| Fall’s here. Time for college students to quit planking and hit the books. That includes UC Davis, where the first phase of a $280M mixed-use student housing complex just opened. West Village claims to be the largest zero net energy development in the US. |
| The development, on 130-acres of university land, is a partnership between UC Davis and a JV of San Francisco-based Carmel Partners and Denver-based Urban Villages. We spoke recently with Carmel Partners SVP of development Nolan Zail, who tells us the final student housing building opens next week. (The next phase consists of single-family homes for faculty and staff.) Infrastructure broke ground in summer 2008. According to Nolan, the zero net energy initiative evolved as the master developers were working with the university’s energy efficiency research centers on ways to reduce the energy load. “We looked at the potential to be zero net energy and set that goal for ourselves.” |
| The student apartments, designed by Oakland-based MVE Institutional, consist of 22 buildings—six four-story mixed-use structures with ground-floor commercial uses and 16 three-story walk-ups. Nolan says environmental responsiveness for student housing will continue: “The expectation of students in terms of the quality of their housing is trending up.” Carmel Partners hopes West Village is a replicable model attractive to other universities and public entities that need to create quality housing with an environmental sensibility. |
| SWA Group's John Wong, design principal for West Village, talked up the project’s sustainability and comprehensiveness when we chatted yesterday. Often they’re working in existing neighborhoods, which has many constraints, but West Village is a new community in an area on the west side of Highway 113 (south of Russell Boulevard): “The book is wide open.” The firm looked at the overall master plan concept—site plan layout, orientation, collaborating with architects on various building design—and integrated the landscaping with West Village’s open space and recreation system, creating pedestrian connections to foster a sense of community. “We’re combining all the techniques and all the available technologies that we know of and applying that to one overall concept.” |
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