Prior to Nishi being placed on the ballot, the Vanguard made the point that we needed to really do something more on the site. In January 2015, we noted what the USC Village, with only 15 acres (one-third the size of Nishi), was doing with that site compared to the relatively small amount of retail and R&D space of Nishi.
Now there is a proposal moving forward with a public-private partnership in West Lafayette, Indiana, home of Purdue University. The Purdue Innovation District will encompass 450 acres (about the size of MRIC and Davis Innovation Centers put together).
The Purdue Research Foundation and Browning Investments are teaming up on what will be a $1.2 billion mixed-use project at the west end of Purdue that will take about 15 to 20 years to build out.
In the write up they describe the 450-acre project encompassing “several million feet of building space including housing for students, faculty and city residents; a hotel with conference center; restaurants; office and business space; parks; research facilities and industrial space.”
“This is a tremendous long-term opportunity to develop several million square feet across a full spectrum of property types,” Adam Chavers, Browning senior vice president, said in a prepared statement. “The vision is large enough that Browning and other developers will be executing vertical development over the next 15 to 20 years.”
They will begin with “developed university housing, a hotel and convention center and an innovation hub that would combine some of Purdue’s commercial programs in the same space as venture capital firms.”
John Hirschman, Browning president & CEO, said the development “is unique in its scale and potential impact as a catalyst for innovation, collaboration and entrepreneurism. Academic and private industry research and discovery will be purposefully integrated with commercial activity and residential options in a transformative development for Purdue University and West Lafayette.”
Another key point was the cooperation between the university and the city.
“We don’t know of comparable town-gown collaboration like ours along State Street, which we hope with the adjoining innovation district will provide the next era of growth and prominence for Purdue,” Mitch Daniels, Purdue president, said in prepared remarks.
The article ends with another note: “The Purdue project is an example of a growing number of town-gown economic developments in the United States. In April, Harvard University announced it was moving ahead with a $1 billion Science and Engineering Complex in Allston, Mass., which would be the centerpiece of an ambitious 10-year master plan for numerous construction projects in the neighborhood.”
In the meantime, in Davis, we just had a relatively modest project that would have added 330,000 square feet of R&D space to the community narrowly voted down by the voters.
There were two proposed innovation parks of less than half the size of the Purdue Innovation Center that have fallen by the wayside for a variety of reasons.
At least, before Chancellor Katehi fell on hard times, UC Davis was looking for its major thrust being into the Sacramento Railyards with a potential billion dollar project, the World Food Center, potentially looking to locate in Sacramento rather than Davis.
But imagine now a different possibility. Imagine a major investment by a private company – it could be Hines or it could be Ramco – into Davis. The university uses its billion dollar muscle to pump several hundred thousand into the project up front, and the city of Davis signs onto the project as well.
The project looks to provide R&D Space, research facilities, a hotel conference center, and an innovation hub that can provide space for technology transfer and university spinoffs that can bring billions of money and investment, thousands of jobs, millions in city revenue and put Davis in the same place that Purdue and West Lafayette are.
But that’s not where this community is right now. We don’t have that vision on either side of A Street, or the tenacity to make it happen. A project proposal will be picked to death by the naysayers, will receive lukewarm support from a majority of councilmembers (although Robb Davis and Rochelle Swanson have been strong in this area) and the chancellor’s office, and so we end up in the situation where we are.
We are living in a town next to a university, which, despite its stumbles this year, is aspirational. They will be adding thousands of students, faculty and staff in the next decade. If Davis is not willing to accommodate their aspirations, they will simply locate their facilities in the Railyards. At some point they may simply starting moving towards Solano County.
While the large innovation center proposal for Solano County has been shelved for now, if Davis is seen as closed for business, I would not count on it staying that way.
If they can make a private-public partnership work in West Lafayette, Indiana, with Purdue University, it certainly should be feasible in Davis, located between the Silicon Valley and the capital of the most populous state in the country.
The problem is that we have become our own barrier to success. Adding innovation centers that are surrounded by land in ag mitigation is not going to blow out the city’s borders or harm our way of life.
In fact, the opposite is true. We like to think of ourselves as a progressive community, but we’re not. In fact, far from it.
We talk about climate change, and yet our current land use policies force people to commute from across the region to work or study in our community.
Low income people cannot find housing in Davis. Students cannot find housing in Davis. College professors cannot find housing in Davis.
Purchasing a home in this community is next to impossible for anyone but the one percent, and well-paying and meaningful jobs are scarce – forcing people to travel significant distances on already jammed roads for hours per day.
I am not advocating that we tear down our land use policies. I’m not arguing for peripheral subdivisions. I’m arguing that we are missing the boat and that a great world class university like UC Davis is going to have to expand into Sacramento and Solano County to meet its aspirations, while universities like Purdue have complete buy-in from private industry and their cities.
That puts us at a huge disadvantage and it is one that is self-inflicted.
We have been talking about our declining infrastructure funding. Yes, we can fund it through parcel taxes. Estimates start at $1000 per year and probably that is a low number to fund our needs. That is on top of the $1200 or so that the school district needs.
Can residents afford a $2500 parcel tax to keep our roads paved, our parks functioning and our schools great? Or is it time to find another way?
Purdue is throwing down $1.2 billion to find another way. Perhaps we should re-examine our public-private, town-gown models to see if there is another way that works for Davis.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
I guess that billion dollar number for development at 391 wasn’t so pie in the sky after all. At 78% of the size of the Purdue project and owned by the city think of all the money Davis gave away in the name of preserving open space.
I repeated that point over and over again to Don Shor’s irritation.
And, as I said over and over, Mace 391 would never have passed a Measure R vote. Never.
But it’s what we needed.
But it would never have passed, so what’s your point? We need economic development. We had three peripheral sites that were identified. One has gone to ballot and failed. Mace 391 carried far more political baggage than Nishi and would have faced an even broader, better-organized coalition of opposition. We apparently need to focus on what we can actually get done at this point, and see what possibilities remain in the next several years for the three sites that have been identified. If anybody feels like continuing to argue about Mace 391, there are lots of threads on the Vanguard debating it. Just use the search function and have fun.
Don, I don’t agree with “never.”
Through its first 15 years Measure O has protected 2,833 acres at a cost to the City of $10,518,937, which works out to $3,713 per acre. If the City realized $40,000 per acre from the sale of the 391 acres, it would have created an Open Space protection war chest of $15,640,000. At $3,713 per acre, that would have protected 4,214 acres around Davis. I believe lots of voters would have voted “yes” on a Measure R vote that permanently conserved over 4,000 acres while “losing” less than 400 acres.
JMHO
I said “would never have passed.”
It might in the future. Right about the same time Covell Village will be brought back for consideration.
I believe a majority of voters would have voted no. A substantial majority.
With over 4,000 acres put into permanent Conservation Easement around Davis, you still think people would have voted “no.” All the reasons why people voted “yes” in 2000 for Measure O would have been reasons to vote yes on a Mace 391 package. Further, instead of the promise of future ag land conservation, they would have the reality of immediate ag land conservation.
You don’t know that. If the city leaders had paused and put together a real explanation to the city as to the benefits of owning and developing this land, and kept it commercial and included half of it open space, I think it could have passed. No developer holding the cards… just the city.
Instead we pissed it away. We allowed more lies to set the agenda.
We had people that wanted the farmland moat no matter what the cost to future residents.
It was a shameful act.
I have great confidence in my assessment of the political realities, and that confidence has increased since then. Especially given the outcome of Measure A. The city leaders did not support the action you wanted. They would not have been vigorously in support of the action you wanted. The promises Matt Williams refers to were and are empty promises. There were no lies.
Beat the dead horse all you want, Frankly. Beat it every time this comes up. Keep saying it, again and again, and I promise you I will reply:
It. Would. Never. Have. Passed.
Don, you believe those “were and are empty promises” but you do not know that they were empty promises. You were unwilling to even consider putting together a game plan for determining whether they were achievable. You wanted the story to end, so you vociferously fought to kill it. You prejudged the outcome and found it didn’t meet your personal criteria. I personally believe that was a failure of imagination.
That is a false statement on several different levels. First off much more of our population than that hated 1% that liberals love to denigrate can afford to buy a house in Davis. Secondly there are many well paying and meaningful jobs already in Davis. Lastly people don’t have to drive for hours if they can’t afford to live in Davis, there is plently of lower cost housing in surrounding communities 10 to 15 minutes away. If one drives for hours that’s a choice not because they have to.
I agree you don’t need to be in the 1% to buy in Davis but you likely need to be in the top quintile or have helpful relatives in the top quintile. Good jobs aren’t hours away they are local or perhaps 1/2 hour away in Sacramento. The commute is still a grind.
according to Zillow
median home value in Davis is $585,200
median home value in California is $464,200
So Davis is 25% more expensive than the state average.
I think you would need to control for those big coastal CA cities where good-paying jobs are plentiful, the general cost of living is much higher, and people from all over the world drive up the price buying second homes. It would be more reasonable to compare Davis to like cities in CA.
I was being a little hyperbolic to make a point that would resonate on the more progressive sector of the community on issues of inequality and sustainability. Clearly it was not a comment aimed at you.
Come on David, is the “more progressive sector” fine with you just making up stats?
I don’t get creative license?
Not if you want to be taken seriously.
I think people know that when you have a $1 million home on the market, that while you are not literally catering to the 1%, you’re not providing housing for low income folks.
David wrote:
> I don’t get creative license?
If you keep calling “making bold faced lies” “creative license” the blog will loose readers…
Nope, you are entitled to your own opinions, but you can’t make up your own facts.
Point being homes are expensive in Davis and jobs are not plentiful.
As noted above the medium price of a Davis home is $585,200. Why do you use a $1 million home as your example? Providing low income people housing is a whole different issue than people being able to buy a house in Davis.
BP wrote:
> As noted above the medium price of a Davis home is $585,200.
> Why do you use a $1 million home as your example?
I just went to Realtor.com and about 99% of the homes and condos for sale in Davis are listed at UNDER $1 million.
I found a 3 bedroom home at 3110 Nantucket Terrace listed at $333K. With a $10K down payment at FHA loan you would have a $1,463/month mortgage payment.
If a typical poor family just cuts back on their cigarette, beer and tattoo spending for a few years (saving ~$275/month) they will have a down payment to buy a home in Davis.
At $585k you would need about $120,000 down and your payments would be about $2000 per month and then another $600 a month for tax and insurance.
The standard debt to income ratio that lenders don’t want to exceed is 36%.
So assuming no other debt (no car loan, no credit cards, etc.) approval for a loan would require $120,000 in the bank and be making at least $5,556 per month or about $67,000 per year.
How many have $120,000 in the bank?
How many have no other debt?
A starter home these days should be in the $200k – $250k range. Assume $40k-$50k down (something that a relative can reasonable be asked to help with… for example mom and dad paying half) and payments of around $1000 per month and about $300 per month for tax and insurance. Then that $50k-$60k per year income ($24 – $29 per hour for a full-time worker) allows for a car payment. It starts to work.
The problem is that Davis has no affordable starter homes.
But there are some in Woodland and West Sac and Dixon. Although the lack of building in Davis is causing housing cost escalation in those communities too.
“If they can make a private-public partnership work in West Lafayette, Indiana with Purdue University, it certainly should be feasible in Davis, located between the Silicon Valley and the Capital of the most populous state in the country.”
I would like to point out one major difference between Purdue and Harvard, themselves private institutions, and UCD which is a public university with its primary mission of the education of the qualified students of this state. A mission which has been coopted by the attempt to privatize the university justified by the success in bringing in money. So yes, if the attraction of ever more money is the ultimate goal, I would advocate for this approach. If one values the primary mission and the current nature of our city more, then perhaps turning Davis into the next huge academic / industrial center is not so attractive.
“The problem is that we have become our own barrier to success. Adding innovation centers that are surrounded by land in ag mitigation is not going to blow out the city’s borders or harm our way of life.”
With this, I completely disagree. This is only true if we define success solely in economic terms. Let’s suppose that we were to build such a large “innovation center”. Do you honestly believe that this would not also lead to the need for more housing for all of those workers ? Where are they going to live ? Either we would build much more housing for them, or they would also join those that are commuting daily. Is commenting in to Davis any less destructive than commuting out?
Now I concede that there are many who would like to see Davis grow its population as well as its economy rapidly and there are others such as yourself who claim that this would not happen. From 60 years of experience living in both large and small communities, business and population have grown commensurately in every small community in which I have ever lived if not geographically constrained. I simply do not believe Davis would not follow this same pattern.
We have had this discussion before. I do not believe that this type growth will not change the basic nature of our city. I do not believe that we can “grow our way out” of our current problems. If this is what the majority of our citizens want, then we should proceed. If this is not what the majority desire, then we should proceed with a balanced plan for smaller scale projects ( such as Nishi) , combined with more prudent use of resources, combined with selectively increased taxes.
Yes, this is a major point that the advocates for a new industrial park are conveniently ignoring. The employees will either need to be housed in Davis, which means much more housing construction; or they will have to commute (Have you experienced the daily traffic jams on I80 lately?).
Woodland is five minutes away.
Don
“Woodland is five minutes away”
Which could equally be stated as an argument for not building more student housing in Davis since the students have to commute “only five minutes” from Woodland. I would not agree with that sentiment, but it is one natural outcome of that point of view.
Not exactly. I travel between Davis and Woodland frequently. If you are going from the residential districts in Woodland and central Davis or UCD it’s more like 15 to 20 minutes (depending on exactly where you are going).
I exaggerated slightly: it is 5.8 miles from the northeast corner of Davis to the southeast corner of Woodland. Our deliveries to Spring Lake from our nursery take less time than delivering to Stonegate or El Macero.
Don wrote:
> Woodland is five minutes away.
While you can make it from South Woodland to North Davis in five minutes (if you are speeding) it takes most people about a half hour to get from their homes in Woodland to jobs or classes at UCD (a friend lives out by the Yolo Fliers golf course and it takes him over a half hour each way to get to his job on the UCD campus).
And it’s only going to get worse if we have more commercial development that causes traffic jams. If we want more commercial development, we need to take seriously the pressure that will create for more housing developments surrounding Davis.
Tia Will said . . . “Which could equally be stated as an argument for not building more student housing in Davis since the students have to commute “only five minutes” from Woodland. I would not agree with that sentiment, but it is one natural outcome of that point of view.”
The other flaw with that sentiment Tia is that as a general rule, groups of UCD students sharing the monthly rental costs of an existing (not incrementally added) apartment in Davis have significantly greater fiscal assets availability than the typical single family looking to rent that same apartment. As a result the groups of students will outbid the single family for the apartment and the single family will be the ones who are forced to have to commute “only five minutes” from Woodland.
Tia,
One point of clarification. According to Wikipedia, Perdue University is a “public university system”. Don’t understand all the distinctions, but it doesn’t appear to be just another Harvard or USC.
That said, I really fail to see the similarities between either West LaFayette or South Central LA and Davis, and how one divorces the conversation about innovation centers from the realities and cultures of the respective host communities and their leading institutions.
Tia Will said . . . “I would like to point out one major difference between Purdue and Harvard, themselves private institutions, and UCD which is a public university with its primary mission of the education of the qualified students of this state.”
Tia, last time I checked Purdue was/is a public land-grant university.
This would seem to be arguing for much more apartment and housing construction.
David wrote:
> Low income people cannot find housing in Davis. Students cannot
> find housing in Davis. College professors cannot find housing in Davis.
Is this more “creative license” (aka “lies”)? We have thousands of low income people in subsidized low income units in Davis (and for 10 years have had vacant units waiting for low income people to move in at Pacificio). Have you met a single student or professor who has told you “I can’t find housing in Davis”? I’m pretty sure that every UCD student and UCD professor can use Craig’s List and “find” housing. Some (like my professor friend who lives in Woodland because he could not “find” a 4,000sf+ home with a 3 car garage on a golf course in town for under $700K) nay not live in town for other reasons, but not because they can’t “find” housing…
There are students who cannot find housing and Davis and commute. The same with professors. I have met quite a few who said that they cannot find/ afford housing in Davis and they therefore commute.
I just went on Craigslist and found 196 entries for rentals in Davis. Many were very resonably priced. And that’s just Craigslist, how many other Davis rentals are out there?
So you don’t believe we have a 0.2 percent vacancy rate?
I’m just telling you what I saw on Craigslist. Some of the ads may be duplicated and a few might be misplaced items but there’s a lot of rentals according to Craigslist and remember that’s just Craigslist, there are more rentals out there in other forms of advertising.
http://sacramento.craigslist.org/search/apa?search_distance=5&postal=95616
I looked at the ads and I don’t understand what you mean by reasonably priced. The cheapest room was one room in an older apartment complex, sharing a two bedroom for $600 per month plus utilities. The other ads were much higher, up to $1000 per room. It looks like City housing has now caught up to new on campus housing. I looked at Woodland and it looks like the rental prices there are catching up to Davis. UCD enrollment will reach 37,000 this year. You have to wonder how this will impact low income families looking for housing in Woodland and will eventually be priced out of the market by UCD students.
David wrote:
> So you don’t believe we have a 0.2 percent vacancy rate?
We don’t have a 0.2% right now (and never have in the summer) after school starts and a few more units lease up to kids who thought commuting from Fairfield or Roseville would be easy we will probably be under a 1% vacancy again…
I recently moved to Davis in February. It took one day to find a rental house for my family.
Topcat
“This would seem to be arguing for much more apartment and housing construction.”
I think that this is exactly what David is arguing for. He just approaches it from two differing points of view, the need for housing and the need for economic growth. What is not acknowledged in his comments is that this approach will inevitably change the fundamental nature of the city.
If this is what the majority wants, then that is how our development should go. But, it should never go that way because David, or anyone else convinces people that the loss of the character of Davis as a small city based on an agricultural background will not be the outcome.
A quick search in Zillow shows over 20 residences in Davis for sale at less than $500,000. I know that’s not affordable for a typical retail or blue collar worker, but it is certainly doable for a typical college educated two earner couple of which I know quite a few in Davis.
Exactly!!!!!!!!!
To buy a $500K home you need a $15K down payment and you would have a mortgage payment of about $2,200/month. Not cheap, but not something that only the “top 1% can afford”. If one person can commute by bike many couples can sell one car and make a bigger down payment (and have even more extra cash each month when you are not paying gas, insurance and maintenance on a second car)…
There is a lot of discussion here on irrelevant and second matters. Barack Pail, Topcat, South of Davis, what do you think of the idea of Davis emulating Purdue and others with a fully public-private partnership and a large innovation center?
All for it, I was also for Nishi. All for MRIC too as long as no housing is included at that site.
Not a big fan of the “public-private partnership” idea. It could get bogged down in conflicting priorities. It would be like a giant piñata that everyone would be taking a whack at to get their own pet projects incorporated.
This conversation is a perfect example of the nitpicking that goes on in Davis. People will find one detail to pick at relentlessly, implying that the broader idea is discredited and ignoring the caution given.
David has given us a well-written picture of Davis’ dysfunctional, ultra conservative, planning process. We are no longer progressive, but conservative in the extreme and we are missing out on opportunities to keep Davis innovative and relevant. We are destined to be that City where business are started and then move to neighboring communities just when they start to generate revenue to support the community. The University will turn away and begin to look at Solano County for collaboration. We are left with a decaying City or ever higher taxes.
Does the fact the no growth is the dominant issue mean Davis is “dysfunctional”?
The developments at Harvard, Purdue and USC are indeed impressive, and are seemingly great examples of collaboration between a university and the community. Perhaps Nishi would have had a better chance of getting improved if UCD had been more overtly involved, but its LRDP website does not give much attention to the Nishi proposal. In terms of housing supply and cost in Davis, I’m surprised that more commenters did not cite what I think is a major factor. That is, UCD’s negligence in not building much needed on-campus apartments. There’s enough dorms to accommodate most freshmen, but after that the students are effectively “evicted” to find a place to live. One of the universities I attended had 45 residence halls with enough rooms that any student who wanted to live on campus through senior year could do so. UCD, on the other hand, spends millions on music halls, art galleries and the international student center now under construction. I believe UCD’s misplaced priorities are largely responsible for the cost and shortage of reasonably priced housing in Davis, yet many people seem more than willing to give the university “a pass” on this issue. UCD’s continued rapid growth becomes our problem.
Yes, the best option for housing all the new students that UCD is expecting is for UCD to build new housing. Redevelopment of the Orchard Park site should be a top priority as that site has excellent access to the University for students walking or riding their bikes. West Village also has lots of buildable land and good campus access.
Topcat wrote:
> Redevelopment of the Orchard Park site should be a top priority
It should be a priority, but the people running the university don’t care if kids live in an RV or an unheated garage as long as they pay tuition (preferably the higher out of state tuition).
UC Davis has never built the units they promised to build and I don’t think this time will be any different since they want to give their friends raises not build housing for students.
P.S. I laughed when I read: “Several UC Berkeley economics professors who support “income inequality” research each earn more than $300,000 a year”
http://www.thecollegefix.com/post/28026/
Topcat, let’s play out your “best option” assertion a bit. Within the past few weeks changes in the on-campus housing regulations at West Village opened up 624 additional beds. The message at the West Village webpage says:
Imagine you are a UCD student looking for Fall 2016 housing and you have a choice between a a bed in a shared room in West Village at $625 per month, or a bed in a room of your own in an average two-bedroom apartment the City of Davis at $731 per month (in Table 3 of the 2015 UCD Rental Rate Survey the average rental for a 2-bedroom apartment is $1,462 per month). Which would you choose?
My point is that building new housing on campus directly impacts housing supply, but only indirectly impacts housing demand. Especially since the costs of construction of any new housing will be higher than the historical costs of constructing the housing at West Village.
Said another way, there is no guarantee that the housing built by UCD will experience an acceptable occupancy/vacancy rate.
People who think Davis is expensive with a low occupancy should house hunt in Cambridge, MA. Good luck with that.
David, good article. Thank you for the examples of other cities and keeping this discussion at the forefront.
I am more interested in the main point of this article – can we put together a city-university-private partnership? Should we?
“can we put together a city-university-private partnership? Should we?”
The collaborative effort of the city and the university has worked well so far with the fire department merger and it fundamentally changed the structure of the Davis Fire Department ( for better or worse depending on one’s perspective). I think that a three way venture would at least be worth seriously considering if the majority of citizens desire a fundamental change to the nature of the city which is implied with this approach. I believe that it is wrong to believe that such a major venture would not change the fundamental nature of the city as it is now and I believe that it is only honest to admit that this change would occur.