A small contingent of Berkeley residents and activists has pushed aggressively to preserve the entire park, which was the center of bloody counterculture protests in the 1960s. In late February last year, a state appeals court in San Francisco sided with the development plan’s opponents, who claimed that the university had failed to conduct environmental reviews required by state law. An appeal to the California Supreme Court is pending.
The university has struggled to cordon off the property, which is strewed with litter and graffiti, and to deter encampments. In August 2022, when the university tried to fence the site, large protests erupted and the crowd tore the fence down.
Since then, Mr. Mogulof said, the city and university have spent more than $6 million to lease motel space and move homeless people occupying the park into shelter and supportive housing, including an initiative in November when most of the roughly two dozen people who were still camped on the site were moved into a local motel.
University officials acknowledged that construction could not begin until the environmental review question was settled by the courts, but they said that the site’s legal status as a closed construction zone had been “repeatedly affirmed,” and that fencing the park was vital to preventing a resurgence of crime and new encampments on the property.
“Given that the existing legal issues will inevitably be resolved, we decided to take this necessary step now, in order to minimize disruption for the public and our students when we are eventually cleared to resume construction,” the chancellor of U.C. Berkeley, Carol Christ, said in a prepared statement.
“Unfortunately, our planning and actions must take into account that some of the project’s opponents have previously resorted to violence and vandalism,” she said, “despite strong support for the project on the part of students, community members, advocates for unhoused people, the elected leadership of the City of Berkeley, as well as the legislature and governor of the state of California.”