UC HASTINGS COLLEGE of the Law's proposal for a seven-story parking garage at Larkin Street and Golden Gate Avenue has spurred a groundswell of community opposition. Many of us are convinced that the structure would profoundly harm the Tenderloin neighborhood. Hastings needs to go back to the drawing board and come up with a mixed-use project that gives the school the revenue stream it needs, adds a reasonable number of parking spaces, and provides new housing.

The project was announced with very little advance warning and no community input – a return to the old days, when the college did whatever it wanted. In 1989 the Hastings property contained two small hotels with a total of 85 rooms serving low-income people. Using the Loma Prieta earthquake as a pretext, the college bulldozed the hotels and began using the site for a parking lot. No thought was given to the impact on the neighborhood or to the displaced residents of the hotel. As a state institution, Hastings does not need city or neighborhood approval for such projects.

Over time Hastings began to mend fences and cooperate with community groups, to the benefit of the whole neighborhood. Now Hastings is back in the soup with the community. Its project adds far more parking than the college needs, builds a wall between the campus and the rest of the neighborhood, and provides no new housing at a time when affordable housing is one of the city's chief goals.

Hastings spokespeople say two of its major priorities are creating more of a campus and increasing public safety. What some call the "monster garage" would achieve neither end. On the contrary, garages are not gathering places and would add nothing to the life of the campus or the neighborhood. And a Hastings garage, empty most evenings and weekends, would increase the danger to both students and neighborhood residents.

In addition, the project would bring hundreds of cars a day to the Tenderloin, an area that already has the second-highest pedestrian fatality rate in California. And the state-sponsored garage would compete with the city's existing Civic Center garage – draining money from San Francisco's General Fund and undercutting the effort to make Civic Center a hub for public transportation.

A mixed-use alternative for the site is the only sensible approach. Housing for students and nonstudents, 250 parking spaces to meet the college's needs, and some retail space would add to the campus and to the neighborhood in general. Commercial space could also house Hastings's legal clinic, connecting students with government offices in Civic Center while exposing them to the challenges of our low-income community.

Hastings has a chance to make a positive impact on the Tenderloin, enhance its students' educational experience, and increase its revenues. The college's neighbors stand ready to work seriously and reasonably to get Hastings and the community back on the track of cooperation and balanced neighborhood development; no one wants to return to the adversarial days of the past. Hastings and the Tenderloin suffer from the same problems; both benefit when the college's development plans are implemented in cooperation with its neighbors.