By David M. Greenwald
Executive Editor
Davis, CA – Village Farms is the first of possibly five Measure J projects to undergo CEQA review ahead of a potential Measure J vote in the spring of 2025.
At the October 3, 2023, City Council meeting, the Council awarded the contract for the preparation of an EIR for the Village Farms Davis proposal to Raney Planning & Management.
At that time, Council also directed staff to have the NOP drafted and to return to the Council for further direction before commencing the NOP public review period. On October 24, 2023, the Council directed staff to release the Notice of Preparation (NOP) and commence the EIR scoping comment period.
Staff reports that a Scoping Meeting was held on November 29 at Community Chambers and 22 individuals came to review the proposed project exhibits and submit written comments.
Under CEQA, there is a requirement for the analysis of a “reasonable range” of alternative projects that potentially would have one or more lesser environmental impacts than the proposed project. While these requirements are not legally required to be analyzed to the same extent as the proposed project, “the analyses will include sufficient detail to allow a meaningful comparison of the impacts.”
Following feedback from council, staff has revised a list “of five proposed alternative concepts that was presented to Council on October 24 to a list of six alternatives.”
Staff explained, “CEQA guidelines require the analysis of a ‘no project’ alternative to compare impacts of the proposed project with that of no project.”
CEQA guidelines also require the lead agency to consider an “offsite” alternative.
After evaluating an offsite alternative, “the lead agency can reject it if it is infeasible.”
The City has “determined that analysis of an offsite alternative would provide a comparison of the impacts of the proposed project with that of a project in another location. The additional alternatives included must represent a ‘reasonable range’ of options.”
See – Comments from the Scoping Meeting
We already did option 6. Its called Spring Lake. It is more car dependent and has greater VMT for UC employees than building on the currently proposed site.
I dont understand what you have shown us here. There was a public scoping meeting and the call for feedback to be submitted by December 8th. This came out on October 24th?
Has staff already decided what the alternative scenarios are going to be and the public input was just performative? It seems FAR too early to have this document out.
I had a number of conversations with people who were in attendance at the scoping meetings, and several have shared their comments with me as we proof-read each-other work.
The alternative requests i have seen from members of the community are NOT captured in the staff prepared alternatives shown here, and they really must be because the differences are important.
For example, one proposal suggested looking at “same number of units, but no single family homes” as an alternative. We know that single family homes have twice the carbon footprint and are over-represented in this development. None of the alternatives presented in the table above seem to consider the form factor of the housing, and THAT is a VERY important distinction.
My own comments asked to analyze a scenario where we created a transit-oriented development which includes:
– Densification of the lower 1/3 of the property
– Provision of a dedicated transit line to serve it that connects it to downtown and campus
– A maximum of 1.3 parking spots per dwelling unit.
If we want to intentionally design housing that will score well on the Rubric, that is what we would do. It is the only way to get housing that is custom-tailored towards serving our LOCAL workforce in a way that doesnt have proportional in-town traffic impacts.
You cant do one of those things though, you have to do ALL of them: the density, the transit and the parking maximum, otherwise it doesn’t work. And there is no alternative on the staff-generated list the even comes close to suggesting something similar.
I sincerely hope the council isnt only going to consider this staff list and they take a good hard look at what was submitted by the community. The alternatives presented here are inferior and dont go nearly far enough in exploring the true range of alternative concepts.