Regents OK Sale of UC Irvine Parcel to Tollway Agency

Defying a hostile faculty resolution, the UC Board of Regents on Thursday approved the sale of 25.2 acres of land on the UC Irvine campus to the agency building a controversial $1-billion toll road.

Some of the land is within an ecological reserve, but UC Irvine officials said that both campus and county growth plans recognized the tollway’s path in official planning documents years ago.

The San Joaquin Hills Transportation Corridor Agency’s offer of $10.5 million for the acreage on the south side of the campus was accepted during a closed session of the Board of Regents on Thursday afternoon in San Francisco, UC spokesman Rick Malaspina said.

About $2.7 million of the purchase price will be used to mitigate noise from traffic on the toll road. And 18.7 acres of land will be restored as a coastal sage scrub habitat, at least half of which will be at a location designated by the university.

Acting UC Irvine Chancellor L. Dennis Smith recently attempted to deflect campus criticism of the sale by announcing that the tollway agency was willing to take fewer acres from that portion of the property now in an ecological reserve.

But last week the campus branch of the Academic Senate voted 38 to 3, with one abstention, for a resolution stating that the sale “is not in the best interest of the university at this time.”

Some faculty members fear that the loss of the acreage, which includes the most biologically diverse portion of the reserve, will be a serious loss not only environmentally but also as a teaching resource.

Stephen Weller, a UCI professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, said Thursday: “I’m very disappointed because our campus loses an important asset. We’ve probably done everything we could have. We took our protest directly to the board.”

Smith, meanwhile, has argued that the toll road is essential for the continued fiscal growth of the university, that it will eventually account for 35% of the traffic entering the campus and that the route was included in campus plans years ago.

Joseph DiMento, an assistant executive vice chancellor who oversees land management for UCI, said: “I’m very sympathetic” to those faculty members who protested the land sale. “We were between a rock and a hard place.”

DiMento said the university will be vigilant in monitoring how the tollway agency develops the land.

“I’d be supportive of ideas that would even further limit the impact (of development) on the space,” he said.