comments from those present regarding criteria for creek names. It is unknown what action will be taken after the names are submitted.