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UC Berkeley’s nearly halfway to funding a major retrofit of Memorial Stadium, and plans unveiled Thursday have already sparked controversy. 

Designs unveiled at a press conference featuring a collection of academic and athletic luminaries include: 

• Improved restrooms and seating and enhanced access for the disability community. 

• A 132,500-square-foot strength, conditioning and sports medicine high performance center to be constructed along the western base of the stadium. 

• A seismic upgrade of the stadium’s western wall to insure the safety of athletes using the high performance center. 

A second phase, to be started when the first phase is complete in the Fall of 2008 could include: 

• Permanent night lighting, long a bone of contention with stadium neighbors. 

• The addition of three new levels atop the existing stadium to accommodate “premium amenities” (a term often used to describe so-called high-priced luxury skyboxes), television broadcasters and other members of the press. 

• A major new underground parking lot beneath Maxwell Field. 

The stars were Chancellor Robert Birgeneau, the deans of Boalt Hall and the Haas School of Business, Athletic Director Sandy Barbour, Cal Bears football Head Coach Jeff Tedford—who had demanded stadium improvements as a condition of his contract—and two student athletes. 

All funds will be privately raised, said Birgeneau “and we already have several gifts and a matching fund challenge that have taken us close to the halfway mark” for the $125 million needed for the stadium retrofit and the sports center. 

If all goes as planned, construction plans will allow for continued play at the stadium, with a completion date in time for the 2008 football season, said the chancellor. He added that the stadium would only be used for university events and would not be rented out for private use. 

University officials unveiled their plans two days earlier in a private meeting with Mayor Tom Bates and City Manager Phil Kamlarz. 

“At a cursory glance, the plans look very good, but the real questions are in the details, which will come out in the EIR [environmental impact report],” Bates said. “We need to look very closely at the traffic and parking issues and at the way the facilities are used.” 

Bates said the stadium retrofit was clearly needed. 

“When I played for Cal [in the 1958-60 football seasons] the stadium was already in disrepair. The sports training facility is absolutely necessary,” he said. “Would I build the stadium there if we were starting from scratch? Absolutely not. But it’s too expensive to relocate.” 

Bates said he wants to make sure the project is carried out in a way that does the least environmental damage and raises the least concern to the neighbors. 

“We’ll have to make sure it’s well done,” he said. 

The press conference left several important questions unanswered. 

Neither Robert DeLiso of URS Corporation, project manager for new development in the campus’s southeast quadrant, nor Birgeneau, was able to answer one key question, the level of earthquake which the retrofitted stadium will be designed to withstand. 

The issue is critical because the stadium sits directly on the Hayward Fault, the source of the catastrophic Loma Prieta earthquake. The soil under the stadium could liquefy during a major temblor. 

Also unveiled were sketches of a structure to be built during a later phase of development which would sit between the existing Haas and Boalt buildings and provide new office and academic space, as well as a glassed-in atrium that could house up to 700 for evening events, and outdoor seating capable of seating up to 1,500. 

“This will be the destination venue that provides a window on the world for Berkeley and a window for the rest of the world on the Berkeley campus,” said Boalt Law School Dean Christopher Edley Jr. 

Birgeneau said the cost of the second phase academic commons building with the glass atrium connecting the two halves for the law and business schools is currently estimated at between $140 million and $160 million, “and must be provided through private support.” 

The chancellor and the two deans waxed euphoric about the potential of the combined projects to, in Edley’s words, “marry the intellectual energies” of the two professional schools, and he said that the plan “marries academics and athletic aspirations.” 

Lyons and Athletic Director Barbour used similar language, calling the plans “really magical” and hailing the “overarching concept.” 

Barbour said the massive athletic high performance center “will move us to an elite position,” competitive not only with other PAC 10 teams but on a national scale. 

Community concerns 

Bates acknowledged that permanent night lighting will be a matter of serious concern for residential neighbors. 

It was partly in an effort to battle permanent nocturnal lights that residents of Panoramic Hill sought and won the designation of a National Historic District for their neighborhood. 

But Janice Thomas, one of the two authors of the successful application, said lighting was a trivial concern compared to the impact of major new construction directly atop the Hayward Fault. 

“I’m really worried that they’ll transform a natural disaster into a man-made disaster,” Thomas said. 

Leslie Emmington, a member of the city Landmarks Preservation Commission and the Berkeley Architectural Heritage Association, said the developments will have a major adverse impact on Piedmont Way, a streetscape designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, America’s preeminent landscape architect, in 1865. 

“No amount of mitigation can offset the effect of blighting this historic landscape that makes that area of the university graceful and campus-like,” she said. 

Former urban planner John English, who has authored many successful historic resource designation applications, has raised the ante for the university by filing an application with the State Office of Historical Preservation that would be the first step in listing Memorial Stadium, which was designed by world renowned architect John Galen Howard and built in 1923, on the National Register of Historic Places. 

“I incorporated a lot of material in the application from a historic structures report done for the university that came to the conclusion that nothing should be built above the existing site,” English said.