It was just over a year ago when the residents of the Binning Tract were gearing up to fight the development of the proposed Davis Innovation Center, arguing that the proposed development of an innovation park at the site could threaten their quality of life.
The opposition to the proposed development was not coming from Davis residents, but rather from the group of people living in a 54-unit neighborhood that is outside of the city limits and north of Sutter-Davis Hospital.
The concerns included the loss of view because the development would have come within 150 feet of the backyards of the southernmost residents of the development, which was built way back in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
They were also concerns about flooding and the impacts on the existing vernal pools and flood drainage system in an area that floods frequently now — even during periods of relatively low rainfall. They were concerned with the size of the project, and the impact of traffic on a roadway system that is narrow and poorly designed.
By May, the Davis Innovation Center had pulled out of the proposal for a 208-acre high-technology innovation and research campus located at Highway 113 and Covell Boulevard. While the project was said to be “put on hold” or “paused,” the reality always seemed much more than that.
At the time, the developers issued a statement, “We strongly believe the City of Davis should entitle and annex land that can accommodate and support innovation centers. This can only be accomplished by a true public-private partnership in the spirit of the RFEI. We continue to believe that the project we have proposed could be a great asset to Davis and the region.”
However, it looks more and more like that asset will now be benefiting Woodland and the region rather than Davis. The Vanguard has learned that the same project developers are now moving towards an innovation center south of Woodland near the Road 25A and Highway 113 intersection.
John Hodgson of the Hodgson Company, who was one of the main partners in the original proposal in Davis, told the Vanguard he has been asked to say “no comment,” in terms of confirming the plans for the innovation center. An email to Woodland City Manager Paul Navazio has had no response as of the writing of this piece.
There is lots of speculation about the reasons why the Davis Innovation Center pulled out, however, it is widely believed that the opposition of the Binning Tract residents added to the uncertainty of the prospects for passage of a Measure R vote – that at some point would have run up against the Mace Ranch Innovation Center proposal.
The conservative estimates on MRIC are that it would generate $2 million according to the EPS Consulting report, with others believing it could generate $10 million in one-time fees along with another perhaps $5 to $6 million in ongoing revenue as build out occurs.
The Davis Innovation Center, at 4 million square feet, would have generated at least that much, perhaps more.
The idea that the protests from non-residents to the city could be so costly to the prospects for Davis seeing ongoing revenue from economic development is just another concerning turn, as the best laid plans from 2014 seem to be falling by the wayside.
Davis had at one point hoped to send the message that we are open for business, but instead the message is more muddled – anyone who wants to set up shop in Davis has to meander through the gauntlet just to get a project to a Measure R vote, where the voters then get the final say.
The question that Davis must ask is why would anyone invest millions of dollars into a process that is likely to incur strong opposition from residents and even non-residents, when they can do as the developers of the Davis Innovation Center have apparently done and move the project literally four miles up the road to the outskirts of Woodland, and have to deal with no such uncertainty?
More importantly, as we move forward with MRIC headed potentially to a November 2016 vote, how will these developments impact the viability of that development? Will Davis be able to attract the high quality clientele to make that innovation center work if the process and prospects in Woodland are that much easier?
The rest of the region is not waiting for Davis to get its act in gear either. Not only is Woodland moving on a large new hotel and an innovation center, but this week, Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson made a huge splash by hiring a young innovator to run his new Office of Innovation.
As the Sacramento Business Journal reported, “Mayor Kevin Johnson doesn’t yet know what his new Office of Innovation will do, but he has handed the reins to a quintessential denizen of the startup community: a 27-year-old with a dazzling resume in government and technology.”
According to the article, “Abhi Nemani, the mayor’s interim chief innovation officer, is the former chief data officer for Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, where he designed apps aimed at boosting government efficiency. He is also a former leader of Code for America, a national nonprofit that aims to improve government transparency through technology. The organization now has over 120 chapters, including one in Sacramento.”
Sacramento is stepping up big time as it pushes the railyards as its new hub for innovation. Woodland is stepping up. UC Davis, while stumbling a bit, is still looking to expand its reach in Sacramento. And Davis, it seems, cannot get out of its own way, as we pointed out in our column yesterday.
So, add more to the uncertainty as to whether Davis can build Nishi and its 325,000 square feet of R&D space next to UC Davis, or MRIC and its more than three million square feet this fall, and now the ultimate uncertainty – will any of this even matter or has the region just passed Davis by – again.
A question for Binning residents, as they look to figure out how to go from septic tanks to sewers, is just how much did their vow to fight the Davis Innovation Center end up costing the city of Davis in annual revenue and how much of that will now need to borne by the Davis taxpayers?
These are all questions that will be coming down the pike as Davis struggles to find revenue to keep its quality of life at its previous high levels.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
“Davis had at one point hoped to send the message that we are open for business, instead the message is more muddled – anyone who wants to set up shop in Davis has to meander through the gauntlet just to get a project to a Measure R vote, where the voters then get the final say.”
What you see as “muddled”, I see as more nuanced. I do not believe that the message is that Davis is closed to business, but rather that many residents are conflicted about what type of business best suits Davis. I see no significant opposition to the incubator start up type companies that are the natural off shoots of the presence of the university. Davis Roots, Jumpstart Davis and Pollinate seem to me to be thriving. However, should Davis be open to major manufacturing is another question altogether and there is far from universal community agreement on this point. And there is certainly no agreement on what form such a center should take and what mitigations would be necessary.
““Mayor Kevin Johnson doesn’t yet know what his new Office of Innovation will do, but he has handed the reins to a quintessential denizen of the startup community: a 27-year-old with a dazzling resume in government and technology.”
This was my first out loud laugh of the morning. Surely you are not promoting as a good plan starting an Office of Innovation when you “do not know what it will do”. Handing the reins to a 27 year old with a “dazzling resume” without a firm idea of the goals and means to achieve them seems roughly the equivalent of handing the reins of the Taj Mahal to Donald Trump based on his name alone ( which was all he was using to “guarantee the success” of the project) and we all know how that turned out ! Do we really want Dan Wolk saying “I don’t know what this office will do, but I want to start an office of innovation because Sacramento has one !”
Really ????
Tia you may want to do some some research on Nemani before you mock him.
She wasn’t mocking Nemani, David, and you know it. She was “mocking” the idea of creating a fancy sounding office with no mission, and deservedly so.
I read it as both. The “27 year old” and “dazzling resume” are definite signs that she is mocking Nemani.
Davis already has a CIO position, as do a lot of other locales, so I don’t think Sacramento is jumping the gun or reinventing the wheel. Nemani seems like a “Moneyball” hire, suggest you read that book by Michael Lewis, while it’s about baseball, it’s really a business book.
Pugilist, the words / phrases “dazzling” and “27-year-old” were taken directly from the Business Journal article that David quoted. Dr. T didn’t make them up.
David
“you may want to do some some research on Nemani before you mock him.
nonane has this right. I did not say a single word about Nemani either positive or negative. I have done no research and know nothing about him. He may be wonderful and this may be exactly the right thing to do. What I was making fun of was the concept that it is a good idea to put in place a major innovation program without having any idea what it is to do. Those were your words. Not Kevin Johnson’s, not Neman’s. On the idea that going in blindly is a bad idea, I will stand my ground.
” . . . there is far from universal community agreement on this point.”
Should that be the standard that commercial development must achieve, one could not have reinforced David’s argument any better. Leadership by committee, by consensus, never works for the simple reason that it divides more than unites and takes eons to complete.
It’s charitable to say public policy determination by the masses is “muddled,” a more accurate description is “chaotic.”
Why plead nuance Tia when you should be popping champagne. Isn’t this what you have been arguing for all along that Davis remain walkable while development goes to those who need the jobs? Now we don’t need MRIC. Now we don’t need Nishi we will simply add student housing to the staff housing in Woodland. We re-route all the traffic away from town so its out of sight and out of mind and we will have solved our local greenhouse gas issue too since local production will decrease as the use of our roads decreases while they crumble. Yes Davis will return to those days of yesteryear when the alleys were unpaved but now we will go even more retro and add the arterial roads as well and the bike paths and the pools, parks, schools… well you get the picture.
So now that your vision has been implemented how do you hope to make sure my dystopian vision doesn’t come to pass, a Davis that can’t fund its needs? I know you are willing to step up and pay Tia, and I applaud your consistency in both opposing growth and your willingness to pay for the things growth could bring, but I hope to see you out there convincing the rest of Davis to come up with the money to maintain its decaying infrastructure and provide the services that civilized society depends upon to maintain a livable community. I hear the tab is about $600 million Tia.
Tia’s arguments have been consistent and we should all thank her for helping to illuminate the mindset and thinking of the people that are chronically change-averse. She has helped us understand that for these people the word “nuance” is convenient for masking the lack of acceptance of anyone else’s plan unless that plan is to do nothing. That word “nuance” is also cover for those lacking their own feasible ideas and vision for a future state. When she demands increased density and car-lessness she is really counting on there being enough outside NIMBY opposition to allow her to take the environmental high road even as the project is killed. Unfortunately for her the Trackside proposal wrecked her proxy-NIMBY cover.
The population of humans includes 5-10% of true leaders and visionaries. These are the people that can visualize a feasible future state and lead the rest to it. Progress requires the remaining 90-95% to lead, follow or get the hell out of the way. In Davis, it is all about getting the hell in the way. The power in Davis is to those that would block progress. It is a fertile environment for those that cannot handle change to agitate for same, same. Those that are constantly made anxious by change and with Measure R and a weird City culture of governance that honors bottom up participation for every damn decision, feel entitled to get their way even though they are almost completely ignorant of both the details and the big picture. In every other community more of these people get the point that they are incapable of leading or following and should just get the hell out of the way.
“thinking of the people that are chronically change-averse”
This from the man who believes that the current gas burning automobile will continue to be the standard for the future and that the best thing we can do to manage traffic is to build additional lanes. From the individual who has repeatedly minimized the role of alternative means of energy production as though what we have now is all we can aspire to in the foreseeable future, so we should double down on it. From the same poster who wants to “take us back” to a family structure that resembles that of his rosy hued version of a “Father Knows Best” male dominated paternalistic society. From someone who would love to block immigration of those who only speak Spanish while ironically enough, living between the cities of San Francisco and Sacramento.
No Frankly, I am not change averse at all. I just envision change much differently from you. You cannot seem to appreciate my vision of the future, one of balance, harmony and collaboration while living as lightly as possible in a healthy environment. And I do not appreciate your ardent embrace of a paternalistic, materialistic society which I often see as a source of our problems rather than a solution.
Misanthrop
No, this is not what I have been arguing for all along. If you read my posts, instead of merely the posts of those who are busy calling me “NIMBY” you will find that I was cautiously favoring the Davis Innovation Center before the application was suspended. I am cautiously favoring Nishi assuming that the pending issues are favorably resolved. It is true that I did not favor MRIC at least without a housing component. So I guess now you and others will be accusing me of inconsistency since “gasp” I actually have favored at least some of the proposals, just not all of them.
It is interesting to me that a group of people who don’t even live in the city, don’t choose to live in the city, nevertheless get a chance to cost the city millions. Next time a Binning project comes up, I’ll be sure to see how I can stick it to the residents there.
“What you see as “muddled”, I see as more nuanced. I do not believe that the message is that Davis is closed to business, but rather that many residents are conflicted about what type of business best suits Davis.”
Tia, I think you’re missing something critical. How much money is a developer willing to invest in Davis knowing that they could lose it all on a vote of hte people. If Nishi goes down, and MRIC goes down, who will take the risk in the future? No one.
The Pugilist
“If Nishi goes down, and MRIC goes down, who will take the risk in the future? No one.”
I do not want both of these projects to “go down”. However, I think that you are defining this too narrowly. While it might be true that no one who wanted to build these particular types of projects would try again in the near future, that does not mean that no one would ever have any proposal for economic development. These types of manufacturing parks are certainly one way to go…..but they are not the only way to go. I have a great deal of faith that someone may very well come along with a better plan than a 20 year old model of a manufacturing center called “green”.
“There is lots of speculation about the reasons why the Davis Innovation Center pulled out, however, it is widely believed that the opposition of the Binning Tract residents added to the uncertainty of the prospects for passage of a Measure R vote – that at some point would have run up against the Mace Ranch Innovation Center proposal.”
Opposition from the Binning Tract folks, who don’t get to vote on innovation parks because they are not city residents, was not the reason DIC pulled out. One of the major rationales the DIC developer decided to pull the plug was the absolute silence coming from the city’s Chief Innovation Officer at the time, Rob White. The city had already decided not to renew White’s contract, which sent a very bad signal (whether intended or not) to developers that the city was not particularly supportive of the innovation park concept. IMO the city made a serious, serious misstep with the move to get rid of Rob White (who was doing an outstanding job of drumming up enthusiasm for all three of the innovation parks) – along with the city painting the budget in glowing terms at the time – which vitiated the need for innovation park tax revenues. It was a colossal blunder of epic proportions on the city’s part. I am not at all surprised that the DIC project would be reprised in some form elsewhere, that is more welcoming…
I think you are correct about the role of the firing of the CIO and the shift in policy with a new CM. At the same time, I think opposition created uncertainty about dumping in millions and that led the developers to find a safer place to invest.
I believe the noncompliance status of our General Plan contributes one additional factor to the ones Anon and The Pugilist have mentioned. Because the General Plan is in noncompliance, what both MRIC and DIC each actually submitted was a general plan amendment application. As a result, those two applications become free-standing competitors to one another, rather than complementary parts of a holistic Innovation Ecosystem. The informal discussions were about “one or the other, but not both.” So, not only were there navigation through the regulatory maze issues, there were who-knows-who issues that affected a “competition” very differently than it would have affected a collaboration.
Here is a very possible scenario… Woodland could build the innovation center at 25A/113, and all the employees could buy a nice new McMansion in Spring Lake for the price of a Davis 50yr old 1500sq ft ranch. They could easily bike to work, and if Woodland put in a reasonable bike path to connect the two, alot of employees probably would bike to work.
UCD in the meantime does not appear inclined to build any more housing, and just might see building more parking lots and making it more of a commuter campus as the cheap easy fix to the lack of housing in Davis.
Davis gets no revenue from the innovation center or new housing, but does get all the effects of additional car traffic on it’s roads.
Made this exact argument dozens of times over the last two years debating those that would block innovation parks.
Growth and development is going to happen whether we like it or not. Either we are part of it, have some control over it to make sure it is SMART, and get some tax revenue from it… or else we get none of the control and none of the tax revenue, and we get most of the same impacts.
Nice job Davis, and Binning Tract. I went to a few meetings on this project and this group impressed me, and they were being straightforward with everyone and not playing games. They gave a good vegetative buffer to the Binning Tract. They hired AECOM to work out traffic and alternate transportation circulation patterns, and I discussed these with their project manager. They promised they would deal with the potential flooding issues (they would have had to). I would have voted for this project had they kept the same team and direction and solved the very real issues of traffic and drainage.
I have not been so impressed with the meanderings of the Mace Business Park and am probably voting against it as things are going.
This outcome of the NW Business Park team moving to Woodland explains a lot. I would have too, if I were them.
And you Ramos shills who said the Business Park had to be on 80, not 113, give us a break!
Yes, J/R will result in Davis being an over-priced, under-funded upper-middle-class utopia slum. And as the price of land goes up, the incentive to protect those land prices goes up, and never shall a residential J/R pass (except maybe Nishi if they play it right).
Innovation Center in Woodland would work, really.
There is absolutely no project in Davis that will not attract vigorous opposition and a threat of a lawsuit. That I am convinced.
Woodland is changing. It is developing its downtown/Main Street area. An innovative center is a really good idea for that town – Main Street renewal with new hotel going in at one end of Main and a new movie theater going in at the other, close to Sacramento, way closer to the airport, a much easier political environment, and lower taxes and less expensive housing than Davis.
Agree here. I foresee a time in the not too distant future where people living in Woodland will agitate for develop projects by pointing to Davis as the example of the lesser community.
“by pointing to Davis as the example of the lesser community.”
Lesser in what ? Lesser in housing choices ? Lesser in congestion ? Lesser in economic opportunity ? Lesser in environmental well being ? Lesser in crime ? Lesser in educational success ? Lesser in parks and recreational opportunities ? Lesser in community engagement ?
There are many, many different ways to judge a community. By focusing only on economics, I believe that you are missing the much bigger picture of what constitutes a community.