UCI Unveils 15-Year Plan for Research Park, Homes
UC Irvine officials unveiled a 15-year blueprint for growth Wednesday that includes development of a long-awaited research park and an urban community with retail and housing development that still would preserve nearly a third of the campus’ 1,510 acres for woods and recreation.
The research park, which is expected to be a magnet for biomedical firms and other high-technology companies that would work cooperatively with the public university, is the most innovative and potentially controversial element of the plan for the still-growing 25-year-old university.
UCI Chancellor Jack W. Peltason has referred to the planned research park as the path of the future for research-oriented universities such as UCI. Situated in the heart of Orange County’s growing high-tech corridor, some have predicted the university park could spur development on the scale of Stanford’s Silicon Valley or the Research Triangle near Duke University in North Carolina.
Officials of Orange County technology firms, which have increasingly been interested in access to the university, said such a research park would increase the stature of UCI and Orange County businesses as centers for scientific advancement.
“This can create an immediate knowledge transfer,” Gregory Ross, a senior partner in the Orange County office of the accounting firm Arthur Young & Co, said of the planned research park.
“Instead of building in the Irvine Spectrum several miles away, a company can now be in walking distance of university researchers, labs and advanced-level students,” said Ross, who has tracked the progress of Orange County’s technology industry for 8 years.
“The university can take its theories and patents and translate them into viable products,” Ross said. He said the university will be able to obtain lab space and equipment in exchange for land it cannot use.
The planned construction of the San Joaquin Hills Transportation Corridor, which is to skirt the southwest perimeter of the campus, will make the proposed biomedical research park highly accessible and, it is anticipated, even more attractive to prospective firms. The corridor will have an interchange at Bison Road, which leads directly to the health sciences complex and proposed research park, and is expected to become the primary entrance to the UCI campus.
UCI’s Long Range Development Plan, which will be the subject of public hearings in Irvine and Newport Beach and will be presented to the UC Board of Regents in September, scales back more aggressive growth plans of 1963 and 1970, when it was anticipated that students would number nearly 30,000 by 1990, instead of the current 14,500. Present projections are for 26,500 graduate and undergraduate students at UCI by 2005.
Because Orange County and the surrounding communities of Irvine and Newport Beach would have anticipated greater university expansion based on the previous plans, no significant community opposition is anticipated, said Ray Catalano, assistant executive vice chancellor.
“No plan has no enemies,” said Catalano, a former Irvine councilman who maintains close ties to city government, “but we believe our neighbors will be pleased with this plan.”
Irvine Mayor Larry Agran said he sees great potential for community benefit from UCI’s projected growth and the planned research park.
“I assume it is going to be an extraordinarily sophisticated level of research, and we all understand that there is a synergism created by research at the university on the one hand, and its application in the private sector,” Agran said. “It can be a real benefit to the community, and I’m hopeful that the plan meets our concerns with regard to traffic generation and other environmental effects.”
Bill Speros, an Irvine slow-growth advocate, said he and other residents are not opposed to the plan because “it puts most of the traffic on the MacArthur Boulevard (southern) side of the campus, away from current residential areas.”
Speros, who noted that UCI still will have a lower population than UCLA and will be spread out over more acreage, added, “I think most of us realize that UCI is an asset to the whole state,” he said.
Ken Delino, executive assistant to Newport Beach City Manager Robert L. Wynn, said he had not seen the campus growth plan and is “not in a position to comment on it.” Other city officials were not immediately available for comment.
While university officials intend to hold public hearings on the proposed long-range development plan, the cities have no veto powers. One hearing is planned for the city of Irvine, although no date has been set. A second hearing may be conducted in Newport Beach. The development plan will be available for public inspection starting Friday at the university library and at libraries in Irvine and Newport Beach.
The new development plan, in the works since 1985, was completed after pacts were reached last summer with the city of Irvine to limit university-generated traffic, and with the Irvine Co. to remove a 25-year-old deed restriction that would allow construction of 2 million square feet of commercial buildings on UCI land.
The proposal also includes the first concrete steps toward something university and community officials have only dreamed about until now: a full-fledged biomedical and high-tech research park.
Two parcels totaling 235 acres have been set aside for private research buildings, to be built by research firms and then leased back to the firms. Based on the model of UCI’s first such venture, the Nelson Research & Development Co. center built in 1983, the park would offer lease income, space and materials for research by UCI students and professors, and an enhanced potential to win multimillion-dollar research grants.
Catalano said Wednesday that high-tech and medical research firms already in Orange County will do more to foster Silicon Valley-style growth here than UCI’s relatively small research parcels. Still, UCI is likely to be a magnet for biomedical research firms that want to tap into university brainpower, he said.
UCI has tried for several years to increase its role in the high-tech community. Earlier this year, in its most ambitious attempt to attract private business interests, university officials met with executives from local biomedical firms and presented more than a dozen technologies being developed by UCI researchers that could benefit from corporate involvement.
Some executives have said the absence of a research park has kept the university from being as involved as it would like.
Robert P. Kelley Jr., president of the Southern California Technology Executives Network, said that UC San Diego has taken the lead in the UC system in its involvement with the business community, but UCI has the potential to catch up.
“In San Diego, businesses think of UC San Diego as an immediate resource. In Orange County, that has been emerging lately,” Kelley said.
And with the availability of land on and near campus for such expansion, Kelley said, UCI has the potential to take the lead among universities in the UC system in its involvement with technology firms.
But some caution that there are drawbacks to corporate involvement with a university, which operates more slowly than a rapidly developing firm. And Kelley said some in the university might oppose the partnership approach, out of fear that corporate development could compromise academic independence.
“You’re not going to find a lot of cheering and shouts of joy in some parts of the campus,” he predicted.
Part of the long-range plan calls for more faculty and student housing on campus, as well as a so-called “Main Street” complex of retail shops and offices along Pereira Drive.
With UC Irvine’s population projected to nearly double by 2005, traffic generated by the university is a concern of county and local officials alike.
“We know there are some pretty ambitious expansion plans that UCI has,” said Ernie Schneider, director of the county’s Environmental Management Agency. “Our concern would be how that would impact the region’s circulation system. Traffic is terrible there (around the university) and UCI is a very big draw.”
UCI officials have already signed a memorandum of understanding with the city of Irvine that future growth would not generate more than 146,000 average daily trips, up from the current 40,000 average daily trips to and from the university. And while that is far below earlier growth estimates of 240,000 average daily trips generated by the university, it is enough to have a significant impact on traffic in the area.
“In and of itself, that is enough to handle three lanes (of traffic) on a freeway,” Schneider said of the 146,000 figure.
Times Staff writers Jeffrey A. Perlman and John Charles Tighe also contributed to this story.
UCI POPULATION
The newest UCI long-range development plan calls for more modest growth than the 1970 plan (27,500 students by 1990). However, UCI anticipates more than a fivefold increase in staff for its Health Sciences Complex by 2005.
1987-88 Horizon Year Actual 2005-2006 STUDENTS General Campus Undergraduate 11,994 20,000 Graduate 1,548 5,000 Subtotal 13,542 25,000 Health Sciences Complex Graduate/Postgraduate 1,040 1,050 Total students 14,582 26,050 FACULTY AND STAFF General Campus Faculty 550 1,200 Non-research staff 581 883 Research staff 230 453 Administrative staff 1,338 2,048 Subtotal 2,699 4,584 Health Sciences Complex Faculty 125 350 Non-research staff 374 700 Research staff 124 350 (Clinical staff) 0 2,000 Subtotal 623 3,400 Subtotal faculty & staff 3,332 7,984 Total UCI population 17,904 34,034
Source: UC Irvine
