Hillel of San Diego, the Foundation for Jewish Campus Life, is one step closer to the culmination of 20 years of Jewish Student Center planning, despite the lengthy legal battle keeping the group from breaking ground. However, the Taxpayers for Responsible Land Use remain concerned over the plans, which may increase traffic and possibly threaten birds of prey currently nesting in the area.
On Feb. 18, a ruling in the case of Taxpayers for Responsible Land Use et al. v. City of San Diego by the State of California Court of Appeals further delayed the Hillel center’s construction.
The Court of Appeals Fourth Appellate District, Division One, heard oral arguments for the case on Feb. 3, in the Student Services Building. The court’s ruling upheld San Diego City’s sale of Site 653, a triangular plot of land across from UCSD’s Theatre District, to Hillel of San Diego, but requires the group to prepare an environmental impact report before moving forward with construction.
Hillel of San Diego planned the center as a facility for Jewish students similar to the Cross Cultural Center, the Women’s Center and the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Resource Center located on campus. The proposed project includes a kosher kitchen, a multipurpose room that can accommodate three religious services simultaneously, a library, classroom and meeting space for students. Due to separation of church and state, Hillel of San Diego cannot have a center on campus but would like to have one as close as possible, Executive Director of Hillel Rabbi Lisa Goldstein said.
‘Hillel centers give Jewish students a safe place to create community and deepen their Jewish connection, while offering the entire campus community resources and information about Judaism and the Jewish people,’ Goldstein said in an e-mail.
TRLU has sponsored a series of legal actions to halt the building project. The group’s most recent legal appeal focused on the city’s issuance of a mitigated negative declaration, a statement
finding that a building will have a significant environmental impact and identifying the actions that need to be taken to reduce the impact to insignificant levels.
‘TRLU strongly opposes locating this student activity canter in a single-family residential area because it would create severe problems of parking, traffic congestion and traffic safety,’ TRLU representative Ross Starr said.
Mitigations for this case include expanding on-site parking to accommodate expected student traffic, which Hillel has satisfied by increasing planned parking from 40 to 68 on-site spaces.
TRLU sued the city of San Diego on the basis that the mitigated negative declaration was not issued properly and did not take into account the impact of pedestrians crossing the intersection of La Jolla Village Drive and La Jolla Scenic Way, and the possibility that the intended site is home to birds of prey.
The judge required a further study of birds of prey nesting on the site and the possible impact of pedestrians on traffic as they cross the intersection. After the appeal, the environmental factors remain the sticking point, with Hillel now required to prepare an environmental impact report.
‘We admire Hillel of San Diego and its aim of arranging a student center in the vicinity of UCSD,’ Starr said in a statement. ‘The conflict is not about Hillel. It’s about appropriate land use.’
Another difficulty in this case is the unique location of UCSD’s main campus, which is adjacent to small residential areas instead of commercial ones.
‘Every other UC campus Hillel center is located in a commercial, mixed-use, or multi-family area,’ Starr said. ‘That’s what the commercial areas adjacent to campus are for. From UCSD’s earliest days, there has been an understanding between the university and its neighbors that the campus would not spread into nearby single-family residential neighborhoods. The location of the Hillel Student Center in this neighborhood would violate the understanding and set an irreversible precedent.’
Although the appellate court decided in favor of TRLU by requiring further investigation of the environmental factors, the justices also pointed out in their opinion that the hypothetical determination that the project has a significant environmental impact would not necessarily preclude the eventual approval of the building project.
The Hillel building project has been in final planning stages since 2000 but the center has been in the works since the spring of 1990. However, TRLU and other private homeowners in the area opposed the center’s construction.
When the city of San Diego granted exclusive negotiation right to Hillel of San Diego to develop the site in November 2000, the site was zoned as open space, which conflicted with the plans because religious buildings are not allowed in open-space zones. The conflict was resolved in May 2002 when the city updated the La Jolla Community Plan and changed the zoning to a single-family area. TRLU’s first legal action accused San Diego City of improper rezoning. Hillel of San Diego won both the initial case and the appeal.
On May 9, 2006, the city approved the sale of land to Hillel of San Diego. TRLU challenged this based on three concerns: procedural technicalities, incorrect pricing of the land for sale and environmental protection. In all, there were seven counts argued and on six of those, the judge ruled in Hillel of San Diego’s favor in March 2007.
Readers can contact Christina Homer at [email protected]