Q&A: Why a state court reprimanded UC Berkeley over People’s Park

BERKELEY — How much noise would a $312 million student dorm make if UC Berkeley built affordable housing on the 2.8 acres of land currently known as People’s Park? The school doesn’t know for certain.

Since the University of California did not study that question in the project’s environmental impact reports — or justify why it could not meet self-prescribed, non-binding housing goals without demolishing the storied park — controversial plans to develop beds for roughly 1,100 students and 125 currently unhoused residents there remain in limbo.

Last week, a state appellate court ruled that UC must either “fix the errors” in its California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) documents or ask the California Supreme Court to intervene.

Here’s how the long-troubled project at People’s Park, which was recently added to the National Register of Historic Places, got to this point and what may happen next.

What happened last week?

The First District Court of Appeals in San Francisco reprimanded UC officials for not analyzing how much noise might be generated by the hundreds of students that would move into the housing project.

The court’s 47-page ruling sided, in part, with the two nonprofit groups that filed the CEQA lawsuit against the People’s Park project in 2021 — Make UC a Good Neighbor and the People’s Park Historic Advocacy Group — in an attempt to preserve the space.

While acknowledging that the environmental law should not be used as a “redlining weapon by neighbors who oppose projects based on prejudice rather than environmental concerns,” the judges decided that the project failed to study the impacts of “loud student parties in residential neighborhoods near the campus, a longstanding problem that the EIR improperly dismissed as speculative.”

Additionally, the judges rejected UC’s argument that the sole goal of rehabilitating health and safety concerns at People’s Park — bounded by Telegraph Avenue, Bowditch Street, Dwight Way and Haste Street — was a valid reason to not consider alternate locations for its proposed housing development.

The unanimous ruling, published late Friday evening, reversed a July 2022 decision by an Alameda County Superior Court judge that UC’s housing plans did not violate CEQA.

When UC Berkeley quickly fenced in the park and started clearing the land for demolition crews in August, a chaotic standoff erupted between police and protesters who wanted to preserve the land — which cost UC Berkeley $4 million, according to public records.

Why does UC Berkeley want to build on People’s Park?

The university houses only 23% of its students — the lowest percentage across all of the 10 campuses in the UC system.

The lack of affordable housing options in the Bay Area has forced students to grapple with hours-long commutes, cramped living conditions and daunting debt from housing costs while earning an education at Cal.

The project at People’s Park, which was first unveiled by Chancellor Carol Christ in 2018, is one of several plans to increase on-campus housing. It was approved as part of UC’s long-range development plan, which was adopted in 2021 to help the university expand its infrastructure and housing stock for an additional 11,730 students through 2037.

That’s one of the reasons why UC Berkeley spokesperson Dan Mogulof said the university plans to ask the California Supreme Court to overturn the ruling, which he called “unprecedented and dangerous.”

“Left in place, this decision will indefinitely delay all of UC Berkeley’s planned student housing, which is desperately needed by our students and fully supported by the City of Berkeley’s mayor and other elected representatives,” Mogulof said in a statement. “This decision has the potential to prevent colleges and universities across the state of California from providing students with the housing they need and deserve.”

How did this project become so controversial?

UC Berkeley’s current development proposal for the property arrives a half-century after a similar plan sparked a violent clash that established People’s Park as a hotbed of social activism.

Located just off Telegraph Avenue, three blocks south of campus, People’s Park was first acquired by the UC Regents in 1967 while they were considering plans to build student housing.

In 1969, thousands of protesters marched to the site after UC fenced the public out before starting construction, and a bloody battle ensued when law enforcement pushed them back with tear gas and buckshot, sparking a state of emergency and one death.

More than a half-century later, the University of California’s current proposal for the empty lot — now dotted with dozens of tents and felled trees from August’s clashes — features one 12-story and one six-story dorm building. More than half of the site would be preserved as open space, complete with newly planted trees and plaques memorializing the historic landmark’s past.

Why have California lawmakers, elected officials and activists gotten involved in the debate over People’s Park?

Fears have bubbled up that the appellate court’s ruling could set a precedent, allowing residents to stop other projects that they deem “undesirable” from being built nearby.

Assemblymember Buffy Wicks (D-Oakland) decried the February ruling as a “grotesque misuse of the law — and it’s proof positive that it needs to change,” while Assemblymember Josh Hoover (R-Folsom) said that he has introduced a state bill that would prevent CEQA from being used to block student housing again in the future.

Even Gov. Gavin Newsom called for revamping the state law in response to the ongoing debate over UC Berkeley’s plans for the park.

“Our CEQA process is clearly broken when a few wealthy Berkeley homeowners can block desperately needed student housing for years and even decades,” Newsom wrote in a statement. “The law needs to change and I am committed to working with lawmakers this year to making more changes our state can build the housing we desperately need.”

But Harvey Smith, president of the People’s Park Historic District Advocacy Group, which is one of the plaintiffs in the case, said painting the project’s opposition as “NIMBYs” is a falsehood that ignores their main goal: preserving the park.

“I think a better word for us is preservationists,” Smith said. “We’re in favor of them building student housing, but the fact is that you also want to preserve the historical character of your community.

“Their spin on the whole thing is disconcerting, because they’ve tried to pull the focus away to make it a story about CEQA, not People’s Park.”

Took a look at People’s Park in @CityofBerkeley today for the first time in a while. Here’s what I saw. https://t.co/u82FG8N3JZ #peoplespark #berkeley @UCBerkeley pic.twitter.com/DPE3v9Yl6o

— Tyska (@Tyska) February 27, 2023