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By Olga R. Rodriguez and Terry Chea

The Associated Press

BERKELEY, Calif. 鈥� Police officers in riot gear removed activists from Berkeley鈥檚 People鈥檚 Park and crews began stacking shipping containers in twos to wall off the historic park overnight Thursday as the University of California, Berkeley, waits for a court ruling it hopes will allow it to build much-needed student housing on the site.

The project has been ensnared in a legal challenge that claims the university failed to study the potential noise issues that could be caused by future residents and to consider alternative sites. The park, owned by UC Berkeley, has also been聽the scene in recent years of skirmishes聽between project opponents and police.

Authorities arrested seven people Thursday on misdemeanor trespassing charges; two of them received additional charges of failure to disperse after they refused to leave the park, university officials stated. Those arrested were booked, cited, and released, they said.

The university wants to build on the park property a housing complex that would accommodate about 1,100 UC Berkeley students and 125 formerly homeless people. Part of the park would be set aside to commemorate its significance in the civil rights movement, university officials have said.

The park was founded in 1969聽as part of the free speech and civil rights movement when community organizers banded together to take back a site the state and university seized from mostly people of color under eminent domain. The gathering space has since hosted free meals, community gardening, and art projects. Also, homeless people have inhabited the site.

Harvey Smith, president of the People鈥檚 Park Historic District Advocacy Group that is spearheading the legal fight for preservation, said the university wants to build in Berkeley鈥檚 densest neighborhood, where green spaces are rare. He said officials glossed over about a dozen other university-owned sites 鈥� including a one-story, seismically unsafe parking lot about a block away from the park 鈥� that could be used for the $312 million student housing project.

鈥淲e have this amazing history in Berkeley of fighting for free speech, civil rights, the antiwar movement, and People鈥檚 Park is one of the chief symbols of it and they want to destroy it,鈥� Smith said.

In February 2023, a court ruled in favor of the advocacy group, and the university appealed the decision to the state Supreme Court, which has yet to rule on whether the university鈥檚 environmental review of the project is sufficient and whether all possible sites for the project were considered.

鈥淕iven that the existing legal issues will inevitably be resolved, we decided to take this necessary step now in order to minimize disruption for the public and our students when we are eventually cleared to resume construction,鈥� UC Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ stated.

University officials said cordoning off the park with double-stacked shipping containers would take three or four days.

In 2022, a group of protesters broke through an 8-foot-high chain-link fence erected around the site and faced off with police, who were standing guard as a construction crew began clearing the park of trees to make room for the housing development.

The project has strong support from students, community members, advocates for unhoused people, the elected leadership of the city of Berkeley, state lawmakers and Gov. Gavin Newsom, Christ said.

In September, that聽alters a key state environmental law聽to say that developers don鈥檛 need to consider noise from future residents as a form of environmental pollution. The new law aims to prevent lawsuits over noise concerns that may block universities from building new housing.

University officials said they would ask the Supreme Court to consider the new law in its ruling.

Rick Shahrazad, a Berkeley resident, joined dozens of people protesting Thursday about a block away from the park after police shut down access to it and blocked off several nearby streets.

鈥淲e see People鈥檚 Park as being one of the few places left where you could sit down on a bench,鈥� he said. 鈥淵ou could talk with your neighbors. There are trees. There are fruit trees.

鈥淭hey should build housing and low-income housing elsewhere and leave the park alone. There鈥檚 only one People鈥檚 Park.鈥�

Editor鈥檚 note: Rodriguez reported from San Francisco.