{"id":27646,"date":"2023-07-30T22:01:55","date_gmt":"2023-07-31T05:01:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=27646"},"modified":"2023-07-30T22:01:55","modified_gmt":"2023-07-31T05:01:55","slug":"why-doesnt-san-francisco-have-a-real-uc-campus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2023\/07\/30\/why-doesnt-san-francisco-have-a-real-uc-campus\/","title":{"rendered":"Why doesn\u2019t San Francisco have a real UC campus?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Owen Thomas | Examiner columnist<\/a><\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

July 30, 2023 (SFExaminer.com)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Century
Cinemark is the latest business to join the growing list of companies vacating the shopping center and the area. But could the space be San Francisco’s next University of California? <\/em>Wikimedia Commons<\/em><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s a historical oddity: Of the University of California\u2019s 10 campuses, San Francisco is the only one that doesn\u2019t offer undergraduate degrees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mayor London Breed has a bold proposal to change that by inviting the state university system to build a new campus downtown, where there\u2019s, unfortunately, plenty of space. She and City Attorney David Chiu unveiled the plan this month, announcing they\u2019d sent a letter to UC officials to kick off discussions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The timing seems fitting because it happens that the University of California is in the process of planning for a new campus. Sort of.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Under pressure to expand its degree-granting, UC has come up with a 2030 Capacity Plan<\/a> that would add as many as 33,000 undergraduate and graduate students to the system by spreading them around existing schools rather than building a new one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

San Francisco is not getting much of that growth: another 129 graduate students, a rounding error in the overall scheme. The Berkeley, San Diego and Merced campuses would account for more than half of the increase in enrollment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That concentration of growth seems unwise. A UC report acknowledged<\/a> that Berkeley and other campuses have experienced \u201cneighborhood opposition\u201d to development plans. UCSD is already behind<\/a> on building needed student housing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

UCSF has had its own challenges to expansion: Neighbors tried to halt a $4.3 billion expansion<\/a> approved by the UC Board of Regents last year, though it\u2019s moving forward now. But Breed and Chiu\u2019s letter suggested downtown as a site for growth rather than UCSF\u2019s tight quarters in Parnassus Heights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere are a number of properties that would uniquely be able to house a mixed-use UC campus, complete with student housing, classrooms, lab space, and student services,\u201d Breed and Chiu wrote in their letter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One such site might be the struggling Westfield Mall. It seems like a natural site for classrooms already, with its curving escalators poised to whisk students rather than shoppers. The now-closed Century cinema could turn its theaters into lecture halls. And one might picture a library\u2019s reading room under the building\u2019s historic dome. SFUSD owns the land underneath the mall, which might smooth the way for a transfer to UC.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From there, one stop down the Central Subway lies Central SoMa, a logical locus for development, with new office buildings opening up and few takers for leases.\u00a0A recent Cushman & Wakefield study<\/a>\u00a0found that the downtown vacancy problem was concentrated there. UCSF\u2019s existing Mission Bay campus is just a few stops further.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s easy to see a campus come together, strung along the spine of San Francisco\u2019s newest and most painfully underused<\/a> transit line. And it\u2019s easy to envision adjunct professors from The City\u2019s biotech, software and AI industries bolstering a downtown college\u2019s faculty and adding to its draw: Stanford already does this quite successfully in the South Bay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Consider, too, the venture capitalists who might lurk in coffee shops near campus, checkbooks in hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s where the San Francisco idea has an edge over UC\u2019s existing expansion plan. Sure, UC Merced is proud of its sustainable buildings<\/a>. But it\u2019s far greener to adapt existing office space, especially if most would be taking public transit to get there. And there would be jobs waiting for new graduates: San Francisco\u2019s unemployment rate remains historically low.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Housing is a challenge, but given the needs of students, a campus might encourage the building of accessory dwelling units, tucking in extra apartments in homes around The City rather than relying on the big dorm construction projects, which seem to be running into trouble elsewhere in UC-land.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The biggest obstacle may be lining up the various institutions involved and getting them to talk to each other. When I asked the University of California what it thought of Breed and Chiu\u2019s letter, Ryan King, a spokesperson for UC\u2019s Office of the President, told me it had \u201cnot yet received the letter from Mayor Breed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How long does it take a letter to travel from San Francisco to UC headquarters in downtown Oakland?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More than a week, apparently. Breed and Chiu said last week, in unveiling the proposal, that they had already sent the letter. But in fact, it was UCSF that offered to deliver the San Francisco officials\u2019 letter to the UC board, according to Breed spokesperson Jeff Cretan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

UCSF Chancellor Sam Hawgood confirmed to the mayor\u2019s office that he had sent it. Hawgood\u2019s office did not respond to an inquiry about the letter’s status, and King offered no explanation in response to a follow-up question.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You\u2019d expect a little more alacrity for a university system that hopes to be educating 33,000 additional students by the end of the decade. But this might explain why so many things seem to move slowly in California\u2019s academic sector. San Francisco, for a change, seems to be in a hurry to solve problems.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Owen Thomas | Examiner columnist July 30, 2023 (SFExaminer.com) It\u2019s a historical oddity: Of the University of California\u2019s 10 campuses, San Francisco is the only one that doesn\u2019t offer undergraduate degrees. Mayor London Breed has a bold proposal to change that by inviting the state university system to build… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[876],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27646"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27646"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27646\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27650,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27646\/revisions\/27650"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}