By Kristin Bender
They wear bandannas on their faces and rarely speak from the tree perches where some have lived for more than a year. The public doesn't know their names because they use pseudonyms, such as Otter and Chewing Gum, to protect their identities from police and UC Berkeley officials. But almost everyone from Bolinas to Bakersfield and from Alameda to Atherton knows about the tree sitters of Berkeley -- a handful of non-students who live and sleep on suspended wooden platforms in the trees they are trying to save from being razed to make room for a $125 million sports training center for the Cal Golden Bears football team and 12 other teams. The tree sit may be the public face of the 15-month controversy over the training center plans, but opponents of the plan -- which include the city of Berkeley, an environmental foundation and a neighborhood association -- say larger issues are at stake if the university moves forward.
Those issues include the wisdom of building a new complex on an earthquake fault that scientists say is overdue for a major temblor, the livability of the neighborhood and increased traffic congestion. "While the trees are important to a lot of people, they are not the reason the city filed a suit in this case," said Zach Cowan, acting city attorney. "The city has been primarily focused on public safety and emergency response and to have a planning process by the campus that was rational." The city of Berkeley is one of four entities that sued the university to stop the training center project. Three of the four lawsuits were consolidated and testimony in the cases continues today in a Hayward courtroom.
The plaintiffs come from diverse backgrounds -- the California Oak Foundation, the Panoramic Hill Association and a group called Save Tightwad Hill all sued. But the lawsuits follow similar themes: The university did not do the appropriate environmental studies or adequately consider alternatives to the grove site where the training center is to be built. The university also wants to renovate Memorial Stadium in later stages of the project, but money for that has not been secured. The plaintiffs contend that the training center will be unsafe because it will be attached to the seismically unsound stadium. Neighbors fear noise, traffic snarls and additional fan craziness with added stadium events. The Tightwad Hill group doesn't want to lose its free view of games from a grassy knoll.
"Folks are worried about the noise and traffic," said Jerry Wachtel, president of the Panoramic Hill Association. "The roads are narrow and choked. During a football game, you either stay home and don't leave, or you leave in the morning and you don't come home until late at night." He said residents worry the university will hold more events at the renovated stadium, thus adding even more traffic and noise to the neighborhood. Building the sports training project has been held up for more than a year by a court injunction that bans any changes to the construction site. And university officials say the project is now more than $6 million over budget because of the delay.
Trial resumes
What will happen next in the closely watched saga will take a step forward today as Alameda County Superior Court Judge Barbara Miller considers expert testimony as to why the planned training center should be considered a "separate structure" from the seismically unsound Memorial Stadium, which straddles the Hayward fault. "From the very beginning, the campus knew it needed to build a separate structure," because anything less would have been seismically unsafe, university spokesman Dan Mogulof has said. "That was the task assigned to our architect, and that is exactly what they delivered," Mogulof said. "We are confident that engineering experts will confirm that the student athlete high-performance center is in no way, shape or form an addition or alteration to California Memorial Stadium." This is the first time Miller has considered the case in court in about five months. A trial for three of the four lawsuits -- not including Save Tightwad Hill -- was held in the Hayward Hall of Justice in October and a decision was expected in January. But in a surprise move in December, Miller issued preliminary findings that rejected UC Berkeley's claim that a law called the Alquist-Priolo earthquake zoning act does not apply to its plan to build the student-athlete center near the stadium. For safety reasons, the 1972 act prohibits "alterations or additions" to existing structures to be built on earthquake faults where the cost of the alteration or addition exceeds 50 percent of the value of the existing structure. That order says the university "never considered" whether the training center was an alteration or an addition to the stadium for purposes of compliance with the act, or whether the cost to construct the center might violate the act because it is more than 50 percent of the value of the stadium.
Stephen Volker, an attorney for the California Oak Foundation, said plaintiffs are confident that further evidence that will be presented in court will show that the student-athlete high-performance center is both an alteration of and an addition to California Memorial Stadium. It's not clear how long oral arguments, which begin at 1 p.m. today in Hayward, will continue.
Antiquated facilities
While opponents have found a number of reasons to criticize the project, UC Berkeley officials say they desperately need a centrally located, state-of-the-art sports training center, with enough space for locker facilities, weight training, sports rehabilitation and medicine for the university's more than 300 athletes. "At the end of the day, it's to address modern-day athletic needs, which today (the stadium) just can't serve," said UC Berkeley attorney Mike Goldstein in a recent speech at the Berkeley City Club. Athletes agree. "We have the smallest amount of space between all the Pac-10 (Conference) schools and yet we are producing championships. I would think we could do so much more with more space and better facilities," said Cal volleyball player Kat Reilly, who is also president of the campus Student Athlete Advisory Council.
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