ARC Project Recommended Sustainability Features
December 08, 2019
Recommended Project Alternatives for the Supplemental Environmental Impact ReportThe following comments were submitted to the City by The Aggie Research Center Working Group, an ad hoc committee of interested Davis environmentalists with experience in evaluating land use and planning issues in Davis, on December 7. The Group has collaboratively developed this set of recommended sustainability features for the project and submitted them to the developer in November, 2019. With his knowledge, these recommendations are now formally submitted as scoping comments to the supplemental EIR for the purposes of evaluating desirable sustainability alternatives for the project
Others who wish to submit their own written scoping comments can do so via the City of Davis Community Development and Sustainability Department, 23 Russell Boulevard, Suite 2 Davis, CA 95616 Attn: Sherri Metzker, Principal Planner or via electronic mail to smetzker@cityofdavis.org up until Monday, December 9, 2019 at 5:00 PM.
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I. SUSTAINABILITY PLAN
Functional Goal: Develop and implement a comprehensive Sustainability Plan and ensure sustainability commitments made in the Plan are embodied in the subsequent Development Agreement and implemented and maintained for life of project.
- Mandatory, measurable and enforceable.
- Equivalent in scope and detail to Nishi.
II. TRAFFIC REDUCTION/MITIGATION
Functional Goal: Provide incentive to shift modes to Bicycling, Public Transit, or 4+ car pool to reduce vehicle miles traveled (VMT), project total carbon footprint, and adverse level of service (LOS) traffic impacts on Mace Blvd Covell Blvd and I-80.
- Install traffic counters to measure in and out traffic to development.
- Tie phases in project build out to construction of improvements in transit and road improvements.
Phase 1 – i) Implement bus rapid (BRT) transit strategies on Mace/Covell for freeway access. Fund study and implementation of bus signal preemption system, ii) Investigate installation of rush-hour bus and HOV lane on the frontage road north of 80 to bypass on-ramp/off-ramp, iii) Implement on-demand electric transit to UCD and scheduled electric transit to Amtrak.
Phase 2 – Installation of bus/4+ HOV lanes on I-80 east and west of causeway.
Phase 3 – Causeway expansion by bus/4+ HOV lane east and west. - Transit stops located throughout complex to ease pedestrian access.
- Implement a Transportation Demand Management Plan with measurable results to quantitatively shift away from Single Occupancy Vehicle (SOV) use.
III. HOUSING
Functional Goal: a) Provide workforce housing to address increased housing demand due to job creation, and b) Reduce VMT and adverse rush hour LOS traffic impacts.
- All housing is high-density workforce housing / No single-family standalone homes.
- Require employer master leasing or ownership of housing units and require employment for residency. Suggest look at Stanford University land ownership model, company town models, Google and Facebook ownership/master leasing of apartments in Bay Area.
- Phase housing construction to project’s commercial build out.
IV. ENERGY EFFICIENCY AND USAGE
Functional Goal: Reduce energy use to minimize project net carbon footprint.
- All electric building construction, gas allowed only for manufacturing processes
- Zero net energy for building envelope and space conditioning and lighting with onsite PV and storage.
- All structures designed for microgrid implementation with required conduits and wiring.
V. WATER CONSERVATION AND LANDSCAPING
Functional Goal: Reduce demand on groundwater and potable water.
- All gray water reused onsite.
- All landscaping adapted for climate change, drought resistant, pollinator friendly, and maintained organically.
- All onsite storm water retained onsite using bioswales and other methods (not applicable to offsite storm flow onto the property).
VI. PARKING AND STREETS
Functional Goals: Encourage use of public transit, electric vehicles, and bicycling Provide convenient electric charging station to encourage electric vehicle use. Reduce run-off and heat island effect of parking lot. Reduce visual, aesthetic, and quality of life impacts of working/living near parking lot.
- Transit access given priorities over auto parking.
- Only high occupancy vehicle (HOV) and electric vehicle (EV) parking allowed adjacent to buildings with EV charging stations pre-installed (exceptions for handicap parking).
- All more remote parking for single occupancy vehicles (SOV) is prewired to later install charging stations. Have plan to phase-in installation of more EV charging stations as EV charging demand grows.
- All housing has one Level 2 EV charger and prewired for 2nd charger per unit
- Paid parking for non-electric SOV for commercial parking. No discounts for monthly parking vs daily parking to encourage occasional bus use.
- Enforceable landscape and PV shading plan to provide 80% shading of walkways and Class I bike paths and 50% parking lot shading in 15 years or imposition of penalties.
- All parking surfaces utilizing tree shading use structured soil or suspended substrate to allow successful tree root development. Size pavement treatment area to match trees' intended ultimate tree size.
- All streets and parking utilize permeable pavement.
It's conceptually-inefficient to separate "Traffic" from "Parking" in this context, but anyway...
Parking:
All very nice mitigations but how many parking stalls? Why do you use the silly term "paid parking" and not e.g. "additional fees to user for temporary vehicle storage"? The Davis Central Parking Lot - "E St. Plaza" - is consistently very full, which begs the question: What kind of "paid" should be implemented? $5 a day? $10 a day? Perhaps - for employees - it should be tied to pay? Every employee pays a percentage of their salary, taken out of their paycheck for days they drive... more fair, but what percentage? Employers will end up compensating for this, and will do the same indirectly if they know employees just pay cash.
Are you in principle not against the thousands of stalls intended to be built at the site?
Posted by: Todd Edelman | December 08, 2019 at 01:55 PM