Family at Orchard Park

Stage 2 RFP Orchard Park Redevelopment Project Summary

Project Summary – Orchard Park Redevelopment

 

PROJECT GOALS

UC Davis is seeking a Developer to redevelop Orchard Park to provide affordable housing for UC Davis students with families, married students or students with registered domestic partners, and single graduate students. UC Davis’ goals for the Orchard Park Project are to maximize affordability, to enhance the quality of resident life, and to provide for exceptional facility design and operations. The Project must be available for occupancy by August 2020.

Affordability

  • The selected Developer will be required to provide at least 200 two-bedroom apartments (400 beds) for UC Davis students with families at a starting rent of $1,000 per unit in 2017 dollars. The campus seeks to limit the annual rent escalations on these affordable units to the lesser of: (i) CPI; or (ii) 2%.

  • The selected Developer may also build a target of 700 beds for single graduate students. The target of 700 beds is not a maximum; proposals with additional beds in excess of 700 beds will be viewed positively, as long as goals for affordability and quality of place are balanced with the higher density. The exact number of beds, apartment unit mix, number, height and massing of buildings, common amenities, parking provisions, and all other design matters will be determined by a collaborative site planning design process beginning with this second phase of the RFP process. These units should be designed to maximize affordability and density while balancing the overall quality of place. The starting rent for these units will be the market rate (as of 2020) for comparable units in the Davis market (to be identified in the ground lease). Annual rent escalations on these market rate units will be the lesser of: (i) CPI; or (ii) 3%.

  • The selected Developer will be asked to eliminate security deposits or to allow for security deposits to be paid in installments over time to assist with affordability.

Quality of Resident Life

  • The selected Developer will be asked to develop a long-term property management plan to provide best-in-class property management.

  • The ground lease will provide for an annual evaluation of property management services by UC Davis Student Housing and Dining Services and UC Davis Real Estate Services using agreed-upon performance metrics.

  • The selected Developer will be asked to work closely with UC Davis Student Housing and Dining Services to develop a resident program to provide support to the graduate students and students with families who live at Orchard Park.

Facility Design and Operations

  • The selected Developer will be required to develop a site plan that maximizes density on the site. Family units should be located on the first and/or second floors, if possible, with easy access to the outdoors and neighborhood open space.

  • The Project should be designed to preserve all existing heritage oak trees at Orchard Park. (See, Appendix 10.)

  • The Project should include open spaces with recreational amenities for children and adults throughout the site and a large common green space.

  • The Project should include a community building, which includes program space for students with families, as well as, single graduate students.

  • The Project does not impose a building height restriction. Exceeding the target of 1,100 beds is encouraged, if financially feasible.

  • The Project should incorporate low-impact design features to treat storm water run-off from the site consistent with the UC Davis storm water specifications. Please note: storm water treatment swales and basins must not significantly alter grades near heritage oak trees. The Campus will provide an updated storm water study during Stage 2 of the RFP as an addendum.

  • The Developer should present the most cost effective laundry strategy – whether in unit or common laundry facilities.

  • The Project should be designed as a bicycle-oriented development:

    • The Project should be designed to give primacy to the bicycle. To that end, in the entry sequence, the bicycle and associated bicycle parking should indicate where the front door is located, not the vehicle;

    • The Project should create two major bicycle pathways and connect the separated bicycle pathways at the northwest and southwest corners of the site to the bicycle pathways on the eastern edge of the site;

    • The Project should be designed to avoid and minimize bicycle and vehicular conflicts throughout the project area;

    • The Project should incorporate secure and convenient bicycle parking (at least one bike parking spot per bed); and

    • The Project should consider building designs that work well with bicycles and incorporate design features like cargo elevators and bicycle work stations to reinforce the bicycle as the primary mode of travel.

  • The Project should locate vehicular access to the site as indicated on the attached Site Diagram:

    • A loop road may not prove to be necessary;

    • Emergency vehicle access should not default to roadway design, but rather lead to bicycle streets and pedestrian promenades; and

    • Depending on the results of the traffic study to be undertaken as part of the project EIR, traffic mitigation measures may require improvements to the adjacent off-site intersections, depending upon the number of on-site parking spaces and common modes of travel.

  • Each family unit should be provided with one on-site parking space conveniently located near the family housing area.

  • On average, approximately 95% of students who live on campus bike, bus, or walk as their primary mode of travel. Accordingly, on-site parking for the single graduate students should be minimized to the extent possible and aggregated into one location. The University will work collaboratively with the selected Developer to minimize on-site parking by developing a remote parking solution, allowing additional on-site acreage to be dedicated to student housing, beyond the targets listed for the Project. Specifically, the area shown in the attached Site Diagram as “student housing parking” may serve as an additional site for housing if the on-site parking is minimized.

PROJECT SITE

The Orchard Park Project site consists of approximately 19 acres located at the northwest corner of the UC Davis core campus. The Project site is bounded by Russell Boulevard to the north, Orchard Park Drive to the east, Orchard Park Circle to the south, and Highway 113 to the west. Properties adjoining the Project site are the Russell Park student housing project to the east and the Baggins End Innovative Housing Project (also known as the Domes) to the south.

The Project site is presently improved with the Orchard Park apartment complex, comprised of 200 two-bedroom apartments in 22 two-story buildings originally constructed in 1963. The complex has been vacant since 2014. UC Davis will demolish the complex during the fall of 2017 and will deliver a vacant site to the selected Developer.

One of the opportunities and constraints of the Project site is a large number of heritage cork oak trees. A complete tree inventory can be found in the attached Appendix 10. UC Davis’ goal is to preserve all heritage oak trees. The design team for the selected Developer should plan for the preservation of these trees in the site plan for the Project. The demolition Project will remove all non-heritage trees to provide greater design flexibility.

Another constraint of the Project site is presence of Naturally Occurring Asbestos (“NOA”). A soils report performed by Geocon for the demolition project can be found in the attached Appendix 17. The Campus will work with the selected Developer to develop a strategy to address the NOA on the site. During this Stage 2 RFP, Proposers should include a budget number of $500,000 for the mitigation of the NOA on the Project site. This is a rough order of magnitude budget number. The actual cost of the necessary mitigation will be developed during the Exclusive Negotiations with the selected Developer.

All utilities are available to the site with main distribution lines existing in Russell Boulevard and Orchard Park Drive. UC Davis staff believes that utility capacities are adequate to serve the Project; however, the Developer will be expected to confirm the adequacy of utilities and will be responsible for all utility costs/fees as a cost to the Project, including any connection fees for campus utilities. Electricity and gas will likely be served by PG&E from the north end of the Project site, while the wet utilities including domestic water, storm water, and sewer will be served by UC Davis campus infrastructure from the south end of the Project site.

At a minimum, UC Davis will require that the design of the Project meet the UC Sustainable Practices Policy (See, Appendix 2), and take into account the UC Carbon Neutrality Initiative (See, Appendix 3). Additional sustainable and environmentally-responsive elements such as aggressive energy efficiency measures and renewable energy are preferred and Developer teams will be given extra consideration for incorporating leading-edge sustainable design elements in their proposals.

The selected Developer will be required to comply with the provisions of law governing public works including, without limitation, Labor Code sections 1773, 1773.2, 1773.3, 1773.8, 1775 (payment of prevailing wages), 1776 (payroll records), and 1777.5 (employment of apprentices).

As the site is University-owned, the Project is not subject to the zoning and building ordinances of local jurisdictions, including building permits and inspections. Project approvals are summarized in Subsection D., below.