Features

After 16 years, four aborted attempts to win city approval and $600,000 lost, the design of UC Berkeley’s proposed Foothill Bridge across Hearst Avenue has changed dramatically—but not the opposition from neighbors. 

UC Berkeley is making what university Environmental and Long Range Planner Dave Mandel has said is likely its final push to connect the two halves of its Foothill Housing complex with a pedestrian bridge. The dorms themselves were first approved in 1988, with the bridge included in the original design. 

Mandel told participants at a Tuesday community forum on the project that the bridge would give dorm residents a safe passage across the hectic intersection at Hearst and Highland Street and provide access for wheelchair bound students currently shut out of the La Loma dormitory on the north side of Hearst. 

For most of the 350 students living in La Loma, the bridge would only shave about 50 yards off their 650-foot walk across Hearst to the Foothill dormitories where their mail boxes and dining commons are located. But for students in wheelchairs, those services are a world away. Because the terrain around the dorms is so steep, the only path to the mail boxes flat enough for wheelchair riders takes them on a half-mile journey all the way to the Greek Theater and around the complex. 

Not surprisingly, said Larry Wong, manager of the Foothill complex, no wheelchair-using students live in La Loma’s 12 wheelchair accessible units.  

The university has no shortage of disabled accessible housing units, but that wasn’t the point, said the Vice Chancellor for Resident and Student Service Programs Harry Le Grande. “What we want to do is make it accessible. If they want to live here they should be able to.” 

While the university originally pitched the bridge as a safety benefit for all residents, UC Planner Mandel said its chief concern is now access for the disabled. He said UC fears that a student could sue the university for denying access to a public building in violation of the Americans With Disabilities Act. 

Neighbors didn’t buy any of the university’s arguments.  

“If they’re seriously concerned about access for the disabled, they’d make the buildings more accessible,” said Chris Scott, an architect who worked on the design of UC Merced. Scott insisted that even with the bridge, disabled students would have limited access to the dormitory. 

Scott said many neighbors remain unsympathetic to the university’s argument for wheelchair accessibility because in 1988 they urged UC to build the dorm on the south side of campus on Bancroft Way and Fulton Street, where the Tang Medical Center is now situated. That location, Scott said, would have offered far better access to students in wheelchairs than the steep slopes of Hearst. 

The opinion of neighbors like Scott carry extra weight for this project because the university needs an encroachment permit from the City Council to build a bridge across the public right-of-way. 

The last three attempts to do so never made it to the council floor. In 1988, 1992 and 1998 the university offered different variations of a massive Bay Region style structure that boasted a slanted roof and wooden pillars, but few supporters.  

Neighbors said it would obstruct their views of the Bay, the Landmarks Preservation Commission opposed it 1988 and again in 1998 on grounds that it would obstruct the view of the national landmark Phi Delta Theta House at 2717 Hearst Ave. (now occupied by the Berkeley Family Church), and the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory feared it would collapse in an earthquake and block their passage for emergency vehicles. 

The new scaled back design proposes a steel and wood structure suspended 21 feet off the ground, measuring 11 feet tall, with a slightly arched green top and bottom. The design was developed by Riyad Ghannam of MacDonald Architects 

Lawrence Berkeley Lab backs the new design, which Ghannam says is more seismically sound than the previous versions. Berkeley Design Review lambasted the plan, however, according to Mandel. “They called it boring, ugly and too simplistic,” he said. 

At the meeting, neighbors didn’t focus on the design of the bridge as much as its symbolism. “We’re getting more and more institutionalized and I see this bridge as one more move to intrude on this fragile residential neighborhood,” said neighbor Daniella Thompson. 

The north side of campus and surrounding blocks have seen several new construction projects over the past decade. A decade after UC built Soda Hall on the north side of Hearst, the university is now breaking ground on Stanley Hall, a four-story building on the southside of Hearst. UC also continues work on the North East Quadrant Science and Safety Project. 

Roger Van Ouytsel, another neighbor, said his problem wasn’t with the bridge so much as with the university building projects that only serve students. “If the university wants to spend more than a million dollars it should spend the same amount to improve our neighborhood and improve the traffic which it is responsible for,” he said. 

Vice Chancellor Le Grande never imagined the bridge would end up costing so much. Had the university won approval for the bridge in 1988, the project would have cost $400,000, he said. So far, UC has spent $600,000 on various bridge designs, Mandel said, and would need to spend another $600,000 to build the bridge. The money, he said, would come from the original $65 million bond that funded the housing complex. 

If approved by the City Council, Project Manager Valarie Neumann said the bridge would be assembled off-site and could be attached to the buildings in one work day. 

The university is partnering with the city to improve pedestrian safety at several intersections along Hearst, said Peter Hillier, the assistant city manager for transportation. He said projects are in the works for the intersections at Oxford Street, and at Arch and Leconte streets. 

Councilmember Gordon Wozniak, who represents the district that encompasses the Foothill Dorm, empathized with the concerns of the neighbors at the meeting, but said he was leaning towards supporting the bridge. “It sounds like the bridge will allow disabled students access to different parts of the complex and also allow safer crossing for students,” the councilmember said. “That’s a plus.” 

Students were divided on the issue. Pammy O’Leary, a resident advisor at Foothill said despite the many hills, a bridge would make living in La Loma useful for a wheelchair-using engineering student, because most engineering classes are close to the dormitory. 

Scott Baker a freshman at La Loma, doubted students using wheelchairs would want to live in a dormitory so high in the hills. “I’m sure the money could go to something more useful,” he said.