Norman Mineta will add cache to campaign for Ed Roberts Campus

Oakland Tribune,  Dec 20, 2006

BERKELEY - A former Silicon Valley congressman has been named honorary chairman of a campaign raising money for a one-stop center for disability services in the city.

Norman Y. Mineta will head the capital campaign committee for the Ed Roberts Campus, an 86,000-square-foot campus that will include a broad range of disability service programs, including legal advocacy, job training, parenting support and wheelchair sports.

The center, which will be built at the Ashby BART station, will also include fully accessible meeting rooms, a computer-media center, a fitness center, a cafe and a child development center. It is slated to open in 2009.

Mineta is currently the vice chairman of Hill & Knowlton, a public relations firm in Washington, D.C., and last week received the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Bush.

He served as U.S. Secretary of Transportation under President Bush, the only Democratic cabinet secretary in the Republican Bush administration, and as U.S. Secretary of Commerce under President Clinton.

The budget is $43 million and fund-raisers have secured $32.5 million in grants and pledges so far, said campus spokesman Caleb Dardick.

The city of Berkeley recently applied for more than $14 million in grants for the Ed Roberts Campus. Results of those applications should be known early next year, Dardick said.

Mineta will help the Ed Roberts Campus complete the private fundraising and head the task force that will organize the groundbreaking ceremonies for the facility, which are scheduled for July 26, 2007 -- to coincide with the 17th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

The campus' namesake, Roberts, had polio and was an early leader in the city's independent-living movement as well as a student who helped pave the way for disabled student services at the University of California, Berkeley. Roberts died in 1995 at age 56.