Natural Beauty, High Visibility Could Make Albany Sweet Spot for New Lab, City Officials Say in Letter to University

and City Manager Beth Pollard co-wrote a letter to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory on Friday outlining why Albany could be the best choice for .

Golden Gate Fields has for the new campus; the deadline for proposals was Friday.

In the letter, attached to the right as a PDF, Javandel and Pollard highlight a range of reasons to consider Albany: its natural beauty; its high visibility by "over a quarter million passersby each day"; potential compatability with the Voices to Vision report on the waterfront; and an existing strong partnership with the university.

Pollard said Monday, in an e-mail to Albany Patch, that the letter was written by the her and the mayorf, and is not "an official position" of the city. Javandel said Friday that the council may elect to write a similar letter, if it so desires.

"We see this as an opportunity worth exploring for the potential benefits it could present to Albany, as well as providing an avenue for working with the property owner on ideas for the future of the waterfront," Pollard wrote in the e-mail. "The intent of the letter is to encourage the Lab to consider the site, with the understanding that Voices to Vision provides the Lab, the property owner, and the City with guidelines about the community’s goals for the property; these guidelines cover elements including open space, built area and revenue replacement."

Here are the letter's main points, summarized:

• The Golden Gate Fields site is "one of the most beautiful settings in the East Bay" and offers the lab "the chance to showcase its innovative and prestigious work"
• The lab could provide "the mechanism for the implementation" of Voices to Vision, "which shares compatible green elements" with the lab's mission
• Albany already is home to more than 2,500 graduate students and their families at , including nearly 1,000 school-age children; the university "is already a significant member of the Albany community"
• The city's values are closely aligned with the university's values, with its "excellent schools, strong community spirit, highly educated population and environmental consciousness"; the city also has "initiated many sustainability measures" such as the
• The city and the laboratory already work together as partners in the

"We are interested in exploring the potential for your world-class facility to be located on the  property in Albany, and working with you on how we could achieve the goals of both LBNL [Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory] and the Albany community, the letter says. "We see the opportunity for a project that will highlight LBNL's greatly renowned work, be compatible with and complement its surroundings, and create an even stronger bond between the University and the Albany/Berkeley community," 

Everybody makes mistakes ... ! If there's something in this article you think should be corrected, or if something else is amiss, give editor Emilie Raguso a call at 510-459-8325 or shoot her an e-mail at emilier@patch.com.