“A place where all good things could thrive,” added Steve Wasserman, the publisher of Heydey Books, who helped cultivate the park as a teenager and decades later published a history on the 50th anniversary of the event

For many it was a Berkeley institution, where generations of students and community members had picnics, smoked dope, organized to end apartheid and police brutality and communed naked with the moon, among other activities.

But in recent years, it also became a refuge for homeless people and a magnet for drugs, rats and crime. University officials said parents complained that the unkempt and sometimes dangerous space has been allowed to exist just a block away from a Haste Avenue dorm complex.

And outside the park’s green borders, the housing crisis in Berkeley became ever more extreme. With rents around town spiraling upward and students desperate to find affordable units, the university faced tremendous pressure to build new housing. Campus officials said last year that Berkeley was able to house only 23% of its students, the lowest share among the UC system’s 10 campuses. The scarcity of campus housing has forced many students to cram into shared spaces, commute long distances or live out of their cars.

And in a town long known for its progressive politics — and once decidedly anti-development — many leaders came to favor housing construction.

“I am pleased at the common sense decision of the state Supreme Court to allow construction of much-needed student housing, supportive housing, and open space at People’s Park,” Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguín said in response to the ruling. “This decision is a win-win that will benefit our community and the next generation of students.”

University officials, meanwhile, never let go of their designs on what was, after all, university-owned land.

Every time they tried to develop it, however, they were met with furious resistance.

In the 1990s, the university constructed volleyball courts, prompting a machete-wielding activist to break into the campus home of then-Chancellor Chang-Lin Tien. The intruder was shot and killed by police. A note in her bag read: “We are willing to die for this piece of land. Are you?”

In 2017, Carol Christ became chancellor and promised to double the number of student housing beds within a decade. She made it clear that she thought the park — long a controversial “third rail” that campus leaders avoided — was a good location for a new dormitory.

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