State lawmakers clear way for controversial Berkeley housing project

A bill that could clear the way for a controversial construction project at People’s Park in Berkeley is headed to the desk of Gov. Gavin Newsom. 

The bill, sponsored by state Rep. Buffy Wicks of Oakland, cleared the final hurdle in the state Legislature on Monday, passing out of the state Assembly with a unanimous vote for the second time this year. Assembly Bill 1307, if signed by the governor, would alter state law to say that developers no longer need to consider noise as a form of pollution when conducting environmental reviews on future construction projects. 

The bill’s passage can be seen as a win for officials at UC Berkeley, who are hoping to build what they say is much-needed housing in People’s Park. The project, which was first proposed years ago, has been in legal limbo ever since a pair of activist groups, wishing to protect the park, sued the university in an attempt to halt construction. The case is now awaiting judgment in the state Supreme Court. 

A university spokesperson told SFGATE in an email that the bill, should it become law, will hopefully bring an end to the lawsuit. 

“UC will ask the Supreme Court to consider the new statute when it issues its ruling,” the spokesperson wrote. “The campus will resume construction of the People’s Park project when the lawsuit is resolved and hopes that the new law will substantially hasten the resolution of the lawsuit.”

Wicks, whose district includes Berkeley, introduced the bill shortly after a state appeals court ruled in February that the university failed to consider alternative sites for the project and didn’t do enough to assess the effects that student noise may have on the area around the park — which, the court said, constituted violations of the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA. That decision overturned a superior court ruling from last year that sided with the university. Campus officials quickly appealed the February ruling, and in May, the state Supreme Court agreed to take up the case. 

“Proud to share that #AB1307, which would reverse a recent legal precedent that ‘people are pollution’ and that human noise is an environmental impact under CEQA, passed the Assembly unanimously,” Wicks said in a social media post on Tuesday. 

Newsom has yet to announce that he will sign the bill, but there’s little question that he supports the university’s project. The governor sent a letter to the state Supreme Court on behalf of the university in April, arguing that siding with the activist groups would set a precedent for CEQA to be abused by anyone who hopes to stop a development project. He also cast the defenders of the park as NIMBYs, a pejorative acronym that stands for “not in my backyard,” in February. 

“California cannot afford to be held hostage by NIMBYs who weaponize CEQA to block student and affordable housing,” Newsom wrote in a statement shortly after the appeals court ruling. “This selfish mindset is driving up housing prices, and making our state less affordable.”

A representative of the People’s Park Historic District Advocacy Group, one of the groups suing the university, did not respond in time for publication to an SFGATE request for comment on the passage of Wicks’ bill.  

University officials began construction on the project — which will cost more than $300 million and will provide space for roughly 1,100 students — on Aug. 3 of last year following the initial superior court ruling, but police and construction crews were quickly met by demonstrators who pulled down a fence that had been erected around the park. Further construction on the project has been paused indefinitely since the state appeals court ruling in February.