Guest House Building Initial Study and Negative Declaration

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL)

DC&E prepared an Initial Study for a proposed 61-room, three-story guest house on LBNL grounds at the University of California, Berkeley. The guest house will provide convenient, affordable, short-term accommodations for faculty, postdoctoral associates, students and other visitors. The guest house building is designed to meet the standards of the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) LEED Green Building Rating System™ Silver certification, and is terraced into its hillside site to reduce visibility and to minimize the need for grading. DC&E’s Initial Study was tiered from LBNL’s 1987 Long Range Development Plan (LRDP) Environmental Impact Report and included a careful analysis of potential impacts to aesthetics, air quality, biological resources, geology and hydrology on the site. The Initial Study concluded that all environmental impacts could be mitigated to less-than-significant levels through the inclusion of mitigation measures from the 1987 LRDP EIR, thereby resulting in a Negative Declaration for the project.