UC Berkeley will close parts of People’s Park on Tuesday for about three weeks to test the soil in preparation for building student and permanent supportive housing on three acres of the park.
Crews will put up fences, and a team of engineers and geologists will test the soil in certain parts of the park, causing closures that will probably last until Feb. 16 depending on weather conditions.
The tests will be done to ensure the park is seismically safe for construction, said Kyle Gibson, a spokesman for the university’s Capital Strategies, which oversees campus design, planning construction and real estate.
The project will build up to 1,200 beds for sophomores, juniors and seniors and up to 150 beds for the homeless. The project’s environmental impact report will look at a student building that goes up to 17 stories.
The closures will not affect public restrooms or street parking at the park. The park’s trees will also remain untouched during the analysis, Gibson added.
Once the soil samples are collected, the closed areas of the park will reopen.
The campus is 6,900 beds short of its goal to house half of its undergraduates and a quarter of its graduate students, according to UC Berkeley. The campus has about 42,000 students.
Discussions to build student housing at the park began in 2017. UC Berkeley officially kicked off design plans to develop housing at the park — known as a safe space for the homeless — in July 2019. The architectural design and environmental analysis will be completed early this year, Gibson said.
The development plan for the park, which is on land owned by the university, will be presented to the UC regents this summer for approval.
Construction is not expected to begin until 2022.
The park has a complicated history. It has been the site for student protests for decades and is the place where deputies killed a man and blinded another on infamous “Bloody Thursday” in 1969.
Sarah Ravani is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: sravani@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @SarRavani
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January 19, 2021 at 07:00PM
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Parts of People’s Park to close as UC Berkeley preps for housing of up to 17 stories - San Francisco Chronicle
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