UCI Plan to Develop Real Estate Outlined

UC Irvine’s chancellor Thursday outlined a plan to develop 113 acres of prime campus real estate with homes, businesses and research buildings to make money that will be used to attract distinguished scholars.

The plan, presented at a meeting of the University of California Board of Regents at UCLA, calls for the first private development ever on any of UC’s nine university campuses.

This first stage of development--which will eventually include about a third of UCI’s 1,500 acres--would be an “urban village” of 325,000 square feet of commercial office buildings; an equal amount of research and development space and 300 units of housing at the northern end of campus. The parcel for the entire project is bordered by Jamboree Road and the Irvine Business Complex, about a mile from John Wayne Airport.

The project’s aim, Chancellor Jack Peltason said, is to generate money so UCI can attract and keep top scholars in its Bren Fellowship Program, and to support research.

“We don’t know precisely how much money” the north campus project will generate for the university, Peltason said in an interview. “We would hope at least $2 million a year.”

What types of buildings would be included would be determined by demands of the marketplace, he added. But the housing--whether apartments for rent or single-family homes for purchase--would comply with the city’s program for low-cost housing, he said.

Peltason told regents that the Irvine City Council--which does not have jurisdiction over the project but was consulted--passed a resolution in support of the north campus development after the city and UCI established traffic and environmental impact planning measures.

While saying Thursday that the project bears scrutiny, Irvine Mayor Larry Agran added that the plan is promising.

“Some campuses and city governments are at war,” Agran said.

“We’re not at a state of war.”

The project would also be next to the university’s arboretum and San Joaquin Marsh, a freshwater wildlife preserve, but both would be protected from intrusive development with buffer zones, Peltason said.

Goran Matijasevic, a member of the Marshians for a Greener Earth, a support group for the San Joaquin Marsh, said Thursday: “We’re concerned with any development. . . . The question is, are they going to make sure there’s enough of a buffer zone?”

The overall development plan, approved in concept by the regents in September, allows a relatively cash-poor campus to use what Peltason called UCI’s “greatest endowment: its valuable acreage.”

While it is a first for the UC system, private universities have been very successful with such joint ventures, Peltason said, noting that such projects at Stanford University in Palo Alto led to the development of the high-technology industry in Silicon Valley.

Under a 1988 agreement with the Irvine Co., the university can develop up to 2 million square feet of space for private use on 510 acres of land it bought from the developer in 1964. The deal lifted deed restrictions that barred for-profit development and came as Irvine Co. Chairman Donald L. Bren donated $2.5 million to establish the fellowship.

UCI retained the Irvine Co. in October, 1989, to come up with a conceptual study of the development area, along with Leason Pomeroy Associates, the consulting campus architect.

UCI professor Francisco Ayala, an evolutionary biologist, and F. Sherwood Rowland, the UCI professor who with a graduate student first postulated the depletion of the ozone layer in the 1970s, are the first two Bren Fellows.

UCI spokeswoman Linda Granell said that even with private development of a third of the campus, the university would have room to grow. She noted that UCLA has just 411 acres and about 36,000 students, while UCI, with about 16,000 students, would still have 1,000 acres for the university.

More steps remain in the planning process before development can begin, including deciding how to pay for the projects and establishing design standards. Once those issues have been resolved, Peltason told the regents, he will return with actual development contracts for their review.

Danica Kirka contributed to this story.