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By Matthew Artz 

At a meeting on Thursday, organic farmers, graduate students and Albany neighbors criticized a planned UC Development that threatens to uproot the area’s last farmland, demolish the university’s most affordable housing stock and create a 72,000 square foot supermarket and neighboring shops. 

“This is an end run around democracy,” said Jan Hitchcock, president of the Dartmouth Avenue Neighborhood Association. “God knows UC needs the money, but they’re using their tax-exempt status to do anything they want and we’re stuck with it.” 

Hitchcock was among about 30 opponents to speak at a scoping session on UC Berkeley’s Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR) for the redevelopment of University Village. The 77-acre plot along San Pablo Avenue has for decades been home to housing for graduate students and agricultural research on nearly ten acres of farmland. 

The project—in the works since 1998—would move two baseball fields to the agricultural land, known as the Gill Tract, restore Cordornices Creek, near where the baseball fields currently sit, and tear down 564 units of aging student housing in favor of 1,333 new apartment units for faculty and graduate students—some on San Pablo Avenue above the new storefronts. 

The retail component of the plan is indicative of UC’s thrust into commercial development to boost revenues. Like the proposed hotel and convention center in Berkeley, UC plans to lease the land to a developer, allowing Albany to claim sales tax revenue, but insulating it from property taxes. UC estimates ground lease revenue for the commercial development at $250,000 per year. 

Albany officials say they are happy with the proposed supermarket, which they estimate will bring in $30,000 a year in sales tax, but fear the plan will leave them footing the bill for essential services.  

“This exceeds our preferred density by a longshot, said Planning Manager Dave Dowswell. “The impact on our fire services will be major and right now we’re not getting compensated for it.” 

A final EIR, including responses to the comments made Thursday and others submitted before the March 17 deadline, will go before the Regents in July. 

Though the plan satisfies Albany and UC objectives, Professor Miguel Altieri, who has tilled a steadily decreasing share of the soil at the Gill Tract since 1981, smells a rat. 

“The university is yielding to corporate research,” he said. “Corporate money has biased research towards biotechnology so the university thinks it doesn’t need fields, just labs to manipulate genes.” If the project goes through, he added, the university would move his organic farming research to Orinda or Pinole, making research nearly impossible for most of his students who commute by bike. 

That move was scheduled to happen this year, but concerns over the financing model have forced UC to push back construction work to 2005, granting the farmers a year reprieve. 

Altieri and many of his students have banded together to save the Gill Tract, going so far as to offer an alternative site plan that keeps the farmland and scales back the housing. 

UC Berkeley Capital Projects Planner Jeff Bond sees little chance the current plan would change. “The Regents have made it clear the priority is to provide student housing,” he said. 

But the plan for housing is also steeped in controversy. The plan would demolish 412 units built for students with children that currently rent for $768 and replace them with more than one thousand new units estimated to rent at $1,366—slightly less than the maximum amount student loans provide for housing. Construction would be funded through bonds repaid by increased student rents.  

Residents warned UC officials Thursday that they couldn’t afford the higher rents and that if UC didn’t opt for a cheaper plan to refurbish the buildings they might have to drop out of school.  

But UC Director of Housing Facilities Operations and Services Bob Jacobs said low interest rates and a soft construction market made this a prime opportunity to build new housing and that the students’ plan would only be a short-term fix. 

“If we just fixed up the units, we could keep rents lower for 15 years and then we’d be faced with the same problem again,” he said. 

Construction of the new housing for families would start in 2004, while the commercial and housing development on San Pablo and the relocation of the ball fields to the Gill Tract would begin in 2005. 

The demise of affordable housing has more than just students worried. Last year the Albany Board of Education voted to oppose the plan, based both on the loss of the Gill Tract farmland and the potential loss of students to the district. 

“We’re afraid this plan means fewer students with children could afford University Village, which means lower enrollment and less money from the state,” said Albany Board of Education member Miriam Walden, who added that enrollment in Albany schools has declined in the few years since UC demolished other affordable housing units at the site. 

Berkeley City Council has passed a resolution opposing the plan, but its Albany counterpart has remained silent. Albany Councilmember Alan Maris said he is satisfied with the proposal and didn’t know if there was a point in arguing about its merits because the university will have the final word. “We’re really not in a very strong position here,” he said.›