Campus and City Wait for Court Decision on Memorial Stadium and Student-Athlete Center

In December 2006, after the UC Regents approved the design and environmental impact report for the Southeast Campus Integrated Projects, the City of Berkeley filed a lawsuit challenging the environmental review. In particular, the city has questioned the safety and legality of building a Student-Athlete High Performance Center next to the west side of California Memorial Stadium. Three additional legal challenges were filed by the Panoramic Hill Association, based on safety concerns of the neighborhood; by Save the Oaks at the Stadium, challenging the proposed removal of oak trees at the site; and by Save Tightwad Hill, a group concerned that the retrofit of the stadium will block out their traditional free view of Cal football.

A temporary injunction was granted by the court in January to prevent the removal of trees or other permanent changes to the site until the lawsuits are resolved. In the meantime, protests have included campus demonstrations, months-long occupancy of the oak trees by activists, and various public events, including a photograph of nude activists staged artfully among the trees.

In an interview with Nathan Brostrom, Vice Chancellor for Administration, Cal Neighbors asked about the central issues involved in these lawsuits.

The City alleges that the student-athlete center violates the Alquist-Priolo Act, which prohibits construction of public buildings on an active fault. How can the university build the student center there?
We've complied with Alquist-Priolo by completing detailed, site-specific studies so we know for certain there is no evidence of an active fault in the footprint of the proposed student-athlete center. We have dug several trenches at the site and drilled numerous core bores, including some during the past two months, to verify this finding.

Even if the student-athlete center site is not directly on the Hayward Fault, it would be very close to it. Wouldn't it be safer to build the center somewhere else, like at the Tang Center lot at Bancroft/Oxford?
When you assess seismic safety, two factors are taken into account: ground rupture (if the building lies directly on a fault line), and ground motion (for buildings not on a fault but affected by one). Since the proposed center is not directly on a fault line, the second factor is the important one. In fact, all of our campus buildings, city facilities, and residences in Berkeley have the same safety risk; they are all built near a major fault. The student-athlete center would be designed to withstand the same ground motion whether it is directly west of Memorial Stadium or downtown. The design of the center has been thoroughly reviewed by geophysicists, seismic engineers, and the campus seismic review committee, which includes some of the top seismic researchers in the world.

Why is the center being built next to the stadium? 
The center will be shared by 13 of the 27 Cal intercollegiate sports, including football and 12 Olympic sports. All of these sports — except for men's and women's crew and men's and women's golf, which have off-site facilities — train and compete in the southeast quadrant, in the vicinity of the stadium. Most of the media attention has focused on the benefits to football; however, for many women's sports the new center represents a move from having no or minimal facilities to having top-quality training and medical facilities.

Why not retrofit the stadium first in the interest of life safety?
Before we can retrofit the stadium, we have to move the staff and students who work and train in the stadium every day into a new, safe building. After we build the student-athlete center, our next step will be to retrofit and renovate the stadium.

What about the oak trees? Is this a heritage oak grove? How many trees will be planted at the site?
This is not an old-growth oak grove. Most of the trees in the area were planted when the stadium was built in 1923. Before that, the site was part of a residential garden. Only four trees on the site — three oaks and one redwood — are believed to predate the stadium.

The university has made a commitment to save as many trees at the site as possible. Current plans show more than 80 new trees being planted in phase 1 near the student-athlete center. Contrary to some reports, the replacement oaks will not be saplings. The project team will work with growers on the West Coast to secure replacement native oaks with trunks measuring up to 6 inches in diameter.

How will the stadium renovation affect the views from "Tightwad Hill"?
Plans for the eastern side of the stadium are only in concept phase. Views from Charter Hill, also known as Tightwad Hill, have always varied depending on where the viewer sits, or where trees might be growing on that challenged hillside. The university is willing to revisit this issue when plans for the stadium are more fully developed.