
“She has ice water in her veins,” said one Cal official who admires Christ’s fortitude.


And using the housing crisis was key to her success. The vote to put housing in People’s Park is a resounding win for Chancellor Carol Christ, the first chancellor in decades willing to weather the political consequences of changing the park. “There will be resistance continuing,” one speaker told the committee. But this is a symbolic end of everything that Berkeley has come to represent: political activism, a respect for our radical history.” “I think it’s the end of a Berkeley,” said Tom Dalzell, who wrote The Battle for People’s Park: Berkeley 1969. Others saw the vote as a different kind of milestone, one that marked the end of the struggles of the 1960s. “People’s Park has a long and storied history, but I believe now is the time for a new vision for the park, one where we can honor its rich history and address the challenges of our time and preserve part of the park the community helped create over 50 years ago.” “This project is a win-win for our city,” Mayor Jesse Arreguín told the Regents’ finance and capital strategies committee on Wednesday. But campus officials presenting the plan to a committee of the regents cautioned that there would likely be delays. If the four lawsuits pending against the long-range development plan authorizing this project do not succeed, construction could begin in the summer of 2022 with students moving in by fall 2024. The site has been a contested space ever since then.
FIRE HYDRANT PLAN SYMBOL FREE
The builders of the park were determined to create a space controlled by the community, not by a conservative university that had a history of squelching free speech.

The move will radically reshape People’s Park, which was born in a spirit of optimism in April and May 1969 after thousands of students, activists and community members transformed a university-owned muddy parking lot into an open, inviting green park. Those buildings will sit on 1.1 acres of the 2.8-acre park, leaving 1.7 acres of open space that will also include a section that honors the turbulent history of the park. The Regents on Thursday overwhelming voted in favor of building 1,100 beds for students in two buildings, one 12 stories high and one six stories, along with 125 beds of supportive housing for the unhoused. The UC Board of Regents has finally accomplished what it set out to do more than 50 years ago: tame People’s Park by building student housing there. The UC Board of Regents has voted to build two buildings with a combined 1,100 beds for students on the historic site.
