(Written by kencraw)

Many have you may have been wondering if there has been much going on with the SAHPC hearing. The answer is of course yes, but nobody seems to be reporting on it. It seems that as soon as the bomb scare happened, which still hasn’t been specifically linked to this hearing, everyone decided not to report. Here’s what I do know:

1. The hearing has been significantly extended. After hearing arguments last Friday afternoon, there was also a full day of hearings on Tuesday. Because Judge Miller’s schedule only alloted until Tuesday for the hearing and there are more days left, they had to be spread out. The next day will be October 2nd and then final arguments will be October 11th.
2. The judge is going to visit Memorial Stadium on October 4th. Why she is doing this is somewhat of a question mark. Is it grandstanding as some have suggested? Or is she just trying to very extremely thorough since she doesn’t have a ton of CEQA and APZ experience and this is a very high profile case? Nobody knows for sure, but it is definitely outside the norm both for the judge to visit the site and for the trial to last much beyond a day (we’re at 3 1/2 of 5 1/2).
3. The last day and a half of hearings focused more on whether the EIR was complete. The city argued that the information about 3 trees for every 1 was not in the EIR as well as how it would handle any indian remains. The University countered that the information is part of a separate EIR, one that has the global plan for the UC renovations and it states how all of these things will be handled. Since the University is bound to both EIRs, they didn’t need to duplicate the information in this EIR.
4. As for analysis, there are those who say that the worst that can happen here is for there to be a delay. I think I agree. The difference is how bad a delay can be for the project. Costs continue to go up with every delay and there are risks regarding a certain head coach sticking around should the delays start to have a multi-year/perpetual nature to them.
5. As for whether the city will be able to force a delay, the opinions seem to be mixed. If I had to guess, and it’s a shot in the dark, the judge will require some minor changes to the EIR, ones that can be made in less than a month and are minor enough that it won’t require recirculation of the EIR (that’s the lengthy part of the re-do process) and then have it approved by the regents at their next meeting. It’s also my guess she’ll say the SAHPC and the Stadium are two separate buildings for the purpose of the APZ. All of this means that we should be ready to fire up the bulldozers not long after the season is over, should things go as I am guessing.