Survey Shows Quality Jobs, Affordable Housing, and Investment in Education are Priorities for Residents
The results of a new survey shows that Emeryville residents want development that includes community benefits. A majority (82 percent of more than 400 surveyed) do not support the current proposal for Bay Street Site B, which includes more high-end retail, a hotel, and condominiums. Site B is immediately to the north of the Bay Street mall. Residents are calling on the city and the developer to include more affordable housing, good-paying jobs, and an investment in education.
In February 2009, the East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy (EBASE) teamed up with a local citizens group, Residents United for a Livable Emeryville (RULE), and UNITE HERE Local 2850 workers to survey residents. Click here for the survey results.
Who was surveyed and where did this take place?
Hold on one gosh darned second! Your blog entry says that 82% of surveyed residents don’t support Bay Street Site B. However, the survey says 44% of surveyed residents don’t support the project. You are counting people who said they have “mixed feelings” in your percentage of those who don’t support the project. That is just plain incorrect.
Something tells me the City Council is not going to be very happy about this.
I think someone who supports a project would not say they have “mixed feelings” about it. They would say they “support” it, especially if they took a survey and were given a “support” choice they could check. Given all this, I would agree that you could fairly call a “mixed feelings” vote a vote of non-support. Seems pretty straight forward to me unless of course you were looking to spin these survey results to make it seem as if Emeryville reisidents were supportive of Bay Street Two where they aren’t.
I agree. The 4/29 6:57 guy seems to want to spin these results to make it seem like there’s more support for this project than the survey results clearly show. I guess he can’t be blamed…if I were a developer’s shill, I’d be upset about this survey too.
The next tactic we should expect from this crowd is to question the legitimacy of the whole survey. If you believe these hacks you will find it not credible there could be a groundswell of discontent in Emeryville. How could people not want another shopping mall filled with chain stores?!?!?
I think a “mixed feelings” vote might indicate a desire for development at the site, but not the kind we keep getting (same old shopping mall stores in anywhere/everywhere USA).
I think the Council will ignore this survey. The findings show Emeryville residents think the Council is not working in their interests. The most likely outcome is that they (the Council) will not engage since any other option probably won’t turn out well for them. If they give in to their impulses and choose to lash out in anger, they will have lost this public policy debate.
The Secret News should answer the first person (April 28th). Was this survey conducted in a way so as to get accurate responces? What was the method used to determine who takes the survey? It is critical answers to these kind of questions be made available or else the credibility of this thing will be fairly questioned.
Those who answered “Mixed Feelings” may support the project or not. They may also be neutral. To claim that those who answered “Mixed Feelings” do not support the project is misleading and incorrect. I do not take issue with the way the survey was conducted, only the way it is being interpreted. I’m hoping that people will read the survey results themselves. To anyone who does that, a story slightly different than what The Secret Blog proclaims is obvious.
Sorry guy, you’re just wrong. You may be a nice person but you’re incorrect on this.
If there is a “support” box, a “don’t support” and a “mixed feelings”, then by definition, you HAVE to say a mixed feelings vote is not supportive. The article broke down the groups into two sides support/don’t support. Mixed feelings CANNOT be placed in the suport column but must be placed into the non-suportive side. To do anything else would be a purposeful slant trying to skew the results in favor of the shopping mall.
Credit the Secret News with showing all readers the sources so they can make up their own minds about this. It seems to me if the Secret News were attempting to slant this, they would not make available the source. I think you’re charge is unfounded.