Alternate UCI House Sites Backed : Preservation: Either of two new locations would be preferable to putting University House where it would threaten rare birds and plants, an Academic Senate subcommittee says.

IRVINE —  A key UC Irvine faculty committee decided Tuesday that future chancellors should not share an ocean-view lot with California gnatcatchers, lest the rare bird be driven from campus environs altogether.

Instead, the land-use subcommittee of UCI’s Academic Senate voted to advise Chancellor Jack W. Peltason to consider building University House, a proposed home and banquet center, on either of two alternate campus hilltops that are not habitat for environmentally sensitive birds or plants.

“I think what our committee was saying today is that the biological concerns associated with (the original site) are so severe that clearly other sites would be more appropriate,” said Timothy J. Bradley, a UCI biologist and chairman of the faculty subcommittee.

Bradley said the resolution will also urge the chancellor to include part of the original site--where coastal sage scrub is used by gnatcatchers as nesting and foraging grounds--with a planned 62-acre campus ecological reserve. The resolution passed on a 6-0 vote, with two abstentions by members representing campus administration.

The committee vote was advisory and is not binding on Peltason, who sought the panel’s counsel after a study of gnatcatchers concluded that four breeding pairs found in the vicinity could be driven to local extinction by the proposed University House siting, in combination with proposed highway projects, such as the San Joaquin Hills Transportation Corridor.

Peltason said Tuesday that it would be “inappropriate to comment on the resolution” until he has seen it in writing. But he added: “I will take very seriously the recommendations. I took their advice last time, and as I’ve told them . . . I want to wait to hear from them before we proceed.”

After 27 years of fast-paced growth, UCI remains the only University of California campus without a chancellor’s residence on or near the campus. Founding Chancellor Daniel G. Aldrich Jr. lived and entertained in a Newport Beach home about 5 miles from UCI. Peltason and his wife live in University Hills, a complex of university-owned housing on campus that is considered a vital faculty recruitment tool to offset the high price of local real estate.

Peltason has said since 1989, when the campaign to raise money for University House began, that the residence will be for future chancellors and that he will not live in the house.

The project is envisioned as a $3.2-million building of about 13,500 square feet, about a third of it for the chancellor’s residence and the rest banquet facilities.

It was to have been built at the southernmost edge of campus, on a ridge with a view of UCI, Upper Newport Bay and, on clear days, Santa Catalina Island and the Palos Verdes Peninsula.

Then came the concern of faculty members and students about rare gnatcatchers, cactus wrens and a plant known as the many-stemmed dudleya.

Last winter, the faculty compromised and agreed on a plan that would spare much of the coastal sage habitat. But now gnatcatchers are being considered for possible federal listing as an endangered species, causing much consternation among county developers with projects pending in gnatcatcher habitats.

And a new study by a UCI biologist and several graduate students documented for the first time that a pair of gnatcatchers have built a nest where the house, itself, was to be built.

The faculty committee Tuesday did not indicate a preference between the two alternate sites.