Judge rules in favor of UC Berkeley housing

UC Berkeley’s proposal to build housing at People’s Park dodged an additional bullet Friday — additional than a half-century immediately after a similar program sparked a violent clash that proven People’s Park as a hotbed of social dissent.

An Alameda County Top-quality Court docket judge issued a tentative ruling Friday night that the university’s programs to build a $312 million housing challenge at People’s Park did not violate the California Environmental Excellent Act.

Decide Frank Roesch successfully gave UC Berkeley the Okay to start out developing housing at the web-site for 1,100 college college students and 125 homeless citizens in two 12- and 6-tale dorm buildings — coming total circle because 1969, when the university’s first motivation to build housing on the 2.8-acre web site culminated in thousands of protesters, a state of crisis and one particular loss of life.

Russell Bates, a 75-yr-previous Vietnam vet who has discovered community at People’s Park since the 1970s, and Stark Mike, a 73-12 months-previous who now stays at the park at night, are ready to do whichever they can to assist retain the room open up and no cost.

“We’re completely ready for war,” Bates claimed in an job interview at the park. “That’s what it is likely to get this time. They received to know that we’re major about defending this.”

On Friday, lawyers for 3 different situations searching for to end the progress — submitted jointly previous 12 months by the Neighborhood 3299 union for UC company employees and local community teams Make UC A Great Neighbor and Berkeley Citizens for a Superior Program — all presented their arguments in court docket.

The teams argued that environmental impression experiences in just UC’s extensive-array enhancement approach, which, in part, lays out how the establishment plans to accommodate its ever-rising pupil population about the up coming 15 yrs, were being insufficient. They preserved the designs unsuccessful to account for how student enrollment expansion will negatively affect the surrounding community, from rising greenhouse gases to clogging presently unsafe wildfire evacuation routes.

In addition, their attorneys claimed that UC officials failed to look at much more than a dozen other places for the housing fairly than the historic park, which was additional to the Countrywide Register of Historic Sites in June.

But until finally Judge Roesch submits a prepared buy, anticipated early subsequent week, building cannot start off simply because of a stay issued by an appellate court earlier this thirty day period, intended to reduce any physical improvements at the park until finally a conclusion was handed down.