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Concept:
The university-owned site at Fulton and Bancroft is one potential location for a new research center, as proposed in initiative
1.8. The concept shown is only one possible architectural treatment for such a center, but shows how windows and shading on the north and west exposures can be designed to enhance daylighting, mitigate heat gain and reduce energy consumption. |
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The university does not end abruptly at the edge of the core campus. The university is an integral part of the city around it, and the campus environs are as much a part of the UC Berkeley experience as the campus itself. However, past university expansion into those environs has sometimes been insensitive to their character and livability. Future university-sponsored projects beyond the core campus shall be designed as positive and integral elements of the city fabric.
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Download & Print
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Strategic Goals 
Capital investment shall enhance the campus' synergy with the city around it by:
- ensuring new university investment in the campus environs is compatible in both scale and use with the community fabric.
- preserving the unique mixed-use character of the Southside and enhancing the quality of residential life.
- transforming the downtown blocks west of campus into a vibrant mixed-use district, including venues for the educational, cultural and public service resources of the university.
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Southside
The Southside (figure 7.1) is home to 30% of Berkeley students: students comprise over 80% of its 11,000 residents. The university also owns roughly 30% of the land in the Southside, and its properties include academic, student service, cultural, recreational, and parking facilities as well as university housing. For both reasons, the Southside has always been the area of Berkeley where a positive, shared city-campus vision is most urgently required, and the lack of such a vision most acutely felt.
In 1997 the city and the university signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU), which states 'the city and the university will jointly participate in the preparation of a Southside Plan ... the campus will acknowledge the Plan as the guide for campus developments in the Southside area'. In January 2000, the city and the campus released a draft Joint Southside Plan for public review (hereafter the 'Joint Southside Plan'), which presents a shared set of goals, objectives, policies and guidelines for future investment and development in the Southside.
Policy 7.1
Ensure future university capital investment in the Southside conforms to the goals, objectives, policies and design guidelines prescribed in the 2000 Joint Southside Plan.
The Joint Southside Plan has as its overarching goals:
- to enhance the Southside neighborhood's unique social, cultural, and architectural significance and character,
- to create a safe and appealing Southside neighborhood based on a comfortable pedestrian-oriented environment, and
- to create a strong physical connection, one that is mutually supporting and beneficial, between UC Berkeley and the Southside neighborhood.
The emphasis on the term 'neighborhood' is intentional. Given the mixed-use character of the Southside and the constant influx of new student residents, it is important to remember that the Southside is, first and foremost, a place where people live. While the Joint Southside Plan recognizes there are many areas within the Southside suitable for new non-residential investment, it also recognizes such investment must be planned in ways to enhance the quality of life for all Southside residents.
Since the release of the Joint Southside Plan, the city has continued to review and refine its various provisions, toward their eventual adoption as an amendment to the city general plan and, subsequently, to the city zoning ordinance. As a state agency exempt from local regulations, the campus' obligation in the Joint Southside Plan is to use it to '...guide [our] planning and development efforts in the Southside ... [and] inform the New Century Plan.' Policy 7.1 affirms and supports this commitment.
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Figure 7.1
Core Campus & Environs
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Downtown/Westside
Viewed on a map, the juxtaposition of downtown Berkeley and the grand west entrance to the campus might suggest an elegant, vibrant interface of town and gown: but this potential is largely unrealized. While the downtown BART station and bus lines from the north and west ensure a steady flow of people through the blocks west of campus, the visible university presence on these blocks consists of a parking structure, the printing plant, the bus garage, and the administrative offices in University Hall.
Policies and initiatives 1.5-1.9 establish a strategic framework for future campus investment on both the core campus and adjacent blocks. Given both its superior transit access and its established commercial character, downtown should be the primary focus of future campus investment in new research, cultural and service functions that require locations near, but not on, the core campus, as described in policy 1.7.
Moreover, these future investments should be planned not merely to accommodate the program needs of the campus, but also to invigorate the downtown and create an inviting, exciting 'front door' to the Berkeley campus. Two projects in particular would contribute significantly to this goal:
Initiative 7.2
Pursue construction of a downtown university museum complex and visitors' center.
The Berkeley Art Museum, presently housed in a structure with a poor seismic rating, and the Pacific Film Archive, now in a temporary facility, would both greatly benefit from a move to a downtown site, not only for the improved visibility and transit access, but also for the synergy with other downtown cultural and retail activity, including the thriving Arts District along Addison St. The campus visitor center, now housed in University Hall, would also benefit from a location which is both more visible and more engaging.
The campus shall undertake a feasibility study of a downtown museum complex, including program options, site requirements, cost projections, and options for financing, delivering, and operating the project. A prime candidate for the museum complex is the site now occupied by the university printing plant and adjacent parking structure. The study shall include at least two alternatives: one in which the entire program, including replacement parking, is accommodated on this site, and another in which the program is accommodated partly on this site and partly on the university-owned land west of the University Hall tower.
The existing museum building could either be replaced, as illustrated in this plan, or it could be retrofit and renovated for other academic and/or cultural uses.
Initiative 7.3
Collaborate with other public and private Berkeley organizations to encourage a downtown hotel and conference center.
Downtown is also the logical place for a conference center, a critical and longstanding need of the campus, as well as the city and its many public and private organizations. The campus shall seek to encourage a privately developed and operated conference center: one flexible enough to serve a variety of users and events, but also large enough to meet the demand generated by both the campus and other prospective users.
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Northside
In general, future campus investment in the northside is not expected to be significant, due to both the lack of developable campus land and the topography and residential character of the area. The one potential exception is the Oxford Tract: the university-owned complex of greenhouses, growing fields and small laboratory buildings north of the SRB1 site.
Initiative 7.4
Prepare and evaluate a longterm strategy to redevelop the Oxford Tract.
The south end of Oxford Tract is now (2002) being redeveloped with a 50,000 sf building to house a mix of academic and support functions. The scarcity of large, developable sites in close proximity to the core campus calls for a critical analysis of options for the balance of the Oxford Tract. The campus shall formulate, and assess the academic effects of, strategies to relocate the current Oxford Tract occupants and redevelop the site at a density comparable to the core campus.
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