UC Berkeley’s proposal to develop housing at People’s Park dodged another bullet Friday — more than a half-century after a similar plan sparked a violent clash that established People’s Park as a hotbed of social dissent.
An Alameda County Superior Court judge issued a tentative ruling Friday evening that the university’s plans to build a $312 million housing project at People’s Park did not violate the California Environmental Quality Act.
Judge Frank Roesch effectively gave UC Berkeley the OK to begin constructing housing at the site for 1,100 university students and 125 homeless residents within two 12- and six-story dorm buildings — coming full circle since 1969, when the university’s initial desire to build housing on the 2.8-acre site culminated in thousands of protesters, a state of emergency and one death.
Russell Bates, a 75-year-old Vietnam vet who has found community at People’s Park since the 1970s, and Stark Mike, a 73-year-old who currently stays at the park at night, are ready to do whatever they can to help keep the space open and free.
“We’re ready for war,” Bates said in an interview at the park. “That’s what it’s going to take this time. They got to know that we’re serious about defending this.”
On Friday, attorneys for three separate cases seeking to stop the development — filed jointly last year by the Local 3299 union for UC service workers and community groups Make UC A Good Neighbor and Berkeley Citizens for a Better Plan — all presented their arguments in court.
The groups argued that environmental impact reports within UC’s long-range development plan, which, in part, lays out how the institution plans to accommodate its ever-growing student population over the next 15 years, were inadequate. They maintained the plans failed to account for how student enrollment growth will negatively impact the surrounding community, from increasing greenhouse gases to clogging already dangerous wildfire evacuation routes.
Additionally, their attorneys claimed that UC officials failed to consider more than a dozen other locations for the housing rather than the historic park, which was added to the National Register of Historic Places in June.
But until Judge Roesch submits a written order, expected early next week, construction cannot begin because of a stay issued by an appellate court earlier this month, intended to prevent any physical changes at the park until a decision was handed down.
No timeline for construction to start has been completed, according to UC Berkeley spokesperson Dan Mogulof, but Friday’s decision was good news for the university.
“We’re pleased with the judge’s decision,” Mogulof said Friday. “We look forward to the court making it official next week, just like we look forward to starting construction this summer.”
In addition to 1.7 acres that will be preserved as open space, the university has included tentative plans to honor the history of People’s Park with a memorial walkway, murals and photo displays.
Dozens of people who were living in the park, bounded between Haste Street and Dwight Way four blocks south of UC’s campus, have been relocated to the Rodeway Inn on University Avenue in recent months.
The housing project at People’s Park has been controversial since it was first proposed in 2018.
But the legal saga took off in July 2021, when UC regents certified UC Berkeley’s updated long-range development plan, which projects enrollment to reach 48,200 by 2037.
Proponents of the development, including Chancellor Carol Christ, argue that the site is necessary in UC Berkeley’s quest to boost its own housing stock. About 82% of the more than 45,000 undergraduate and graduate students enrolled last fall were left to find off-campus housing — the highest percentage among the entire University of California system.
But people like Nicholas Alexander argue that the development needlessly snuffs out a hub for community and support that unhoused and marginalized residents have forged at People’s Park for decades.
“This has always been a beacon to the homeless,” Alexander said, adding that when he was homeless, the park was the first place that felt like home and helped him get on his feet, even attending UC Berkeley a few years later.
Anticipating that UC Berkeley officials will soon fence off the historic park and start clearing the land, he’s turning the kitchen he’s helped run at the park since March 2021 into a fortress — preparing for whenever construction crews and law enforcement inevitably show up.
“I hope that when they do put up a fence, it galvanizes the community. We’ve torn down the fences before. We need to show them that it’s going to be a nightmare to build here.”
A group of advocates wanting to preserve People’s Park as it exists today planned a four-day “De-fence Phest” in protest.
Andrea Pritchett, a member of the People’s Park Council, said Friday’s tentative ruling was a disappointing setback. While they don’t want riots or disruptions, she said the community would not stop trying to save the park from becoming only a “gravestone” of the history that has unfolded there.
“I don’t know how these people, with their cold calculations about profits and losses, don’t understand what they’re destroying,” Pritchett said. “People’s Park has for so long presented us with the opportunity to minister to, to care for, to attend to the needs of poor people and people in need. Why is that so hard to understand?”
Source: www.mercurynews.com