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A controversial proposal to develop Laney College properties and the Peralta Colleges Administration Building land ran into a significant setback last week when a meeting designed to win over Laney College support instead appeared to stiffen opposition. 

In addition, Oakland developer Alan Dones’ proposed changes in the proposal now bring it into direct conflict with funded development plans already in place for Laney College’s Art Annex. 

Following the meeting, Laney College Athletic Director and former Faculty Senate President Stan Peters said there was “absolutely no support on the Laney campus” for Dones’ proposed development project, and members of the Laney Faculty Senate began circulating a petition on campus which urged the district to “enter into no contracts or compacts to develop [Laney] land or use the facilities for non-college purposes” until the district has developed a strategic education, facilities, and land use plan. 

In a plan presented to the Peralta Community College District Board of Trustees last November, Dones proposed putting a high-rise parking facility and a multi-agency administrative complex along the west side of East 8th Street on land currently occupied by Laney faculty and student parking, a “possible medical center” and residential development on land currently occupied by the Peralta Administration offices on East 8th and 5th Avenue, and setting aside the Laney baseball and softball fields as a “future planning area.” 

Peralta’s outgoing Board of Trustees—four of whom chose not to run for re-election last November—voted to authorize Chancellor Elihu Harris to enter into a one-year contract with Dones’ Strategic Urban Development Alliance (SUDA). But last month, after Laney College faculty and student representatives complained that they had never been consulted on the Dones proposal and announced particular opposition to any development of the athletic fields, Harris said he was not ready to enter into the authorized contract negotiations with SUDA, calling them “premature.” 

Dones later said in a telephone interview that opposition to the Laney athletic fields development was due to a “misunderstanding,” and that his company never planned to propose anything more than enhancing the athletic use of the fields. 

Last week, after admitting he had erred in not consulting with Laney representatives before bringing his proposal to the Peralta trustees, Dones held an open meeting at the Laney campus with faculty, staff, students and “members of the community” to try to repair the damage. According to reports from some meeting participants, it did not work. 

“Nothing he showed us was of benefit to the college,” said Laney Faculty Senate President Evelyn Lord. She added that “he’s got so many things in his proposal, it looks far beyond what the limited available land can support.” 

In a presentation, Dones listed a “mixed use parking structure” for the existing faculty and student parking lot as originally presented in November to the Peralta trustees. But the presentation also proposed—and Lord and Peters said that Dones emphasized—placing a high-rise student/faculty parking structure in another location: the existing tennis courts at the southeast corner of the campus on East 10th Street. 

The problem is, last year the Peralta District approved construction of a $7.4 million art annex building on that same tennis court location. An architect and construction manager are already hired, and construction is scheduled to be completed in January of 2006. Construction of the art annex is necessary because CalTrans needs the land housing the present annex for use as a staging area during an upcoming I-880 freeway retrofit project. 

“If you don’t include the art annex construction in the proposal, the rest of the discussion is moot,” athletic director Peters said. 

Faculty Senate President Lord said that Dones acknowledged the conflict with the art annex at the meeting, but his solution was to ask meeting participants to lobby district officials to try to halt the art annex construction. She thought that was a dead end. “He admitted this was coming at the 11th hour,” she said. “I suspect this is past the 11th hour to try to change those types of plans.” 

Lord also accused the developer of being disingenuous in the presentation of his plans to Laney representatives. “He presented the proposed Peralta Administration Building development to us as ‘health care facilities,’” she said. “But in an ad he put out last week in a local newspaper, he said he was going to put a hospital on that land. That set off alarm bells. A hospital would have a huge impact on the Laney campus.” 

Lord said that Laney faculty members were not automatically opposed to any development on Laney lands, just to the particular development proposed by Dones. Both she and Peters agreed that an expanded parking facility was a critical need for the college. “We support a high-rise parking facility,” Lord said. “We just don’t want it on the location [Dones] is now proposing, the site of the new art annex.”  

Peters, who helped lead a successful effort a decade ago to halt plans by Kaiser Hospital to build a medical facility on Laney lands, said that he was going to fight for three principles in any Laney development: “it has to include sufficient parking for now and the future, it has to be compatible with our educational mission, and Laney has to get a bigger share of the proceeds in return for giving up any of our land.”  

In addition, Peters said another reason for his opposition is that approval of the Dones plans would block off any future expansion of Laney’s educational facilities. “We really have too many campuses in the district,” Peters said. “One possible way to correct that imbalance would be to close Merritt College and expand Laney’s campus. But the only place for Laney to expand is in the parking lot and the district administration building.” 

Dones was not available for comment for this article. 

Dones’ new proposals also failed to get the support of Peralta Federation of Teachers (PFT) president Michael Mills, who attended the Laney meeting. 

“PFT does not have a position on SUDA’s proposal,” Mills said. “Our position is that the Trustee Board’s original actions in authorizing the SUDA contract were improper. The contract should have been put out to bid.” Mills said that because of the union’s position, he has resisted Dones’ request for a meeting with union representatives to discuss the proposal. “I’m not going to have a sit-down with him,” Mills said. “I’m not going to legitimize the process.” 

Lord said that Dones presented no plans at the end of the Laney meeting as to what the next step in the process would be, but the faculty senate president said “we’re not waiting for him. We’re not going to sit passively back to see what happens.” 

Lord said that she expected representatives of Laney College’s faculty, staff, administration, and students to meet sometime in the near future to plan strategies to block the development proposal. “Our real goal is to get the trustees to rescind their action in approving the SUDA contract negotiations,” she said.›