BIG UPDATE!!! 8/30/07
Hey everyone,
Mayor Tom Bates has called for a special meeting of the City Council this Tuesday, September 4th, solely to discuss the lawsuit and construction of the Student Athlete High Performance Center.
The meeting will be in the Berkeley Unified School District offices (Old City Hall building) at 2134 Martin Luther King Jr Blvd, on the second floor.
Start time is 5p... get there as early as you can (i.e. 4:30p or earlier) to pack the house, get a seat and get a speakers card.
This is our chance to show the City Council how many people are in support of the Stadium Project!!!
Everyone in the Bay Area... please come to this meeting and show your support!!!
Go Bears!
UPDATE 8/8/07: Please make sure that you have signed the online petition supporting Cal football and the stadium project. Click here .
Also remember to keep writing letters to the City, Mayor Tom Bates and each individual member of the City Council. Contact information for all of them can be found here . Go Bears!!!
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Hi everyone, thanks for visiting my page
Well, we all know that I am kinda old (I turn 84 this November), but I am still the most beautiful girl on the block and an architectural masterpiece. Regardless, I decided recently that it is due time for me to have some work done. A few of my joints are creaking, my insides need a bit of cleaning and I could really use a facelift. So, my caretakers and friends, the University of California and the California Athletic Department, agreed to help me with my project, clean me up and add a highly necessary new building next door. The purpose of my page is to gather all of your support on this project, make sure that everyone was aware of the facts of the situation and dispel all of the rumors and lies that have been floating around.
We all decided that the proper first step should be to add the new training facility next door to me, called the Student-Athlete High Performance Center (SAHPC). All of the wonderful student-athletes that train and study inside of me operate in very cramped quarters. Much of space is not safe for them to be in, and more importantly, I do not even have enough of this space to house all of our wonderful athletes. Do you realize that the women of our softball team have no lockers and have to change for practice in their cars?!
I believe (and I hope you agree) that our Student-Athletes deserve first-rate resources to reach their full potential and consistently form the winning teams around which Cal’s alumni and friends can rally. A 142,000 square-foot facility, the SAHPC will make this dream a reality by providing locker rooms, meeting rooms, and offices for football and 12 of Cal’s Olympic sports. It will also house a state-of-the-art training, applied sports science and medicine complex for year-round access by approximately 450 student-athletes.
Along with all of the wonderful training facilities, the SAHPC will feature a brand-new academic center available for use by all students, providing them every essential resource necessary. Computers, tutors, study materials and more will help ensure that all of our Student-Athletes excel as much in their studies as they do on the playing field. I am so proud of the academic success and improvement all of my athletes have shown over the past several years; the academic portion of the SAHPC will guarantee that this excellence in the classroom is upheld.
(All these features are great, but the new building near my west wall is also simply going to look beautiful. I really don't know how the architects managed to design something that will make the area look even more gorgeous, but they did it. Just check out all of the design pictures by clicking on my photos above and choosing the "Design Pics" album)
So this all sounds fantastic, right? Lets get going, break ground, bring in the concrete!!! I wish it were that easy. I am very sad to say that there are three distinct groups who seem to have a serious problem with our plans. They do not agree with our dreams and desires for the Student-Athletes and the University to have safe, world class academic and athletic facilities. These three groups are the City of Berkeley, the Save the Oaks Foundation and the Panoramic Hill Neighborhood Association. They filed a joint lawsuit against me and the project in January of this year, obtaining a temporary injunction to stop construction on January 29th.
They all have separate, distinct and respectable arguments about my project, but the University and the Athletic Department have addressed them all completely. We have vetted every single complaint, make adjustments to the scope of the project and conducted extra seismic testing to prove that the project is safe. All of this work has not changed their stubborn attitude and therefore we currently have a court date set for September 19th. You can read much more about the lawsuit and everything the University and Athletic Department has done regarding each complaint in my blogs above.
Okay, so you've made it this far and I can't thank you enough for your support. I am a very strong, beautiful woman, but I definitely need some help to get through this ordeal. Please tell all your friends about my page here, leave me your comments (funny or serious, I'll read them all), add me as your friend and make sure everyone you know has learned all of the facts regarding my project. I know in the end that I'll be victorious, but I won't be able to do it without you!
GO BEARS!!!
