Cal stadium to be debated in court

0 Comments | Oakland Tribune, Mar 7, 2008 | by Kristin Bender

BERKELEY -- They wear bandannas on their faces and rarely speak from the tree perches where some have lived for more than a year.

The public doesn't know their names because they use pseudonyms, such as "Otter" and "Chewing Gum," to protect their identities from police and University of California, Berkeley, officials.

But almost everyone from Bolinas to Bakersfield and from Alameda to Atherton knows about the tree sitters of Berkeley -- a handful of nonstudents who live and sleep on suspended wooden platforms in the trees theyare trying to save from being razed to make room for a

$125 million sports training center for the Cal Bears football team and 12 other sports teams.

The tree sit may be the public face of the 15-month, town-grown controversy over the training center plans, but opponents of the plan -- including the city of Berkeley, an environmental foundation and a neighborhood association -- say larger issues are at stake if the university moves forward.

Those issues include the wisdom of building a new complex on an earthquake fault that scientists say is overdue for a major temblor, the livability of the neighborhood and more traffic congestion.

"While the trees are important to a lot of people, they are not the reason the city filed a suit in this case," Acting City Attorney Zach Cowan said. "The city has been primarily focused on public safety and emergency response, and to have a planning process by the campus that was rational."

The city of Berkeley is one of the four entities that sued the university to stop the sports training center project, which plaintiffs believe will be seismically unsafe and cause more noise and traffic. Three of the four lawsuits were consolidated and testimony in the cases continues today in Hayward.

The plaintiffs come from diverse backgrounds -- The California Oak Foundation, the Panoramic Hill Association and a group called Save Tightwad Hill all sued. But the lawsuits follow similar themes: The university did not do the appropriate environmental studies or adequately consider alternatives to the grove site where the training center is to be built.

The university also wants to renovate Memorial Stadium in later stages of the renovation, but money for that project has not been secured.

The plaintiffs contend that the sports training center would be unsafe because it would be attached to the seismically unsound Memorial Stadium. Neighbors fear noise, traffic snarls and additional fan craziness with added stadium events. The Tightwad Hill group doesn't want to lose its free view of games from a grassy knoll.

"Folks are worried about the noise and traffic," said Jerry Wachtel, president of the Panoramic Hill Association.

"The roads are narrow and choked. During a football game you either stay home and don't leave, or you leave in the morning and you don't come home until late at night."

He said residents worry the university would hold more events at the renovated stadium, thus adding even more traffic and noise to the neighborhood.

Construction of the sports training project has been held up for more than a year by a court injunction that bans any changes to the building site. University officials say the project is now more than

$6 million over budget because of the delay.

What will happen next in the closely watched saga will take a step forward today as Alameda County Superior Court Judge Barbara J. Miller considers expert testimony as to why the planned sports training center should be considered a "separate structure" from the seismically unsound Memorial Stadium, which straddles the Hayward fault.

"From the very beginning, the campus knew it needed to build a separate structure," because anything less would have been seismically unsafe, university spokesman Dan Mogulof said.

"That was the task assigned to our architect, and that is exactly what they delivered," Mogulof said. "We are confident that engineering experts will confirm that the student athlete high- performance center is in no way, shape or form an addition or alteration to California Memorial Stadium."

This is the first time Miller has considered the case in court in about five months.

A trial for three of the four lawsuits (not including Save Tightwad Hill) was held in the Hayward Hall of Justice in October and a decision was expected in January.

But in December, Miller issued preliminary findings that rejected UC Berkeley's claim that a law called the Alquist-Priolo Earthquake Zoning Act does not apply to its plan to build the student-athlete center near the stadium.

For safety reasons, the 1972 act prohibits "alterations or additions" to existing structures to be built on earthquake faults where the cost of the alteration or addition exceeds 50 percent of the value of the existing structure. That order says the university "never considered" whether the sports training center was an alteration or an addition to the stadium for purposes of compliance with the act, or whether the cost to construct the sports center might violate the act because it is more than 50 percent of the value of the stadium.