Public Comment

It can be taken as a truism that UC Berkeley will always choose the most inappropriate and inconvenient time to release a Notice of Preparation involving a controversial development project. The current case is no exception. Who else would take advantage of community vulnerability to push its development agenda while a pandemic is raging on?  

No doubt UCB is aware that the California League of Cities on 22 March 2020 requested of Governor Newsom relief to extend a number of deadlines, including the deadline in the Permit Streamlining Act. Yet your Notice of Preparation, released more than two weeks later, cites the Permit Streamlining Act deadline as immutable. 

Furthermore, the only public session allowing community members to speak would be via a live webcast on April 27. Clearly, a single two-hour scoping session, of which a good part would be taken up by UC’s own presentation, is grossly insufficient for the community to express its views on a subject so complex.  

UCB must withdraw the Notice of Preparation for the duration of the current COVID-19 crisis. 

As for the proposed housing projects, both portend highly undesirable outcomes. 

Housing Project #1 will do away with the University Garage (Walter H. Ratcliff, Jr., architect, 1930), a City of Berkeley Landmark. 

Housing Project #2 will be on People’s Park, also a City of Berkeley Landmark, and surrounded by 16 other designated City of Berkeley landmarks, constituting a de facto historic district. Please see all of them in the map attached below and in this photo exhibit: http://berkeleyheritage.com/essays/around_people’s_park.html 

It’s time for UCB to show us that it has a human side. Table the Notice of Preparation until the COVID-19 crisis is over.