Faculty among foes of UC Berkeley plan for faculty housing
To ease a faculty housing shortage that UC Berkeley says makes it hard to recruit and keep professors, the university expects to break ground in September on two buildings with faculty apartments, parking, classrooms and event space. But instead of rejoicing, the faculty voted this week to try to kill the project.
In another twist, the Berkeley City Council voted Tuesday to sue the campus over the plan — even though city leaders say they actually like the project that would replace the four-story parking structure at 2698 Hearst Ave. at Gayley Road. It would have 150 faculty apartments, 170 parking spots and a third academic building for the university’s Goldman School of Public Policy.
Yet on Wednesday, professors hot under the collar about the $126 million development voted 174-69 to ask campus Chancellor Carol Christ to “immediately suspend” the project that would demolish hundreds of parking spots. They’d called a special meeting of the Faculty Senate to tackle a range of complaints about the project.
Among their fears was that the project would drag the
campus further into debt.
“We saw what happened with the stadium,” electrical engineering Professor Eli Yablonovitch told the packed auditorium, referring to the $321 million renovation of Memorial Stadium and the $153 million student athletic center that opened in 2012 and for which the university will owe annual payments of $26 million to $82 million beginning in 2032.
Yablonovitch accused the administration of excessive secrecy in its planning for the project that he said makes “far less than optimum use of precious campus real estate.”
Then the professor touched on the third-rail issue that, for many faculty, rivals the lack of housing in its importance to their quality of life: parking.
If the vast, concrete “Upper Hearst Parking Structure” is demolished, gone would be the 350 spots that many faculty and staff members depend on when driving to work.
The university said it would make parking available elsewhere, albeit fewer spots, and would provide shuttle service for faraway spots.
Yablonovitch won applause when he called for the administration to drop the project and “involve the faculty in creating a new plan.”
In arguing in favor of the project, Chancellor Christ called the need for faculty housing urgent. She promised that the campus would use philanthropic donations to help professors pay their rent — expected to range from about $3,100 for a studio to $4,600 for a two-bedroom.
Christ, who became chancellor years after the athletic complex deal, explained this project’s “public-private partnership” and said the campus would not be on the hook for any debt.
“If the project goes belly up, it’s the (developer and property manager) American Campus Communities” that will take the hit, she said. “Not the campus.”
Others spoke up for the project. Jeff Edleson, dean of the School of Social Welfare, said housing problems are so bad that “it has cost the university a great deal of money” when it has to promise housing subsidies just to get them to stay.
Henry Brady, dean of the Goldman School of Public Policy, which would get a third building in the deal and no longer have to rent space in the football stadium, called the project “highly desirable and a great recruiting tool.”
But in the end, parking problems, fears of a financial boondoggle, and the complicated politics of adequate consultation with faculty governance led to the professors’ formal opposition to the project.
The city of Berkeley’s objection is about UC Berkeley’s student population explosion and its impact on the city.
That’s because the campus discussed its growing enrollment within the environmental impact report it submitted for the Upper Hearst project. (The campus projected that it would have a student population of 33,450 by 2020, but it currently has about 41,000 students.) That bothered Berkeley council members so much that they voted to take the university to court.
“Why would they try to bury such a massive population growth into a project that is ostensibly about two buildings?” asked Matthai Chakko, a city spokesman. “Our belief is they are trying to distract people from the issue, which is the massive population growth.”
Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguin said in a statement that the city needs to hold the university accountable. He said the soaring student population leads to “increasing burdens on our streets, police and fire services” that everyone feels, including students.
The problem is exacerbated because the university is exempted from paying property taxes and other fees, which “places an unfair burden on local residents to address increasing growth,” said Arreguin, who has asked the university to do an analysis of its growth. But he said he doesn’t oppose the new development.
“The Upper Hearst Development is a worthy project and should not be saddled by a flawed (Environmental Impact Report) or cramming the issue of greater student enrollment into the report,” the mayor said.
Campus spokesman Dan Mogulof said that including the student enrollment information within the project’s report made it possible to measure the project’s impact accurately.
“While the campus is prepared to successfully defend its position in court, we hope that continued dialogue will lead the city to decide that litigation is unnecessary, and not worth the extraordinary expense,” Mogulof said.
Meanwhile, the campus is scheduled to present its project to the University of California regents at their three-day meeting in San Francisco, May 14-16.