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City Planning Director Issues Scathing Critique of UC Stadium Expansion Report

By Richard Brenneman
Tuesday August 01, 2006

City Planning Director Dan Marks has issued a stinging rebuke of UC Berkeley’s key environmental document covering its massive expansion plans for Memorial Stadium and its surroundings. 

In a 54-page critique, he describes a university so intent on raising funds that it is willing to ignore serious risks to the lives of its students, as well as those of parents and others who attend events at the stadium. 

In the document presented to the Planning Commission Wednesday night, Marks slams the university for its “dismissive attitude toward the City of Berkeley and its citizens” and assails a document he said is full of critical flaws and factual errors. 

The target of his criticism is the draft environmental impact report (DEIR) prepared by Design, Community & Environment, a Berkeley planning firm headed by David E. Early—the same firm that drafted the university’s 2020 Long Range Development Plan. 

“It appears that the university has prepared a DEIR that seeks to justify actions it had already determined to take before the DEIR was prepared, without sufficient environmental effects or alternatives,” wrote Marks. 

Marks called the document legally inadequate, and chided the university for failing to offer the real alternatives required by the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) for the quarter-billion-dollar complex of buildings reviewed by the DEIR.  

“We respond to comments in the final EIR,” said Jennifer Lawrence McDougall, a principal planner for the university. “We don’t have any other comments about the city’s letter.” 

A call to David Early wasn’t returned by deadline. 

Marks said “fund-raising considerations and concerns of alumni” rather than compliance with CEQA seemed to be driving the process, starting with a conceptual design for the 132,500-square-foot Student Athlete High Performance Center that were sketched out two years ago—well before the start of the EIR process. 

Had the university’s concern been the safety of students, officials would have begun by retrofitting the seismically unsafe stadium—a building constructed directly over the Hayward Fault. 

“But it is our understanding that Phase II of the project that includes the Stadium retrofit remains unfunded, while fundraising proceeds on Phase I, construction of a new fitness center attached to the crumbling and dangerous stadium,” Marks wrote. 

Noting that the DEIR declares that even with a seismic retrofit, the risk of injury and death from earthquakes at the stadium can be reduced “to less than significant levels,” Marks said “it is essential that the Campus seriously consider and analyze the option of relocating the stadium to other sites.” 

One possibility he suggested was the Oakland Coliseum after the A’s lease expires. 

 

Underestimated 

“The skimpy information that the DEIR includes is difficult to find, inconsistent and frequently underestimates the magnitude of projects,” offering only “snippets of information” about crucial details, Marks wrote. 

One example he cited was the parking lot planned for a site northwest of the stadium beneath Maxwell Family Field. 

The DEIR “does not indicate the specific size of the Maxwell Field parking structure, which will probably be more than 325,000 square feet,” he wrote. 

One snippet related to the mammoth garage is a fleeting mention of a 12- to 15-foot-high wall around three sides of the structure that would be out of character with its historic surroundings, including the recently landmarked Memorial Stadium. 

“Other critical information is simply omitted,” he wrote, including the ”extraordinary amount of excavation” needed to construct four underground parking levels, as well any analysis of its environmental impact—including the high volume of truck traffic that would accompany the dig and subsequent construction. 

In addition to the training center parking structure and eventual stadium retrofit, the project includes construction of a 186,000-square-foot building that would join offices and functions of the university’s law and business schools. 

Marks wrote that the document is also notable for what it doesn’t include, such as the cumulative impacts of the projects when added to other nearby and pending projects, including major renovations at Bowles Hall, just across from the parking structure, and the planned demolition of the Bevatron at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, a short drive up the hill from the stadium complex. 

 

Other failures 

Other failures Marks cited include: 

• Use of inappropriate analytical methods and standards of significance in evaluating impacts: 

• Lack of accurate descriptions of the document’s regulatory framework; 

• Omission of any evidence that the university is carrying out mitigation measures promised in the EIR for the Long Range Development Plan. 

• The absence of discussion of how the university has “followed its own adopted policies as they apply to the project.” 

• Lack of accurate descriptions of how city General Plan policies and regulations would apply were the project within municipal jurisdiction; 

The document is “so fundamentally flawed,” he wrote, “that the only way to fully rectify these shortcomings is to substantially revise and recirculate the document.” 

The usually phlegmatic Marks laced his report with stark adjectives as he worked his way through a critique of each of the sections of the two-volume DEIR. 

UC Berkeley’s environmental review of the stadium area expansion has been freighted with controversy from start. 

After attending a Dec. 8, 2005 scoping session held by the university to gather input on the scope of the review, Marks told the Landmarks Preservation Commission four days that that he had been distressed to learned the university was already working on building designs before the review began. 

Because an EIR is supposed to consider alternatives to projects under consideration, the fact that the university had already committed money to plans was a sign that any alternatives raised would be little more than symbolic. 

“By the time it’s in schematics, it’s done,” Marks told the commission. 

The university is planning to use private contributions to fund the major projects. The university has been cagey with information from the beginning, starting with the initial press conference called to unveil the project. 

When a reporter asked if the second level tier to be added above the stadium rim included luxury sky boxes—premium seating for wealthy fans and corporations—Birgeneau professed ignorance, as did other officials. 

The acknowledgment of a fact that seemed self evident to journalists would only come later.