Keep UCSC from Outgrowing
Santa Cruz
A great resource, UCSC now threatens to become
a dangerous colossus. Its huge 15-year growth plan (an impending 45% increase
in students, faculty, staff and their families) presents tremendous problems:
• Unbearable Traffic: Unlike other campuses, UCSC
is isolated from dining and shopping areas, and from freeway access. Only
a few residential streets serve it. Students lack adequate campus parking
now. UCSC growth will produce Westside gridlock. Driving times could double
on Mission Street, which is already near capacity, and increase response
times for emergency vehicles.
• Negative Economic Impact: The proposed expansion
will absorb much of the city’s capacity for growth and economic development,
without adding to our tax base. The city lost over $550,000 in revenues
when UCSC bought the Texas Instruments building and leased the Holiday
Inn.
• Biggest Project In History: The growth will
double UCSC’s square footage in buildings and add 10,000 more people (students,
staff, faculty and their families).
• Endanger Water Supplies: UCSC expansion will
have a huge impact on a limited water supply, especially during droughts.
Part of the reason the City must build an expensive desalination plant
is to accommodate UCSC thirst.
• Make Housing Even More Expensive: This expansion
will absorb the entire projected growth in our housing stock. It will put
upward pressure on already sky-high housing prices. Over 1,600 more units
will be needed for UCSC students, staff and faculty in the City, and over
2,100 in the County, driving out middle- and lower-income families.
• Impact on Neighborhoods: More students means
more traffic and more cars parked on neighborhood streets, more loud parties,
etc.
• Environmental Degradation: State authorities
are already investigating questionable storm drainage systems at UCSC that
have silted Westside ponds, and endangered protected species’ habitats.
Upper campus development will breach the City’s Green Belt and compromise
the quality of life in Bonny Doon.
• Broken Promises: UCSC began as a small, undergraduate,
liberal arts centered campus. The City of Santa Cruz has passed resolutions
calling for growth to be moderate and limited. UCSC promised to offset
previous growth with measures to lessen its impact, but has failed to make
the significant mitigations a reality.
Unchecked growth of a comparatively inaccessible
campus, that lacks adequate parking and other mitigations already, is not
the solution to the UC system’s need to serve a rising population of students.
Alternatives— the new campus in Merced and growth in areas that can sustain
it—must be explored first.
