by Worldchanging San Francisco local blogger, Brian Smith: After seven long years, the David Brower/Oxford Plaza complex finally broke ground in downtown Berkeley, California. This Center will be a place from which our sustainable future is planned and implemented. A good sign that the project is already on track was the number of young parents with kids who arrived at the groundbreaking ceremony May 23, 2007 on bicycle. I sure was envious of the eco-hip toddlers with cool stickers on their bike helmets. Anyone know where I can get a T-rex sticker? The groundbreaking was a celebration of a man, and a movement, and the end of a difficult planning process described by one of the main planners as “brain-damaging” in its complexity. When complete, the Brower Center will serve as a home office for the environmental movement, with retail space on the ground floor, meeting rooms, a theater, and 97 units of permanently affordable, and high-quality rental housing near public transportation and jobs. And of course it will be a state of the art, green building. A Man on a Mission The complex is named after the undisputed heavy hitter of the American environmental movement. David Brower’s career spanned… (more)
(Posted by WorldChanging Team in Community at 2:41 PM)