The Trackside Debate Continues

On November 14, the council is expected to take up the issue of Trackside.  One question is whether by that point there will be an agreement between the residents and developers.  Late last year, the developers scaled down the project from six stories to four stories.  Meanwhile, the neighborhood association has come out with its own counter proposal for a three-story building.

In an ad running on Facebook, the neighbors opine:  “The Davis City Council could approve the four-story version of the Trackside Center project on Tuesday, Nov. 14. This building would be the largest mixed-use building in Davis, setting a precedent for future growth and it does not conform to any zoning or planning documents.”

The ad continues: “Old East Davis supports the development of a mixed-use building at the Trackside site with mass and scale conforming to Davis zoning and Design Guidelines.”

Instead of the developers’ proposal, the neighbors argue for what they call Trackside 3.0, which is “a proposal that balances the need for housing with the basic Davis values of sensible growth and the preservation of neighborhood character.”

The association’s proposal is “a three-story, mixed-use building based on the current design by the Trackside Partners — but scaled to fit within neighborhood Design Guidelines and city zoning.”

In the meantime, in an op-ed this weekend, Nicole Bourne, Dan Wolk and Dan Fuchs write, “We support the Trackside Center proposal because we think it strikes the proper balance between neighborhood interests and local and regional development goals.”

Here they argue: “While a smaller project will comply with the decade-old General Plan guidelines, the slightly larger project now before the City Council will better harmonize those guidelines
with the land-use policies forged by generations of Davisites that guide us today. Those policies (shown in the table below), including Davis’ commitment to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, provide the blueprint to achieve the goals that determine our land-use decisions.”

They note that, in the perfect world, all projects would meet the standards perfectly but, in reality, “we need to weigh all of these factors when making decisions that have long-term impacts on our community.

“By itself, Trackside won’t solve all of these challenges, and we understand the impacts it will have to neighboring Old East Davis,” they write. “But decisions like these set the tone for how Davis will grow and whether such growth is in line with our values. And we think it’s an important litmus test on whether the city actually wants to meet the goals laid out.”

The authors continue, arguing that that Trackside is a great example of how “strategic densification can help the city grow more sustainably. This kind of strategic densification can help Davis be the more walkable, livable and vibrant community we want.”

For them, building more density near the core, with transit and parks along with grocery stores and shops nearby, enables the economy to thrive, and allows people to walk and bike rather than drive.

The result, they say, is that residents will drive less, reducing congestion and transportation costs.

“[A]s density increases, the city can spend less per capita on road and utility infrastructure,” the three write.  They add, “Importantly, from an equity perspective, strategic infill development like Trackside can increase our housing stock while improving accessibility to public facilities, especially for those who do not have cars.”

They also see this as an advantage from an environmental perspective.  Here they argue that higher density next to transit and amenities “means less car travel, cleaner air, lower greenhouse-gas emissions, lower building energy use, greater water conservation, and more rural and agricultural lands preserved. All of these things enrich our community — including the Old East Davis neighborhood — and balance the goals laid out by the city.

“Increasing the housing supply by building more densely also can bring down the cost of housing in Davis,” the authors claim. “This would be the right thing to do even if the new housing package passed by the California Legislature did not hold cities more accountable to meeting housing needs.”

They acknowledge that this will not solve the city’s housing problems by itself, but instead call it “an important step in a city where the rental vacancy rate stands at 0.2 percent.”

Like the neighbors, they see this as precedent setting, but in a positive way.

“The City Council can set the direction of future development in Davis with its decision on this proposal. We believe the current proposal best balances the neighborhood’s legitimate concerns with the larger needs of the city,” they write.  “A new generation of community leadership has the opportunity in Trackside to make a bold contribution to furthering our values; we hope they act.”

The neighbors believe the developers can do much of this and still comply with existing design guidelines.

They argue: “Responsible land use involves balancing the city’s need to grow with implicit contracts between the city and its citizens, which are embodied in zoning ordinances and land-use policies. The city’s goals can be achieved with a zoning-compliant building.”

The neighbors cite Planning Commissioner David Robertson, who on August 23 asked at the Trackside Center hearing, “If we’re not going to enforce the Design Guidelines, then why do we have them?”

For the neighbors, that is the key issue as they view the policies of the General Plan, Core Area Specific Plan and Design Guidelines as “statements of shared values and norms, produced with the input of planners, decision-makers and community stakeholders.”

—David M. Greenwald reporting