On Monday, the Vanguard noted concerns of the Old North Davis Neighborhood Association (ONDNA) about the proposed construction of a new modular building that would be installed on a downtown site, with the parcels being merged into a single lot. The current configuration has a garage structure on the site that is used as a clothing closet, and a manufactured building that has been on the site for over twenty years, which serves as the food closet.
STEAC (Short Term Emergency Aid Committee) provides immediate short-term assistance with basic necessities to Yolo County families and individuals whose income falls below the poverty level. That assistance may include help with rent, utilities, furniture, clothing, food and other basic necessities.
Currently, they have facilities that are located in Davis at 504 Fifth and 512 Fifth, and these sites are owned by the city.
A March 15 letter from Davis Downtown Executive Director Stewart Savage, sent to Mayor Joe Krovoza and the city council, urges “the City Council and Staff to support the efforts of the Short Term Emergency Aid Committee (STEAC) to upgrade their facilities located at 508 5th Street.”
They argue, “The upgrades would allow STEAC to better fulfill its mission of providing food and clothing services to those in need by including on-site restroom facilities and laundry room.”
“The current facility is in a location where clients are able to access needed resources via bicycle, public transportation, or car pooling,” Mr. Savage writes. “The upgrades would provide an opportunity for aesthetic and architectural improvements to a highly visible property along one of our major thoroughfares and ultimately an investment in our community.”
“STEAC has been providing emergency aid to our community from the 5th Street location for close to 30 years and is intricately woven into the fabric that brings our community together,” Mr. Savage continues. “STEAC works closely with the Davis Farmers Market, Village Harvest, and other downtown community organizations enabling them to serve 3500 clients and provide 57,000 meals per year to people in need. STEAC is a shining example of an organization that serves thousands of people each year on a shoestring budget.”
STEAC is proposing construction of a new modular building to be installed on the site, and the merging of the parcels into a single lot.
As stated, the current configuration has a garage structure, used as a clothing closet, and a manufactured building structure, used as the food closet.
STEAC proposes to remove these existing structures and replace them with a new, custom built, manufactured building. The new structure would be engineered for food storage with refrigerators, would provide additional space for clothes storage, and would include a washer and dryer, and a bathroom for volunteers.
The existing house on the property will remain and will continue to be used by the cold weather shelter. The project would also include new landscaping in front of the new modular along D Street.
In the process of doing so, STEAC is proposing to remove one existing oak tree, one walnut tree, and four palm trees in order to accommodate the modular building.
Residents in Old North Davis, the neighborhood bordering the proposed site on its north, object to the plan.
In February, Steve Tracy, President of Old North Davis Neighborhood Association, wrote a letter noting that the residents have been placed “in a very awkward situation.”
“Many residents of Old North Davis have supported STEAC with our personal time, or donations of money or goods,” Mr. Tracy writes. “But we are bewildered that a good organization so dedicated to community service would attempt to do something so damaging to the surrounding neighborhood.”
“Residents of Old North Davis are appalled at the proposal by STEAC to build a massive storage shed at the corner of Fifth and D streets,” he writes. “This will be blight at first sight on a very prominent corner in a corridor soon to receive a makeover costing well over $1 million.”
Andrea Montalbano noted, “I have great compassion for the mission of STEAC. I understand the difficulty nonprofit organizations have raising funds to provide their necessary facilities.”
However, she said that she was the architect of the largest homeless shelter in Alameda County, Crossroads, “One of the most important design elements of Crossroads was respect for the surrounding neighborhood. In order to ensure that the neighbors were respected, we held neighborhood meetings to listen to their concerns and adjusted the design accordingly.”
She continues, “We worked hard to find funding for the use of high-quality materials and did everything we could to ensure that the building was in harmony with its surroundings by designing thoughtfully. The resulting project had a positive effect on the community.”
“Unfortunately, STEAC has done none of these things,” she argues. “The building as proposed is badly sited on the lot. It uses the cheapest, lowest-quality materials possible. It has a very negative impact on its next-door neighbor. It disregards completely the design guidelines required by the zoning code. It will be an eyesore and will degrade not just its neighborhood but the entire city, as it will be prominent and visible from one of the most traveled streets in Davis.”
Stewart Savage, however, in his letter argues, “Pushing STEAC to the outskirts of our community would negatively impact their continued success in serving the many vulnerable members of our community.”
“Downtown Davis is about more than just businesses and commerce. It is about creating a rich and vibrant social community where people from all walks of life can connect and share in opportunities in which all are able to prosper,” the letter continues. “We are home to many non-profit organizations that serve residents who have met with some misfortune or are otherwise in need. STEAC is exactly the type of organization which needs our ongoing support.”
—David M. Greenwald reporting
About 10 years ago while working for the state we obtained a modular of this size for temporary offices. It was basically partitioned off into offices, had a bathroom, the basic utilities, and that was about it. The terms of the lease/purchase were such that it cost $40,000/yr to lease it and after 3 years the state owned the double wide trailer at a cost of $120,000 (leaking roof included).
The city owns the land and no one including the city is saying this will be a temporary location. I think the North Davis Assoc is not even really objecting to the location. I believe there is already a landscape architect volunteering their time and expertise to landscape the place, and I think Andrea would be willing to volunteer her architectural services. I am certain in Davis there are 100’s of trades and other people who would jump at the opportunity to volunteer time/materials/$$. I would guess that for less than the cost of a couple of modulars, we could design and build a structure that would not only better serve the needs of STEAC, but also help make the community more aware and supportive of the services that STEAC provides.
The only question the CC should be asking at this time–the question they should ask of the STEAC leadership and that that leadership should be ready to answer–is, “What will be the impact on STEAC’s clients if we do not approve this project?”
Another way to frame the question would be: “Can you deliver the same level of services without any additional hardship to clients if the services currently provided at the 5th and D location are offered elsewhere in the city?”
This is the key “end” we should all be considering before questions of architecture or neighborhood “fit” are discussed. If the service provider believes that [i]not[/i] providing services in this location will hurt those it serves then the CC and the community should work together with STEAC to find a way to allow them to stay at the present location.
Many Davisites may not understand that over the past several years due to state and county budget cuts and the independent effects of a poor economy on vulnerable people, it is the non-profit sector of Yolo County and within the City of Davis that has stood in the breach–whether we are talking about the Food Bank, DCM or STEAC (or others). These organizations work with small budgets and thanks to many volunteers who offer time to meet the needs of those living on precarious situations. We should be doing what we can to enable their work not hinder it.
Full disclosure: I staff DCM’s H Street transitional housing shelter two overnights per week. My views here do NOT represent the views of DCM however. In addition, I stand to gain nothing by whatever decision is made related to STEAC. I am merely trying to help us think about the key ends upon which we should be focusing in this matter.
In thinking about the challenges for mixed-use (residential/commercial) zoning, I think residents need a reality check for what that means. Commercial enterprises will need commercial facilities. They cannot all be designed to have zero impacts to those hypersensitive to things that don’t meet some high standard of residential village bliss.
If the residents of D Street cannot accept reasonable changes to those properties that are commercial in nature, they should move away to somewhere not zoned for mixed use. There are plenty of areas in town that are ONLY residential and the neighbors are all busy-bodies making sure no neighbor changes anything beyond their narrow scope of what they deem acceptable.
The City sponsored a ‘toy closet’ in City Hall… yet, in the proximity of the City Hall, the DJUSD offices, County services, two churches, the main “fire dept”, we can’t accommodate an expansion of the food/closet, on a route that is served by two public transit lines (YoloBus and Unitrans), which will soon be served by bike lanes (courtesy of Mr Tracy and the HO group he represents)?
STEAC activities do not primarily serves the “homeless”… their primary mission is to serve those who have had “emergencies” [of varying durations], which more typically are families ‘on the edge’. That is not to deny that some clients are in fact “homeless”. Yet, the services provided are NOT provided locally (certainly not the City, unless you need to ‘borrow’ toys) elsewhere.
The current location is appropriate. Proposed upgrades to appearance of the structure are appropriate. Proposed landscape upgrades to ‘screen’ the improvements are appropriate. The size proposed by STEAC (downsized by political considerations by City staff?) is appropriate.
I hope that the appeal by OND is rejected. I hope that the appeal by STEAC is upheld.
Thanks for these points hpierce–I think Ryan Kelly has made similar ones in another thread on this topic (who exactly is served by STEAC). In comments I made before the CC a few weeks ago I highlighted the transportation issue (access to bus lines). In my comments above this would represent one potential hardship for some clients. While some (a majority perhaps) of STEAC clients have cars, some rely on bike or public transit to obtain services. Both inter- and intra-city bus lines serve this location with stops at the corner of 5th and D.
Has the city asked what the urban forest manager thinks about removing the trees?
“If the residents of D Street cannot accept reasonable changes”
who decides what’s reasonable?
“Has the city asked what the urban forest manager thinks about removing the trees? “
of what relevance is that?
[quote]“Has the city asked what the urban forest manager thinks about removing the trees? ”
of what relevance is that?[/quote]
Well the city has an urban forest manager. The urban forest manager gets a salary of up to 94,000 a year. If the plan calls for cutting down part of the urban forest I think the urban forest manager should be consulted.
i don’t think five trees on a lot constitutes cutting down part of the urban forest.
Actually, it does. [url]http://www.davisenterprise.com/local-news/city/local-property-manager-illegally-cuts-down-city-trees-gets-slammed-with-heavy-fine/[/url]
“Three city-owned trees near the turnaround on the far eastern point of Olive Drive were illegally cut down over the spring, prompting the city to drop a hefty fine on the property management company that ordered the removals.
The city fined Select Commercial Brokers, the company responsible for the work, $12,000 for chopping down two Chinese hackberries — one completely and one partially — and one coast live oak.
The city estimated the trees were worth about $40,000.
The fine covers the cost of planting 98 new trees to replace the total inches of diameter of the three removed trees.”
[i]who decides what’s reasonable?[/i]
Reasonable people.
Do you have any reasonable doubt that this is a defendable legal term?
Definition:
[quote]A standard for what is fair and appropriate under usual and ordinary circumstances; that which is according to reason; the way a rational and just person would have acted.[/quote]
The owner of a property does not have to get approval to cut down a tree unless it is a City street tree, but there is a permit process, I believe. In the case cited above, someone who was not the owner of the property cut down trees without the knowledge or permission of the owner. In the case of STEAC, they are asking the owner of the property for permission to remove 3 palm trees. The City arborist is involved in the permit process for tree removal.
STEAC is acting responsibly and following all the rules.