The University of California, Davis, has begun the next phase of preparation of a new Long Range Development Plan, inviting public comments on the scope of the environmental impact report that will be prepared for the plan.
In accordance with the California Environmental Quality Act, the university has released a formal “Notice of Preparation” of the EIR, and that notice is available for review online and on paper. Comments are welcome until Feb. 17, providing more than the 30-day minimum public review period. See below for more information on public review and comment.
In addition, UC Davis has scheduled an open house to address the EIR’s scope and content, from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 25, in Ballroom A at the UC Davis Conference Center (on Alumni Lane). Campus planners will be available to discuss the EIR process, and the university will accept written comments during the open house.
The updated Long Range Development Plan, or LRDP, will guide the campus through projected growth in the numbers of students, faculty and staff, allowing for expansion of existing programs and launch of new initiatives. To meet these goals, the plan will analyze an additional 2 million gross square feet of academic and administrative building space, in addition to expanding and redeveloping campus housing.
The draft plan identifies capacity to house more than 90 percent of the projected growth in student enrollment on campus. Based on previous experience, 90 percent of students live on campus or in the city of Davis, while others live elsewhere for various reasons. This projection is therefore intended to ensure that the campus has sufficient housing to accommodate all the additional students from enrollment growth who desire to live on campus.
The Davis City Council has formally requested that UC Davis study providing on-campus housing for an even greater percentage of students, in response to the challenge of a very low apartment vacancy rate in the city. While the Notice of Preparation marks the formal beginning of the environmental review process, UC Davis will continue to engage the city as a collaborative partner and will remain committed to continuing to examine opportunities for additional student housing capacity within the draft LRDP’s land-use plan.
UC Davis opened the LRDP planning process with the launch of the “Campus Tomorrow” website (campustomorrow.ucdavis.edu) in the fall of 2015, and since then has received extensive public comment. University planners have held open houses on campus and in the city of Davis, and UC Davis officials have met regularly with city staff, given informational presentations to the City Council and participated in City Council LRDP Subcommittee meetings.
After the scoping period for environmental review, UC Davis will begin working on the draft EIR. UC Davis anticipates releasing it this coming fall for a 45-day review period, for the general public and government agencies. The UC Board of Regents could consider the plan’s adoption in early 2018.
UC Davis is known globally and locally for its commitment to the environment, both through research and sustainable practices on campus. UC Davis recently earned the worldwide No. 1 designation in the University of Indonesia’s annual GreenMetric sustainability ranking, and has repeatedly placed among the top-10 universities in Sierra Magazine’s annual “Cool Schools” report on the nation’s greenest universities.
UC Davis West Village is the largest planned housing development in the nation with a goal of zero-net energy, and an on-campus solar farm is the largest of its kind on a U.S. campus, supplying about 14 percent of electricity needs for the Davis campus. Student-led programs such as the Student Farm and the Solar Decathlon competition are helping to bring forward a new generation of environmental pioneers.