The California Court of Appeal ordered the University of California (UC) Berkeley to stop its planned demolition of People’s Park until a court can rule on the merits of a lawsuit.
Make UC A Good Neighbor and the Peoples Park Historic District Advocacy Group (PPHDAG) sued the University of California Board of Regents alleging violations of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) when they refused to delay the destruction.
The July 7 order stays all construction, demolition, tree clearing, and other landscape alteration activity at People's Park until the trial court rules on the merits. A hearing is scheduled for this week.
The Regents oversee all of UC’s nine campuses in terms of land use, development, and enrollment.
“The University of California's Environmental Impact Report (EIR) admits that demolishing it will have a significant adverse effect on the historic significance of this property so that point is not in dispute,” said attorney for plaintiffs Tom Lippe. “Everybody agrees that it is a significant environmental harm to demolish it.”
Plaintiffs want to preserve People’s Park for historic reasons while UC had planned to build student housing at the People’s Park location.
People's Park is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as a historically significant property and also on the California Register of Historical Resources as well as a city of Berkeley historic landmark.
“There are lots of other places they could build student housing, but the University of California Berkeley has wanted to build on People's Park since the 1970s,” Lippe told the Southern California Record. “It's this longstanding institutional desire so they prioritized building on People's Park rather than building somewhere else that would have less impact on historic resources."
UC Berkeley has increased enrollment from 31,000 students in 2005, according to a press release, and it's planning to further increase enrollment to 48,000 by 2037. Currently, enrollment is at 44,000 students.
“This approval shortly followed a previous approval of another housing project on the west side of campus and then a few months later they approved this one south of campus and there will be more coming up,” Lippe said. “They aren't specifically identified yet but the big question hanging over this case, both legal- and policy-wise is why People's Park and not another location?”
The complaint asks the court to order UC to study and implement alternative sites for student housing, which would preserve People’s Park.
“My clients support building more housing for students at UC Berkeley but one of the legal claims is that they did not evaluate alternative locations for this housing project in the EIR, which we believe is a requirement of CEQA,” Lippe added. “Obviously, housing is a giant issue across the state, across the economy, and across all demographics. Overall, student housing is a piece of this bigger problem.”