Features

Berkeley has blocked the start of construction on a permanent home for Vista College—more than 30 years in the making—due to a parking dispute with the Peralta Community College District.  

The city is withholding construction permits to Peralta—which counts Vista among its four member schools—for Vista’s new downtown campus at 2050 Center Street, said Mayor Tom Bates, until the district settles its parking mitigation fee with the city. 

The dispute concerns how much Peralta owes the city in parking mitigations for putting the six-story, 165,000-square-foot new campus right in the heart of downtown, where a 54-space parking lot once sat. 

Peralta has offered $3.6 million in mitigation fees, the amount originally requested by former City Manager Weldon Rucker. But two months ago, Bates said current City Manager Phil Kamlarz notified the district that a new survey put the tab closer to $6 million. 

While the two sides haggle, the city has blocked permits closing off parts of Center Street for construction, and Peralta’s general counsel is determining if the city can deny Peralta the permits. 

Without the permits, Peralta had to cancel excavation work for their building scheduled to begin last Monday, a Peralta source said, costing it $2,500 per day in contractor fees. Due to the permit delay and other hang ups, Peralta’s construction consultants have pushed back the scheduled opening of the building from fall, 2005 to January, 2006. 

“We’re kind of at an impasse right now,” said Vista President John Garmon. 

Bates, who has fought for decades to get Vista a home of its own and now finds himself holding up construction, blamed the district. “They’ve known about this all along,” he said. “We can’t help them until they resolve this issue.” 

As an institution of public education, Peralta claimed an exemption from city planning rules in designing their building, which under city guidelines would have required them to provide 208 parking spaces. 

To mitigate the increased parking need caused by Vista and the potential loss of two downtown lots, the city is considering paying an estimated $18 million to tear down and rebuild the 420-space Center Street garage at twice the capacity. 

Berkeley is also demanding it receive the parking money promptly, or at least get a guarantee that it will be paid. Garmon said the money is tied up in state construction bonds and that the state wouldn’t release the money until the building was ready for occupancy. 

That’s not good enough for Bates, who worries the construction money could dry up. “They’re saying they’re good for it but we want the money or some kind of assurance it’s going to happen.” Bates added the city would devote the entire payment to parking mitigations and not use it to plug the city’s estimated $9 million budget deficit. 

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