Campus planners have removed all proposed student housing from Russell Field, in the latest draft of the 2017 Long-Range Development Plan.

Assistant Vice Chancellor Bob Segar, in charge of Campus Planning and Environmental Stewardship, will provide an informational update to the Davis City Council tonight (Dec. 6) with the new proposal, which is reflected in changes made to the Campus Tomorrow website (you may need to refresh the webpage). Ultimately, the UC Board of Regents will consider the LRDP for approval.

The City Council meeting is scheduled to begin at 6:30 p.m. in the Community Chamber at City Hall, 23 Russell Blvd.

In the spring of 2015, the campus released a preliminary planning scenario that called for the housing of 1,000 students on Russell Field, on the campus’s north edge. After community feedback and further study, the campus in September of this year came out with a draft planning scenario calling for only 400 students in the Russell Field neighborhood: in buildings that would take up part of the field and part of Parking Lot 14, and some of the space in a multistory building that would replace the single-story Cowell Building (the old Cowell Student Hospital).

To compensate for the reduction in Russell Field’s student housing capacity, campus planners transferred 600 units to the Solano Park neighborhood in the fall revision.

Now, in the LRDP’s latest iteration, the campus leaves Russell Field (and Howard Field) intact, while still planning for 50 beds in the Cowell replacement building and allocating the last 350 beds (the ones that were supposed to go on Russell Field) as follows:

• 150 beds would be placed within the campus core — as the campus tries a new strategy of integrating student housing into new buildings.
• 200 beds would be incorporated into Tercero 5, a single building adjacent to a second dining commons under design for the Tercero neighborhood.

Thus, the plan accommodates all 1,000 units originally assigned to Russell Field — and sticks with the campus’s original goal of having enough student housing to accommodate 90 percent of enrollment growth and 40 percent of overall student enrollment.

When compared to 2014-15, the plan provides capacity to accommodate an additional 6,200 students, as well as an additional 475 faculty and staff in campus housing.

The LRDP update now moves into environmental review, with an open-house-style “scoping” session scheduled from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 25, in Ballroom A at the Conference Center.

Under the LRDP timeline, the draft LRDP and draft environmental impact report will be published in the fall of 2017, for public review, and the final documents will go to the UC Board of Regents in early 2018. If adopted, the LRDP would replace the LRDP dated 2003.

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