Court grants campus garden a reprieve
College of San Mateo officials must study parking lot impact
A 54-year-old garden at the College of San Mateo gained a new lease on life Friday when a state appeals court told college officials to consider the environmental effects of replacing the greenery with a parking lot.
The First District Court of Appeal in San Francisco had issued a similar ruling in 2013 but was ordered to take another look by the state Supreme Court in September. The high court said the college district was entitled to some deference for its finding that paving the garden would have no “significant aesthetic impact” on the campus.
After further review, the panel reached the same conclusion Friday: The views of students, teachers and others who frequent the garden establish that demolishing it “might have a significant environmental impact.”
That is enough to require a review that the district has not yet con-
ducted, the court said: either a full environmental impact report, soliciting public comment and presenting plans to limit the project’s effects, or a description of steps the district would take to reduce the environmental effects to “insignificance.”
Susan Brandt-Hawley, lawyer for a group of students and local residents who call themselves the Friends of the College of San Mateo Gardens, said the ruling was a victory in their six-year battle to preserve their campus haven.
Lawyers for the district could not be reached for comment. They could again seek review in the state Supreme Court.
The garden, interspersed with walkways, dates from 1963. The court quoted fond descriptions by supporters, including a professor who called it the “single surviving seminatural asylum” on a campus whose development has given it “the sterile aspect of an industrial park.” Students spoke of finding “sanctuary” in the garden, and especially praised a “tall and majestic” redwood tree from a species previously thought to be extinct.
The college district’s 2006 master plan proposed leaving the garden intact. But five years later, district officials presented an amended plan to remove the garden, and an adjoining greenhouse and vacant classroom building, and replace them with 140 to 160 parking spaces. Two buildings previously scheduled for demolition would be preserved.
The district declined to conduct an environmental study, saying the demolitions would amount to only a minor alteration in the 2006 plan. Trees and shrubs would be replanted elsewhere on campus, the district said, and aesthetics are in the eye of the beholder.
In its unanimous ruling in September, the state Supreme Court said an agency, like the college district, that revises its previous land-use plans must have leeway to decide whether the changes require a new environmental review, as long as its decision is supported by “substantial evidence.” But the appeals court said the district’s revision doesn’t pass that test.
In the college community, “there was widespread concern that replacing the gardens with a parking lot would remove one of the last green spaces on campus,” Presiding Justice James Humes said in the 3-0 ruling. He said there was at least a “fair argument” that demolition would have an aesthetic impact — the standard set by state law to require further environmental review.