People’s Park protest will cost UC Berkeley millions

BERKELEY — Two chaotic days of destruction at People’s Park last year racked up more than $4 million in excess costs for UC Berkeley, a records request has revealed.

The tense standoff erupted in the pre-dawn hours of Aug. 3, when demolition crews quickly fenced in the park and downed dozens of trees on the university-owned site three blocks south of campus, which was once a center of 1960s political protest. Over two days, protesters foiled the university’s attempt to start construction on its controversial housing project for 1,100 students and 125 unhoused residents on the historic site.

By the early afternoon on Aug. 3, hundreds of police officers in full riot gear had retreated amid growing pushback from protesters, leaving dozens of people free to pry apart barricades, cut gas lines and puncture tires of heavy machinery left behind — the most recent chapter of a fiery history of activism on the land.

The havoc’s toll includes a whopping three-quarters of a million dollars to pay for the fencing that protesters ripped out of the sidewalks around the 2.8-acre park, but the biggest cost is $2.73 million to compensate law enforcement deployed at People’s Park, according to UC Berkeley spokesperson Dan Mogulof.

The police response at the park — bounded by Telegraph Avenue, Bowditch Street, Dwight Way and Haste Street — was led by University of California Police Department officers, with help from the California Highway Patrol and California State University officers. Mogulof said that $2.73 million includes outside officers’ room and board, physical security supplies and overtime for UC Berkeley police personnel.

Fortunately for the $312 million project, there’s already wiggle room baked into the budget that the University of California Board of Regents approved in September 2021.

The plan allocated nearly $52.8 million for contingency costs, which included “anticipated delays due to litigation or special considerations relating to clearing the site for construction,” according to documents from the UC’s Capital Strategies Committee.

Mogulof, who said he was not previously aware of those funds, could not confirm if that was where the $4 million from August’s protests would be sourced.

So why should the greater Berkeley community care that a $312 million UC housing project — complete with a dedicated contingency fund — will swallow an additional $4 million in expenses and ballooning interest costs during years of delays?

While no taxpayer dollars are at stake, Mogulof said the public should be concerned that a small group of people were able to temporarily shut down a project that has otherwise gleaned support from the Berkeley City Council and 68% of surveyed university students.

“UC Berkeley is a public institution, and the public has a vested interest in the fact that the university is a good steward of the funds they receive, from the public and elsewhere,” Mogulof said by phone Tuesday, adding that unforeseen expenses may put pressure on the prices students pay to live in the proposed facility.

“These costs were incurred because of unlawful behavior, and it raises the question: Who gets to decide? At the end of the day, somebody has to pay. It’s a hard pill to swallow when costs are the result of illegal activity.”

But many activists working to preserve the park are left wondering whether UC Berkeley reflected on where they went wrong in August, given the fact that they’re left with a “hefty price tag for nothing,” according to Andrea Prichett, a member of the People’s Park Council who was one of the protesters arrested for blocking the construction in August.

“When you spend $4 million and you have nothing to show for it, that’s a public policy problem,” Prichett said. “I would like to think that they would revise their approach in future, but unfortunately they have it in their minds that they can simply roll over this portion of the community and force their will upon people. It didn’t take a public policy expert to recognize that there was going to be resistance.”

Construction was approved in July by Alameda County Judge Frank Roesch, who rejected several lawsuits — filed jointly in 2021 by the Local 3299 union for UC service workers and two community groups, Make UC A Good Neighbor and Berkeley Citizens for a Better Plan — that argued the housing project violated the California Environmental Quality Act.

Redevelopment of People’s Park has remained on hold since August — at first to avoid further confrontation, but also because the university was hit with an injunction by a state appellate court. That same court appears to be on the brink of forcing UC to abandon its current plans at People’s Park.

In December, the First District Court of Appeal in San Francisco filed a tentative opinion that the University of California failed to offer a valid reason for why it did not analyze alternative locations, well-documented noise impacts and unintended population growth while developing a plan to build desperately needed homes on the historic 2.8-acre site.

Oral arguments for the case will be heard Thursday.

While the battle slogs through the courts, UC Berkeley is also on the hook to pay the project’s contractor delay fees, which are contractually required in order to compensate for costs that will be incurred while progress is stalled on the project.

Mogulof said that bill is currently $2.6 million and will continue to climb for as long as the delay continues.

“There’s always the possibility of delays in a complicated construction project, not necessarily due to the courts or activists,” Mogulof said. “But covering these (additional) costs requires resources that we would rather use elsewhere to support our students, faculty and academic mission.”

The total price tag does not include the crews and equipment used to cut down several trees at the historic park, which was added to the National Register of Historic Places in June. Rather, Mogulof said those costs will be rolled into the larger project’s final bill, since those actions were already planned, regardless of any protests and damage.

More detailed financial information about the bills — from the toll of the construction equipment that was destroyed to the locations where officers were housed during the protests — is not yet available.

Moving forward, Mogulof said the university wants to start construction as soon as possible in order to complete the project and welcome new residents within two years, attempting to address the university’s student housing crisis.

About 82% of the more than 45,000 undergraduate and graduate students enrolled last fall were left to find off-campus housing — the highest percentage among the entire University of California system.

“The university’s commitment to the project is unwavering,” Mogulof said. “And we intend to proceed with construction as soon as we’re able to.”