Leona Heights Neighborhood News

by Gordon Laverty

Narrow country-like roads, the delight of many in Oakland's hilly neighborhoods, are rapidly becoming involved in planning issues as steep lots are purchased and developed. Oakland is in a "fill-in" development stage, so steep, downhill-sloping lots are becoming attractive for development. This growth gives rise to a new issue the City of Oakland must address: a more detailed set of requirements to provide on-lot parking or at least sideslope retaining walls to provide street-level widening for parking in addition to the already required two-vehicle parking on slabs in front of garages of new dwellings.

At a time when wide SUVs and pickup trucks need more space to negotiate narrow streets, they also are the problem when parked on narrow streets where inadequate on-lot parking exists or may be planned. The restricted passage becomes awkward for residents' traffic and can be fatal in the event of fire or need for other emergency vehicle access. In our neighborhood, this is not idle speculation but has already posed real problems for ambulance access.

In our opinion, the city needs new ordinances requiring developers of steep lots to provide for parking without blocking roads in front of new homes. Clearance space near existing home driveway entrances must also be scrupulously observed.

Update on Old Chabot Observatory Community School

The Bermuda Triangle Neighbors (those living on Bermuda and Belfast Streets and Mountain Boulevard) and the president of the Leona Heights Improvement Association addressed concerns before Dr. Randolph Ward and the Oakland Board of Education at the Board meeting of August 11. In statements limited to two minutes, about a dozen residents registered neighborhood comments about the appropriateness of the observatory site for a school for at-risk students and raised the following concerns: how will the closed campus be operated, student security maintained, fire dangers planned for, and transportation handled?

Dr. Ward indicated that the school district leaders would welcome periodic meetings with the neighborhood to assure that observed problems were quickly identified and resolved. The school will open on September 7.

We will keep our eyes open. Neighbors question the solution, but don't want "at-risk" students neglected either. The good news is that dialog continues.