After a 70-year relationship, the city of Riverside and UC Riverside are taking each other to court.
The city is alleging that the university, with its ambitious future growth plans, is shirking its responsibilities to the city it calls home.
Riverside has requested a court order against the University of California Regents over UCR’s 2021 long-range development plan — the roadmap for the campus’ next 15 years.
“The city is thus now bringing this action to challenge the UC Regents’ failure to adequately analyze and mitigate the environmental impacts” of the plan in its final environmental impact report, the 43-page document states.
The city alleges that UCR’s plan and its accompanying environmental report ignores or minimizes the campus’ impacts on air pollution, wastewater and storm water, light pollution, the off-campus housing needs of thousands of more students. Riverside also contends that the university doesn’t plan to pay for additional demands on police, mass transit and city parks.
“The campus is going to grow,” said Kevin Dawson, a Riverside resident and co-chair of the University Neighborhood Association, which previously took unsuccessful legal action against UCR over the issue. “The existing sewer lines and water lines and electrical will have to be upgraded in order to support that. Well, who’s going to pay for that? UCR likes to push the costs of their growth onto other people … They push it off onto the neighborhood. They push it off onto the city.”
UCR spokesperson John Warren referred questions to the UC Office of the President.
“We are proud of the Long Range Development Plan and the vision it sets for the campus,” UC spokesperson Ryan King, wrote in a Sept. 9 email. “While we are disappointed that the city has taken this step, UCR has already defeated one challenge against the LRDP. We hope we will succeed in doing so again.”
Meanwhile, the university has taken its own legal action against the city, objecting to fees Riverside wants to charge UCR to connect existing sewer lines to new campus housing.
Riverside hasn’t made a big fuss about its move. No press release on its website announces the legal action against the city’s third-largest employer. And city officials say they want to resolve things amicably.
“The city council has taken this step to safeguard taxpayer dollars and mitigate the impacts of UC Riverside’s growth,” Mayor Patricia Lock Dawson wrote in a Sept. 17 statement. “UCR is an important institution in our community, and I am hopeful these issues can be resolved in a timely manner.”
Lock Dawson, the first UCR graduate to become Riverside mayor, is not related to Kevin Dawson.
City alleges UCR ignores impacts of growth
Riverside’s Aug. 23 legal filing alleges the university’s final environmental impact report illegally failed to properly consider the long-range development plan’s impacts in several ways. These include:
UCR’s plan ignores Riverside’s 2018 ordinance intended to cut down on light pollution.
UC has not documented how historical sites would be impacted by the plan.
The plan does not detail how areas with tribal cultural and archeological importance would be affected.
UC does not account for greenhouse emissions from transportation to and from campus.
UCR’s study doesn’t address how additional runoff would impact city storm drainage on which the campus relies.
Despite an “unrelenting housing crisis” in the city, UCR’s plan assumes that 60% of students will live off campus, which will affect the quality of life of neighboring communities.
The UCR Police Department has been partially defunded, despite an “anticipated increase in crime and livability issues” on campus due to growth called for under the plan.
UCR intends to connect to city trails and parks without paying the fees that other projects that increase the city’s population must pay.
The university proposes a new Metrolink station be built to accommodate additional students but proposes no action to assist or have a back-up plan if it’s not built.
UCR is already discharging more wastewater into city systems than stated in the environmental report and needs a new agreement with the city.
One thing the university’s report does note, according to the city’s legal filing: According to the California constitution, the UC system is exempt from local regulations and doesn’t have to comply with Riverside’s rules.
That argument is central to the university’s legal action against the city.
UCR wants to open a 1,500-bed student housing project on the north side of campus, according to Warren. But the university objects to the fees the city wants to charge.
“The city’s denial of the permit has stalled construction of the sewer lines,” Warren wrote in the email.
In its Aug. 19 filing, UCR argues that it’s exempt from the fees — which would add up to more than $1.3 million a year — because it is a “sovereign state entity” not subject to the rule of the city.
Dawson, of the University Neighborhood Association, said the costs for hooking new student housing to the sewer system shouldn’t be borne by Riverside Public Utilities customers.
“This campus sits in Riverside, but it belongs to everyone in the state of California,” he said. “And that cost should be shared across system, not the local people of Riverside.”
UCR plans include much growth
The UC system requires its universities to create a long-range blueprint to show how they will handle enrollment and students’ needs.
According to UC Riverside, today’s 25,000-student enrollment will grow by 10,000 to 35,000 students in the next 10 years.
Most construction outlined in the plan will occur on campus east of the 215 Freeway. Those 604 acres are the majority of the university’s “built space” for classes, student housing and recreation. The other half, the western side, are 504 acres used for agricultural research fields and teaching.
UCR wants to increase student housing capacity on the campus’ eastern side. Today it can house 32% of the student body, but officials would like to increase that capacity to 40%. Campus housing needs to expand from 8,700 beds to about 14,000 beds, according to Warren.
In what UCR calls the North District, on the east side of campus between Watkins Drive and Canyon Crest Drive, the university intends to construct residence halls and apartments in phases. This will ultimately include 1,200 residence hall beds, more than 4,000 apartment beds, dining facilities and recreation and athletic fields. Construction has already begun on a project with 1,500 apartments. When finished, UCR will have added more than 5,500 beds to its dorms and more than 8,000 beds for transfer students, family housing, and graduate students.
The university also intends to replace 1,100 beds in three apartment complexes — Bannockburn, Falkirk and Oban — because the complexes are in poor condition.
The long range development plan also includes:
Creating the Canyon Crest Gateway on Canyon Crest Drive between Blaine Street and University Avenue as a main street area with housing, dining and shopping.
Establishing the University Avenue Gateway as the primary entry from downtown Riverside and the 215/60 freeways by adding taller buildings, cafes, restaurants and venues.
Adding family housing, student parking and residential support services on the eastern campus.
Berkeley, Santa Cruz faced similar issues
Riverside is not alone in trying to balance playing nice with the goose that lays the golden eggs while simultaneously wanting the goose to be a good neighbor.
The cities of Berkeley and Santa Cruz have signed agreements with their UC campuses to help manage the impacts of campus growth.
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A 2008 Santa Cruz settlement curbed UC Santa Cruz’s growth in enrollment and the construction of student housing.
And in 2023, Berkeley and UC Berkeley decided to work together to plan future growth after the university agreed to pay an $82.6 million settlement after the university destroyed rent-controlled housing that it replaced with a new dormitory.
Representatives for the city of Berkeley declined to comment. Representatives for the city of Santa Cruz could not be reached for comment.
The cities of Berkeley, Santa Cruz and Riverside are not alone in complaining about how the UC system manages its long-range planning.
More on Riverside’s relationship with UCR
UCR student renters out of hand, residents say
UCR vows to address off-campus problems
Group seeks to solve rental home complaints
Extra bedrooms limited near UCR
In 2007, the Legislative Analyst’s Office released a report on the responsibility UCs have to surrounding cities. The office serves as a nonpartisan adviser to the California legislature on fiscal and policy matters.
UC’s preparation of long-range plans and environmental impact reports, lacks “accountability, standardization, and clarity,” the office’s report states. “This unnecessarily creates tension between the university and local communities regarding how much campuses should grow and the mitigation of the environmental impacts related to that growth.”
Such tension is here, today, in Riverside.
“There was a point in the late ’70s that there was local worry the UC would close down UCR because of declining enrollment,” Dawson wrote in an email. “But that was years ago and an unfounded worry. UCR is now the 900-lb. gorilla in the city. It’s eating my neighborhood and doing so for free.”
