When I first learned of the revelations that ConAgra had donated a large amount of money to David Morris about six weeks ago, my first reaction is that this is going to kill the Cannery Project. At this point, I believe that was a premature reaction and assessment.
While I think the donation for a startup fund was an interesting idea by ConAgra – and at the time may have made sense if the issue of losing the business park land potential became the leading criticism of the Cannery proposal – as I have stated numerous times this week, I find most of the explanations a bit perplexing and not fully adding up.
Right now our assessment is that Cannery has two certain yes votes – Rochelle Swanson and Dan Wolk. There are then three questions. Joe Krovoza has been the most vocal in pushing forth the notion that, without better connectivity, he is going to oppose the vote.
Back in August, Mayor Krovoza said that he was opposed to the project because of the connectivity issues.
The Enterprise reported that the mayor said, “I want to ensure that the design of (The Cannery) enhances the Davis lifestyle… and I do see outstanding circulation for both bikes and pedestrians and cars as lessening (the impact on traffic).”
Mayor Joe Krovoza told the Vanguard this week, “The city had made significant concessions to ConAgra in order to facilitate the Cannery project — most notably a weakening of our affordable housing requirements. Conversely, our Council has identified traffic mitigation measures and community needs related to the project that we believe ConAgra should support prior to approval.”
“I can only hope that Con Agra designating $2M for a project not prioritized by the Council does not complicate the City’s ability to come to terms with the developer,” the mayor added.
Our assessment is that Brett Lee, who has had a number of concerns about the Cannery, is also not likely to be a supporter.
Among other things, he has stated that the Cannery does not include enough options for seniors.
“I would like to see a more robust senior component in the development,” he told the paper in August. “I think there are some nice things there, but I probably am on the same page as Mary Jo Bryan. I think there’s an opportunity to do much more.”
That leaves Lucas Frerichs, who has tended to be more pro-development, as a possible swing vote here.
What becomes clear looking at the council dynamic is that the ConAgra folks are going to have to give something in order to get their project approved. We have speculated all week that the second below-grade crossing is probably first on the list, and a given.
While the donation might leave some heads scratching, the overall approach by ConAgra to community demands has not been completely unreasonable. They have met extensively with community groups and members on issues like connectivity, senior housing, sustainability and other issues.
On the issue of sustainability, for instance, they have moved in the direction of more photovoltaics. In September, they announced that all 367 single-family attached and detached homes would now include a 1.5 kW Photovoltaic system (total 550 kW) as a standard feature, and public areas will include 45 kW Photovoltaic systems for site lighting to achieve zero net energy.
The result is that Cannery homes, they argue, will “achieve 40% better than California 2008 Title 24 Energy Building Code, exceeding City of Davis requirement of 15% better than Title 24 for new construction.”
So, there has been some movement by ConAgra on some issues. But ConAgra strategically is probably holding some of their cards back. For instance, if they gave on the second grade-separated crossing now, they may have to give something else when the issue finally comes to a vote at the city council level.
Each councilmember probably has their own list of demands that they want, and ConAgra will be looking to a formula in order to get to three votes on council.
That being said, the $2 million issue now makes things a bit more difficult and probably more expensive to council.
The comment by Joe Krovoza rings true – the councilmembers who are still on the fence are going to argue to ConAgra – hey, look, you gave a $2 million contribution to Capitol Corridor Ventures. As Mayor Krovoza argues, that is an expenditure not prioritized by council.
As a private entity, of course, ConAgra can give to whomever they want, but council is going to be able to argue that if you have $2 million for CCV, you better have the money for a second below-grade crossing and whatever other needs the council believes they have.
As Brett Lee stated nearly a year ago, “I believe a project of this size should be based upon not only how nice it is for the people who ultimately live there, but how it benefits our community as a whole.”
The question now becomes an interesting cat and mouse game in terms of what ConAgra is willing to give in order to get their project through. Where the $2 million comes into play is going to be in terms of lost leverage by ConAgra, who will now have trouble pleading poverty.
Our view at this time is that the $2 million does not kill the project. We just do not see a nefarious intent that would lead the Davis City Council to automatically say no to the project.
What we see is that ConAgra is going to have to give more to get the project through and, ironically, that is not the worst thing in the world for the community.
There, of course, is one big looming question and that is how will this impact a potential election. We just don’t know at this point. At one point there was a lot of talk about putting this on the ballot. Certainly, one of the possible community members inclined to do so continues to endorse that approach.
But how that plays out long term will depend on what the council attempts to do. The more ConAgra can meet the demands of community groups, the more likely they will be to prevail both at the council level and with the voters.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
The question I have is what ConAgra will do with the property if the council doesn’t approve their project.
Pleading poverty? Is there a CC member who would still believe them?
Put it on the ballot.
Come on Joe and Brett: put it on the ballot.
“The question I have is what ConAgra will do with the property if the council doesn’t approve their project.”
Secretly bury large amount of toxic waste on it, then deed it to the city.
“Joe Krovoza has been the most vocal in pushing forth the notion that, without better connectivity, he is going to oppose the vote.”
So there seems a relatively easy way to secure a 3rd vote.
Michael Harrington, this si going to pass and the council will not vote to put it on the ballot. So that most likely being the case how long does the public have to gather signatures and put this to a vote? Do you know of anyone that’s going to spearhead this?
“What will ConAgra do with the property if not approved?” They would continue processing food around the globe, project applicants would move on to other projects, homebuilder will continue to build homes, entreprenueres will continue to be entreprenuers, and whoever paid the bill for all the processing will lose their a**. Years later, a developer will appear…….
One needs to consider the GAAP impact of a $2MM donation to a charitable organization vs. an additional $2.5MM in capital expenditure for a second grade crossing. I think those equating the two either don’t understand the book impact difference, or they expect most voters to not understand the difference and are ginning up manufactured outrage.
[i]But ConAgra strategically is probably holding some of their cards back. For instance, if they gave on the second grade-separated crossing now, they may have to give something else when the issue finally comes to a vote at the city council level.[/I]
I agree with this. It is a necessary strategy for a land owner/developer dealing with a city filled full of activist people and groups with endless lists of goodies they continue to demand. If ConAgra had agreed to this second crossing earlier, we would be debating some other $2.5MM feature being demanded.
“One needs to consider the GAAP impact of a $2MM donation to a charitable organization vs. an additional $2.5MM in capital expenditure for a second grade crossing. I think those equating the two either don’t understand the book impact difference, or they expect most voters to not understand the difference and are ginning up manufactured outrage. “
The Davis Bike Club is a non-profit…..
“I agree with this. It is a necessary strategy for a land owner/developer dealing with a city filled full of activist people and groups with endless lists of goodies they continue to demand. If ConAgra had agreed to this second crossing earlier, we would be debating some other $2.5MM feature being demanded.”
Again, I think developers need to move away from thinking of these things as “goodies”. I’m sure at one point indoor plumbing used to be considered a “goodie”.
Frankly
[quote]It is a necessary strategy for a land owner/developer dealing with a city filled full of activist people and groups with endless lists of goodies they continue to demand[/quote]
I do not consider safety issues to be “goodies”.
There are two issues of safety that I do not feel have been addressed adequately at this point.
1) Individual safety for any but the most experienced bicyclist. The way that the developers have configured their bike paths is demonstrably unsafe forcing relatively fast turns onto cross paths with very limited visibility. You asked me to be specific and so I will. When my son was about 7, he was riding his bike from our cul de sac onto the North Star greenbelt. Like most kids, he enjoyed picking up speed on the slight down hill slope and then starting to pedal faster picking up speed to make the faster and therefore more fun left hand turn onto the greenbelt. He did not see one of my daughter’s friends approaching from the left, ran into her accidentally with as much speed as he could muster knocking her from her bike and breaking her collar bone.
Luckily it was a broken collar bone, not a humerus or femur or possibly worse, a closed head injury. Our families were quite friendly and all was understood and forgiven. My point is that the way the bike paths are currently configured, every child going from the Cannery to North Davis Elementary, Holmes Junior High,
Davis High, or DaVinci, will be forced to use these demonstrably unsafe bike paths. The configuration is such that if I were a mother living in the Cannery, I would not allow my elementary school age children to cross Covell on the bike paths as currently proposed.
2) Community Safety
I have not heard any response to my repeated questions about evacuation planning. In this area, I have been unable to find, so far, adequately similar situations to quantitate my concern. So I am going to have to extrapolate from similar situations to explain my very material concerns about this matter. There are two types of circumstances which while they are not common, are also not rare.
1) Gas line explosions. One occurred in San Bruno, Ca. in 2010 with 8 deaths and 66 injuries as well as the complete loss of a number of homes. My second example was a natural gas line explosion in Bedford, Mass.
with one death, a number of injuries, and a greater number of lost homes.
2) Train accidents
7/20/13 – Train carrying flammable liquids derails, becomes engulfed in flames, kills 47 people
10 /19/13 – Train carrying flammable liquids derails outside Edmonton sending fireball across two lane highway igniting fires on both sides.
Since there is a rail line immediately to the west of this project, my questions are the following:
1) What are the contents of the cars on the north-south rail line ? If they contain flammables, what are the
safety provisions that are in place ? Do they meet standards for going immediately past densely populated
neighborhoods ?
2) What are the accepted standards for evacuation of a community of 1,500 people should a catastrophic
accident occur ?
3) Are the only two exits onto a single major crosstown artery conducive to meeting evacuation standards.
We already have one community in town which has a single exit into a highly congested single intersection, Olive Drive. Do we really want to create a second such situation in the North part of town ? I don’t know that this is the case, but I would think that every council member should be asking these questions and not considering a “yes” vote until they have measurable, quantifiable answers to these questions.
Gosh, it’s hard to turn this pig’s ear into a silk purse filled with millions in profit.
[quote]ConAgra is going to have to give more to get the project through[/quote]
This corporation behaves as most others according to their Golden Rule “Buy low and sell high”, which pretty well accounts for their behavior.
Let’s take the “sell high” first. Certainly no one doubts that, a development agreement having been negotiated, ConAgra will sell these 550 houses and the commercial pieces at the highest rate they can obtain. And no one I have heard really objects to that. Davis is an attractive place to live and these homes will command considerably higher prices than the identical ones in Roseville or Elk Grove, say, mostly because of the desirable characteristics that Davis has compared to these other places. At least a part of this is the ability to live a (partly) non-car-centric lifestyle, which exists because the previous forty years of City Councils have insisted on good pedestrian and bike connectivity in the developments that have occurred.
Most of the discussion here regards the “buy low” (skimp on the product) half of the rule. My main contention is that it is misguided to 1) view the Council as subtracting from ConAgra’s profit by requiring good bike connectivity and 2) view it a loss for ConAgra to have to provide this. This is too simplistic.
Rather the Council is, or should be, setting the minimum standards for what the developer should supply based on community values. The developer should not determine this entirely based on what will make them the most profit. It is absolutely appropriate for an elected body to decide what kind of development (including the level of bicycle and pedestrian connectivity) the last large undeveloped tract in the city should have. And we shouldn’t apologize for that.
The requirements the Council sets change the intrinsic worth of the houses that ConAgra will build. The homebuilder doesn’t seem to understand this because they haven’t ever built a non-car-centric development.
[quote]Cannery homes, they argue, will “achieve 40% better than California 2008 Title 24 Energy Building Code, exceeding City of Davis requirement of 15% better than Title 24 for new construction.”[/quote]
Roughly half the energy required for us to live is the energy to cook, wash, light and heat our homes, etc. This is the Title 24 energy referred to above. But roughly the other half is energy expended in transportation. If 92% of these homes wind up using the automobile for their transportation mode, as much will be lost there as is gained in tight construction. It frankly doesn’t make sense to bend over backward to try to approach zero net energy in construction if you’re going to blow these savings burning lots of gasoline to get around.
[i]The requirements the Council sets change the intrinsic worth of the houses that ConAgra will build. The homebuilder doesn’t seem to understand this because they haven’t ever built a non-car-centric development.[/i]
Mont – I think you contradict yourself a bit here. If people pay more to live in Davis because it is less car-centric (and although I agree with this to some degree, I think it is less the attractive attribute for the majority of Davis residents than some would like to believe), then the developer would absolutely be motivated to add those features. The developer is advised by realtors that explain how attributes can be marketed and what the resulting impact would be to valuation of the homes and business property for sale.
My sense here is that there would not be enough ROI on a second grade crossing to justify the additional expense. And it is not just $2.5MM, it is $2.5MM on top of all the other demands being made by the city, and the federal and state construction code requirements and other regulations that add $XXXXXXXXX dollars to the cost of the project.
What we have is a piling on. And at some point that last feature will be the straw that broke the back of the financial feasibility of the project.
I think we need a reality check here. How many Davis residents living in peripheral neighborhoods use their car on a regular basis even having multiple bike access points? I very much doubt that having a second grade crossing is going to change that ratio for the Cannery. You are basically demanding the developer spend another $2.5MM only for biker convenience. That irritates me significantly because many of the people demanding this convenience are the same that would block adding retail and parking that would improve shopper convenience.
So, in the end this second grade crossing is just a bit of special interest candy. One group’s self interest for convenience over all the rest.
“My sense here is that there would not be enough ROI on a second grade crossing to justify the additional expense. “
Even if this is true, I don’t believe it’s justification for not doing it.
“How many Davis residents living in peripheral neighborhoods use their car on a regular basis even having multiple bike access points? “
Speaking for myself, I’m much more likely to decide to ride my bike if access is good. I think MANY more people would allow their kids to ride to school if safe bike access were available.
If the kids coming from WildHorse to Birch Lane had a bike tunnel, it would ease a lot of the traffic congestion on Covell in the morning and afternoon. Not to mention the kids going to Harper. Now that I’m thinking about I really wish the city had pushed for this when WildHorse was being developed.
“So, in the end this second grade crossing is just a bit of special interest candy. One group’s self interest for convenience over all the rest.
If by “convenience” you mean safer and more accessible bike access. And they not arguing just for themselves, come on Frankly, think of the children;-).
Frankly, you are missing the point.
It isn’t convenience we are after, it is safety. As a student of the past ten years of citywide accident data I can state with assurance that in all the millions of miles bike riders, joggers, and pedestrians log in this city each year, I am not aware of a single fatality that has occurred in or on one of our car-free tunnels or bridges. And injuries on those facilities are miniscule. Tunnels and bridges are a proven way to get people across busy streets with no risk of getting smacked by a car.
So how about this: We let the developer off the hook on the bicycle facilities. Instead we place a rigid requirement that residents of Cannery Park may only drive vehicles without crush zones, seatbelts, collapsing steering columns, or air bags, AND that the dashboards of their specially-built automobiles must be covered with sharp points. That should have them driving very slowly and carefully as they endanger the cyclists and pedestrians that were forced onto the streets to compete with their two-ton sleds by bad development connectivity. This development should have the same transportation features that have been provided in new developments in Davis for decades.
Finally, Davis has the highest bicycle travel rate in the country by far, and more bikes than residents. Trying to label Everyman cyclists a fringe group by accusing us of wanting “special interest candy” is pretty lame.
“Come on Joe and Brett: put it on the ballot. “
why not just have them vote no?
“My sense here is that there would not be enough ROI on a second grade crossing to justify the additional expense. And it is not just $2.5MM, it is $2.5MM on top of all the other demands being made by the city, and the federal and state construction code requirements and other regulations that add $XXXXXXXXX dollars to the cost of the project.
What we have is a piling on. And at some point that last feature will be the straw that broke the back of the financial feasibility of the project.”
conagra loses this one because in part the $2 million and in part because they won’t get a third vote without it.
[quote]Cannery homes, they argue, will “achieve 40% better than California 2008 Title 24 Energy Building Code, exceeding City of Davis requirement of 15% better than Title 24 for new construction.”[/quote]
That’s based on 2008. How does it compare to the new standards set to be implemented in 2014?
So setting aside for the moment the bicycle safety issue, I have still been trying to find the answer to the
community safety issue. The update with regard to the issue of the contents of the north -south bound rail cars is, I don’t know. A perusal of the EIR did not reveal any answers. Maybe someone happens to know the answer. Alan, do you know ?