Berkeley’s People’s Park is already almost unrecognizable

The operation, which began in the early hours, marks the university’s most brazen attempt to move ahead with its plans to build housing for students, unhoused people and low-income people on the 2.8-acre park. When the university had previously tried to secure it with a fence in August, protestors quickly pulled it down.

Containers were trucked in overnight and stacked two high and secured together around the three sides of the park bordering Haste and Bowditch streets and Dwight Way. Police cleared 40 people from the park, University of California, Berkeley spokesman Kyle Gibson told SFGATE, and though seven people were arrested they were released soon after.

By morning the containers were in place and an approximately nine-block grid around the park was behind barricades staffed by large groups of police. Inside the barricades, the streets were largely quiet save for law enforcement and construction crews.

Shortly before noon Thursday, a protest gathered at Telegraph Avenue and Haste Street to rally against the closure. But outside of a shouting match between demonstrators and a supporter of the university’s plans, Thursday’s rally was calm.

Though the park development plans are on hold pending a case currently before the California Supreme Court, Gibson said the university expects a positive ruling and wants to be ready for when that comes. Though the court has yet to hear oral arguments, as SFGATE previously reported, it will make its ruling 90 days after they take place. 

Once a ruling is handed down and it becomes official 30 days later, construction can begin. But until then, a coalition of groups opposing the plans are vowing more rallies to “take our park back.”