S.F. community groups trying to stop UCSF s expansion of Parnassus campus
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UCSF’s Parnassus Heights campus.Santiago Mejia / The ChronicleShow MoreShow Less
Three organizations filed separate lawsuits Friday in an effort to stop UCSF from building a 2 million-square-foot hospital and academic facility expansion at its historic Parnassus campus.
The groups that filed lawsuits in Alameda Superior Court San Franciscans for Balanced and Livable Communities, the Parnassus Neighborhood Coalition and the Yerba Buena Neighborhood Consortium seek to overturn a decision by the University of California Board of Regents to allow the Parnassus expansion to go forward.
They argue that constructing a large, regional hospital on a dense hillside sandwiched between two residential neighborhoods would have severe environmental impacts on everything from traffic to air quality to public transportation. They argue that the impact of the project was not adequatel
Over the past few years, leaders in the Sacramento region have repeatedly touted the promise of Aggie Square. The mixed-use project, being developed through a partnership of UC Davis, developer Wexford Science & Technology, and city officials near UC Davis Medical Center, will add thousands of jobs and boost research around science, technology, engineering, and mathematics when it’s completed around 2026. But the project hasn’t been without controversy, with local groups attempting to negotiate with project principals in recent months for a community benefits agreement to address fears that Aggie Square could further gentrification and displacement in surrounding neighborhoods such as Oak Park, as Comstock’s
Caltech announced Friday that it would remove the name of its founding president and first Nobel laureate, Robert A. Millikan, from campus buildings because he supported eugenics joining universities across the nation in repudiating those who joined the racist movement a century ago.
“It is fraught to judge individuals outside of their time, but it is clear from the documentation presented that Millikan lent his name and his prestige to a morally reprehensible eugenics movement that already had been discredited scientifically during his time,” Caltech President Thomas F. Rosenbaum said in a statement. “The renamings will help position the Institute to retain and attract the most talented and innovative researchers from every background, so we may remain a leader in science and technology.”