City of Davis

Sunday Monday Commentary: I want to be able to put my weight behind the parking proposal, but I can only put half of my weight behind it, because I do not believe it solves the entire parking problem.

Some people will say that parking is the biggest problem we have in our downtown, but, as someone who works every day in the downtown, I don’t agree.  The biggest problem that we have in the downtown is that the streets are poorly set up to accommodate multi-modal forms of transportation.

The discussion over Mace 391 has much larger ramifications than simply what the city does on that site.  In a very real way, it frames the way the city handles land use policies going forward.

One of the key variables in the Mace 391 deal was the idea that the city would be able to develop a parcel of land, Mace 391, as a business park, while at the same time being able to secure other key areas of land such as the Shriner’s Property as a permanent easement.

At its December 3, 2013 meeting, the Davis City Council will hold a workshop on the Downtown Parking Management Plan.  Staff will then return in February or so to seek council direction on formal action.

In October 2012, the council appointed a Downtown Parking Task Force to “identify issues and solutions for addressing downtown parking issues including identifying short-, mid-, and long-term actions to address parking management and supply.”

There is no getting around the fact that the process involved in the original discussion on Mace 391 in June was less than ideal.  There is plenty of blame to go around for that debacle, and I think, or at least hope, that those involved learned critical lessons to prevent future such debacles.

The shame here is that we could not have had a discussion on the merits in June, when going forward with an alternative path might have been seen as viable.

Meeting Punctuated by Verbal Jousts between Assembly Seat Rivals: The meeting ended late Tuesday night – or early in the morning depending on your perspective.  In the end, it was a split decision with Mayor Joe Krovoza wanting additional assurances on the connectivity aspect of the project, while Brett Lee felt, in the end, that the project did not offer enough in moderately-priced homes and zero net energy.

The question is now whether this will go to a vote.  The Vanguard immediately reached out to one potential source for such an effort, Mike Hart.  Mr. Hart, who is the CEO of Sierra Pacific and who spoke out against the project on Tuesday, indicated that they are currently looking into the costs associated with such an effort and the likelihood of success.

Monday night was the first in a series of 16 symposia to be held around the state and produced by the Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development (GO-Biz) (www.business.ca.gov), the University of California and SARTA (Sacramento Area Regional Technology Alliance) (www.sarta.org), which is one of the 16 California Innovation Hubs (iHubs) (http://business.ca.gov/Programs/Innovation.aspx).

The UC Innovation Series was conceived by several of the leadership of GO-Biz almost a year ago, most notably Louis Stewart, GO-Biz Deputy Director for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. For the Davis Edition, he was assisted by UC Davis representatives, most notably Dean Steven Currall from the UC Davis Graduate School of Management and Marjorie Dickinson, Assistant Vice Chancellor for Government and Community Relations, as well as Meg Arnold, SARTA CEO. AS with all of these types of collaborations, there were many other from GO-Biz, UC Davis and SARTA that helped to make the event possible and demonstrates the partnership that exists in this region.