 Back in the Davis Media Access Studio for another episode of The City Considerers, I'm Autumn Labé-Renaud and this month, February 2018, we are talking about the Downtown Plan Advisory Committee and my guests today are Rob Davis, who's the mayor of our Fairburg and Meg Arnold, who is serving as chair of the Downtown Plan Advisory Committee. Welcome to you both. Good to be here. Thank you. So this process that you're undertaking is going to span roughly two years and attempt to project out a couple of decades, no small feat. I'm really interested to learn more about what the process is and sort of what's driving it. And I believe, let's start with you, Rob, because I believe it came from part of the Council's resolutions or goals moving forward. Yeah. I mean, actually three years ago, Council started talking to staff about the need to update our broader city general plan. And nested within that was the idea of the core area itself, the downtown. And staff recommended that we begin the process of updating our entire general plan with a revisioning of our downtown. Since that's the area where most change is likely throughout the city, there was a desire to understand how to achieve prior core area goals such as having more people live downtown, how to deal with retail and the Amazonization age that we're in. And so we decided at that point to focus our initial efforts on a visioning process for the core area of the downtown. The fact is that everything about business and how we move through the city and how the city itself is built, everything has changed since the major planning affecting the downtown was enacted all those years ago. Yes. Well, and right. If you look back at the prior plans, even way back is there was a real desire to see more people not just coming into the downtown, but making the downtown their home, recognizing that that's critical for vitality. We're not getting there. And so the question is, how do we take a comprehensive look at retail, at living, at all the elements that come around people being in that space 24 hours a day, security, all of those things in a comprehensive way so that we can plan moving forward about how to achieve the things that we've said we wanted to achieve for a fairly long time. So we have the need for that kind of information driving it. How is this going to play out? What have you taken on, Meg? Well, actually it's a fabulous process and it's a great challenge. And it's a really important one for the future of the city and the future of the type of community that we decide that we want to be collectively. So the downtown plan advisory committee that I chair is a fairly large group of about 19 individuals, some of whom were appointed representing specific other organizations in our city and some of whom were appointed at large. I was one of the at-large appointees directly by council. And we're embarking on a two-year, roughly two-year, 18-month to two-year process that will include an enormous amount of opportunity for public input and public comment. Obviously, as with any public process and particularly in a community like Davis, a really critical part of the outcomes that we're going to drive to and really inform them. The city also has engaged a number of consultants who are helping to manage, helping staff to manage the overall process and helping to make sure that the committee and the public input opportunities are as informed by data as possible. And these are not just process people. These are some of the leading experts in their fields of parking, downtown design, sustainability. I mean, we've got an amazing consulting team that's coming to work with our local group. I noticed how specific their expertise is. Yes, very, yeah. There's parking and there's transportation and their different experts. Historic structures, sustainability, water use, I mean, all of that, yeah. So this process, all the ways that people will have to kind of feed into it. Let's talk about some of those. Why don't you tell us, tell everyone what a charrette is? Sure. Because there's going to be a couple of those. There will be a couple of sustained charrette opportunities. So a charrette is a common practice word for essentially a public workshop, workshop with significant opportunity for public input and frankly, formed around the goal of significant public input. And there will be at least two series, two opportunities for a couple of days at a time, actually I think four days at a time, at two separate opportunities for a sustained public charrette process. The first of these will be in late March. The second of these will be further on into the process. So in addition to the charrettes, all of the meetings of the downtown plan advisory committee are public meetings. And so there's opportunity at each of those for public input and discussion. And as well, through the city's downtown plan website, there's an opportunity to sign up for regular updates on where the process is and in particular what public input opportunities are coming up. Let's give that URL now and we'll give it again at the end. But cityofdavis.org forward slash downtown plan. Exactly. I'll get you there. Yeah. Okay. So you had a public workshop on last Thursday. Yeah, just about a week ago. Any early takeaways, anything you can share from that? Well, Rob mentioned in his comments a minute ago the appreciation for the long-term impact of these plans. And in fact, one of the consultants in his remarks to the committee and to the public who were there was about the 1961 plan. And some of the impacts that we still see today on downtown from that plan, which happened many, many years ago, possibly even before I was born. And so I think it was very sobering to the folks in the committee. What I took from that was very sobering. Not just that we're planning for this 20 year looking forward period, which is daunting enough. But that what we as a city end up deciding as part of this process could stretch with impacts far beyond that 20 year period. And another one of my own personal big takeaways from the session last week and some of the materials that have been made available is just the magnitude of changes in society and the way society is working or is going to be working in the future. You mentioned the Amazon, I can't say it that way. Amazonization. Amazonization. Of retail. Of retail. And so you look at what's happening to retail, not just in our downtown, but nationally, and then you think as well on a completely slightly, completely different realm about personal transportation and public transportation and the likelihood of autonomous vehicles. And what that means for parking and the demand for parking. Not in the next five to seven years perhaps, but certainly in the later years of this 20 year planning period. And so looking into the future at any point in time is really hard. But looking into the future in this particular set of years, I think- With so much change on the horizon. Carries a lot of challenges. Yeah, I agree with that. And that can be daunting, right? Because how do we plan for the short to medium term, given what we know is coming later? But I think what we're trying to do is set a table, right? That's flexible enough, but really does drive towards the goals. I think one of the things that really grabs me about this process that I think may be different than other ones that we've had is that we're taking a much harder look at the economics of the downtown. The city had the redevelopment agency for almost a generation, and it's gone now. So the incentives that could come from the resources that generated are gone. At the same time, we recognize one of the key messages is we have a lot of small plots in the downtown. And we have a lot of areas that are difficult to imagine how to redevelop in the dense way that we think is necessary to bring people down there. This process will bring expertise to the table to talk about, really, what's it going to take to get there? And I know there's skepticism. Even some of the members of the committee are saying, how do we get there in an economic and financial sense? We have to take a hard look at that, because we can aspire to a lot of things, but it's got to be grounded in the reality of what's possible for investors and for people that are going to be willing to take the risks to drive the change based on their ownership of property or their desire to redevelop it. How will the university feed into this process, too? Do they have a stakeholder seat on this? Yes, we have a university representation. Because obviously the UC Davis students represent a large portion of the number of people who use the downtown and even who would maybe be inclined to live there. And when you talk about densification, I assume you're talking about work, living space, retail below. Yeah, multi, let's call it mixed use, not necessarily all work, live work, which we have in the Chen building. I'm not so sure I agree that the students will be there. I think the demographic that's primed to move into the downtown is my generation. It's people who are empty nesters and who are looking to downsize and want that walkability, bikeability in a confined space close to transit, close to long distance transportation, which we have the train. I hear over and over, these are the people who want to live there. There is simply no supply. And so I think around the periphery we'll continue to have students. And certainly there's a stake that the university has. But I think the people that are going to populate massively the downtown over the next 30 years are people who can live in smaller spaces. And yet, quite frankly, afford something that is probably going to be priced at a premium. Because this is very, I mean, it's a very limited space. And there's only so high that we're gonna be able to go even if we talk about densification. One of my takeaways from reading through the materials for this is that this is not a little tweak here or there. This is pretty much a wholesale revisioning of how we utilize our downtown and how it can work for us. I think it could end up as a wholesale revisioning. I think the scope is there to have it become that. If that's what we hear through the process would be appropriate. I don't think it's necessarily a foregone conclusion. No, but the potential for it is there. But the opportunity is there to consider something as broad as that. So for anyone watching, their way to have their impact on that is to participate in one of these planning processes. Well, the nice thing about the planning processes and why I hope people will participate is there will be people there with reality checks. I mean, these experts have seen a lot. They've been to a lot of communities. They understand that while Davis is special, Davis is not unique. And so they're able to kind of ground the conversation in reality while giving people the opportunity to think big and to dream a little bit. But they're solid in their experience and being able to say, let's think about the potential there. And that's what I'm really excited about is that we've really multiplied the level and depth of expertise that we have to help ground the conversation in what's real in a short and longer term. And benefit from what other communities have done, learn from them. And that I'm really excited about. And I hope people will come because they'll get solid answer to their questions. They'll get good feedback on their ideas. And it'll really help the committee to digest and propose to the council a way forward. So in terms of the next times to plug in, you mentioned one in March coming up. And the week before Davis Joint Unified spring break. Well, let's all pack it in at once. Well, at least it's not the week of. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Which also happens to be the week before UC Davis spring break. Yes. Which is useful because students will still be around and in town. And to your point about UC Davis involvement, we do have a representative on the committee. But it would be wonderful to see greater UC Davis student involvement in the rest of the public process as well. Right, because it's not just the living downtown. It's sort of how they, the coffee shops, how they commute downtown, where they park, do they ride bikes, all of that, where they eat. Is there food available at 2 AM? Nothing that came out is the arrangement of public spaces. Interestingly, we view our downtown as having that large green park. But there's opportunity for more green spaces in the downtown. There is the transit hub. We want to create a greater sense of a true hub for transit. Well, that's going to bring many more people in and through the downtown, including students. So I'm not sure how we reach them and encourage them to participate, but they're clearly important stakeholders. And it was even remarked at the public meeting that on the committee itself, there aren't any students, which is not unusual for Davis. Stepping up and volunteering, it's a big commitment. But we really want, and there were students at the workshop, and we hope that there will be more. And the good news is there are a couple of professors who are on the committee who can encourage students to come as well. Great. What else would you like to know? We're down to about our last minute. What else would you like the viewers to know right now? I think we could maybe repeat the URL for the website. Okay, that was cityofdavis.org forward slash downtown plan. And again, we've been talking about the downtown plan advisory committee and the work that's going to unfold over the next 18 months to two years, taking a look at our downtown and the many ways in which it's used and serves our community. I want to thank our mayor, Rob Davis, for coming back. I think this is your third time on The City Considerers. We're always happy to have you and Meg. Thanks for doing your first gig here. Good to be here. All right, thanks for tuning in. You've been watching The City Considerers here on Davis Media Access. Catch it online at dctv.davismedia.org. And it'll air Tuesdays at 6.15 on Channel 15, Comcast Davis. Thanks.