West Village

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village-square.jpgphoto by Karin Higgins, UC Davis

UC Davis West Village is a new campus neighborhood located on UC Davis land adjacent to the core campus in Davis, California. It is a mixed-use community that will eventually include student housing, single family homes, retail, and recreation facilities as well as a community college center, the Sacramento City College Davis Center, which is part of the Los Rios Community College District. It is designed to enable faculty, staff and students to live near campus, take advantage of environmentally friendly transportation options, and participate fully in campus life. It is also the largest planned zero net energy community in the United States.

The development and implementation of UC Davis West Village is a collaboration between the university and a private developer, West Village Community Partnership LLC (WVCP), led by Carmel Partners of San Francisco with their joint venture partner Urban Villages of Denver, Colorado. The total Phase 1 cost is around $280 million, of which UC Davis invested approximately $17 million to bring utilities and infrastructure to the site. The university will recoup this investment through a surcharge placed on resident utility bills.

Students and staff began moving in to The Ramble and Viridian apartments in August 2011. Model single-family homes are scheduled to open in Spring 2012 and home sales will also begin in 2012.

September 2011 move-in dates were delayed and residents were compensated with stays at the Hilton, Visa gift cards or free TV's. Construction is still taking place as of 11/2/2011

Website: [WWW]http://westvillage.ucdavis.edu
Map location: [WWW]http://campusmap.ucdavis.edu/?l=811
Theory: [WWW]"Technological Optimism"

Please Note: The Ramble Apartments and The Viridian are not part of UC Davis Student Housing.

    1. Apartments
    2. Businesses
    3. Other Services
    4. History
    5. Media
    6. Photos

Apartments

The Ramble Apartments - Undergraduate Students
The Viridian - Graduate students, Faculty and Staff

Businesses

To be announced.

Other Services

Sacramento City College Davis Center

History

The West Village Master Plan was approved by the UC Regents in November, 2003. Land use map of Phase 1 can be viewed [WWW]here.

The West Davis Neighbors organization sued to stop the project. After the suit was dismissed the first time, the group appealed in 2005 with the same [WWW]result. Because of the Neighbors opposition, there is no direct connection with Russell Boulevard for the development, and it is much less likely for the new Westlake Market to have customers from there.

In November 2006, the Regents approved the business terms of the ground lease with West Village Community Partners and gave the go-ahead for the first phase of UC Davis' West Village to begin.

In August 2008, UC Davis and its development partner, West Village Community Partnership LLC (developers from San Francisco and Denver), signed the ground lease, clearing the way for the design and construction phase of West Village 1. In December, the 113 Orchard was cut down and large pipes were installed underground, presumably as infrastructure for the development.

Groundbreaking for the project took place in August, 2009, amid some [WWW]fanfare.

Media

Photos

village-square2.jpgVillage Square viewed from balcony of Viridian apartment, October 2011

apartment-interior.jpgInterior of Ramble apartment, October 2011. Photo courtesy of Carmel Partners, Inc.

westvillageround1.jpgRoundabout for West Village, November 2009, looking West on Hutchison westvillageround2.jpgRoundabout for West Village, November 2009, looking North from Hutchison

Comments:

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2005-07-05 02:09:14   This was the project that had somebody shoving somebody else at a public meeting at Emerson Junior High School. —NickSchmalenberger

2008-05-30 00:33:32   I can't seem to find a projected date of completion: does this mean that it's too early to tell, or is it just that they don't want anyone to know? —JoePomidor

2008-05-30 01:48:57   From a 12/19/2007 UC Davis News Service [WWW]article: "The university is proceeding with plans to build 343 single-family homes and town homes for faculty and staff, and apartment housing for up to 1,980 students in phase one of its West Village development. Groundbreaking for the site, which is west of Highway 113 between Hutchison Drive and Russell Boulevard, is planned for 2008, and the first occupancy could be in late 2009." That sounds extremely optimistic to me, but this is the most recent update I can find online.

2008-05-30 13:29:33   If this project is like any of the other University construction projects, it's about 2-3 years off on its completion date. —JamesSchwab

2009-08-06 21:27:54   From [WWW]http://westvillage.ucdavis.edu:

When will the new homes be finished?

Mr Schwab was right on it seems.

2009-08-06 21:35:43   If I had a decent camera I'd take some pictures of the construction. The roundabouts on Hutchinson are well under construction. Its worth a look for someone with a good camera and some free time. —ARWENNHOLD

2010-04-26 17:05:20   The roundabouts are now complete and most of the arterial streets are paved. Construction of real buildings can't be far off! —ARWENNHOLD

2010-10-02 20:19:13   Just curious to see if anyone has any new info to add. I haven't been around to see the progress since June but I imagine buildings are going up now. —ARWENNHOLD

2011-03-01 09:44:33   They are now advertising apartments through their leasing office downtown and on this website: [WWW]http://www.ucdaviswestvillage.com/ —IAmNewHere

2011-05-07 03:24:08   Rent ranges from 1840/month for 2br/2ba to 2970/month for 4br/4ba. Utilities + internet included, parking an extra $20/month per spot. —TimJ

2011-09-29 20:21:47   Ok so I live in West Village and I need to rant. It is great place to live and all but it all seems like a bit of green wash to me. If they wanted a sustainable community why didn't they look at Village Homes or the Domes for inspiration? The gardens are not very well thought out in terms of water usage and plant diversity. I appreciate that it is probably reclaimed water but that doesn't mean water plants with automatic sprinklers for several hours at a time and in the hottest part of the day (to the point where the grass areas are soggy to walk, and the paths get more water than the plants do). They have mulch in some areas around plants but then not in others, where it could definitely use it. I would have LOVED it if they planted some productive trees around the place and in fact I was thinking about doing some guerrilla gardening around the place - just some perennial herbs maybe. This is something that should've been factored into their ‘sustainable’ design concept to begin with. I understand that it is completely solar powered but why do ground lights around the trees need to be on 24 hours a day?
Also, when we moved in, they didn't provide recycling bins even though it seems to me that almost all of peoples waste when they are moving is cardboard boxes and other recyclables. They still haven't really provided recycling bins, someone just sticky taped some cardboard on the front of 2 bins that says "recycling", probably because of how much cardboard was being thrown in the 4 general waste bins they have provided. Just something that bothers me…
I would like to see composting as well if we are going to pretend to be sustainable, green and cutting edge. There is already a ton of infrastructure in Davis for it.
It just feels very corporate to me and I wish that maybe some of the environmental design departments or something at UC Davis had more involvement in the project.
There are a lot of positives about West Village. 24 hour gym and study area, a swimming pool, spa, sand volleyball court, game area, wireless internet. It’s expensive, but everything is included. The staff are super nice and helpful. The apartment is really nice but you can tell they rushed it a bit. There is still some construction going on and they start really early in the morning and sometimes work until super late at night. The apartment was dirty when I moved in, there are a few scratches on the floor, etc. as if the construction workers don’t have a clean up crew. I appreciate the effort and concept but it could be taken a few steps further. I don’t want to be too harsh on them because it is just getting off the ground and they are still getting organized but my hope is that they will start to take these things into consideration because they have a lot to live up to. I’ll certainly be doing my part to make them act more “sustainable”.

2011-10-02 23:20:59   Ok, so a little follow up. I noticed that some of the sprinklers around my apartment were on around 12pm today and wasn't so bothered by it until I went for a walk to the study/computer area at around 11pm (don't get me started with the people printing 100 pages at a time, leaving no ink or paper for anyone else) and the sprinklers were still on! The trees they were watering were flooded and much of the water was flowing into the gutter. I mentioned before that I'm sure much of it is reclaimed water but it is just unnecessary. I found the tap and turned it off anyway, which I've done before when water was flooding the carpark, and I'll continue to do it. I want to speak to the person responsible for the garden but haven't spotted them yet. Otherwise, I want to repeat that they are great apartments, I love living here and I'm at least glad that something like this is being built. Hopefully it becomes mainstream and it only gets better with time. —ConsciousConsumer

Did anyone go to the pep rally seriously? what a waste of rent money again! Everything was a disappointment. LIke only 20 people showed up and there was Gunrock shooting free West Village "Swag"/T-shirts into the grand stands. I saw everything- it was quite elaborate. They got food catered from the Davis Grad, cotton candy, popcorn, a jumping house, huge big balloons (those half dome thingys), grand stands, Gunrock, the UCD dance/cheer teams. Wow, they must have spent like $10,000 or more on the entire event. I saw ENTIRE boxes of foam fingers just sitting there, unused. Even the raffle tickets were elaborate. Not the ordinary roll chunk of raffle tickets. It was high quality full color glossy 4x4 index cards. It was quite ridiculous. Those cost like $1.50 to print each. And also not to mention all the Viridian key chains and pens they were giving out. I guess the Viridian isnt selling so well, with its $1800 rents and such. I don't know where the West Village team is getting these silly ideas...wow..why cant they put their energy into solving our internet and other miscellaneous problems, instead of planning these stupid parties that no one goes to. They also spent money on a full half page AD in The Aggie.

2012-01-05 22:44:18   Anybody else have outlets failing all over the place? I'm down 4 at last count... —ConsciousConsumer

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