The Woodland Research & Technology Park is scheduled for a series of public meetings that could see the long-planned, 351-acre scientific research park and residential community get a laundry list of approvals.
The project has interest from both commercial and residential developers, said John Hodgson, president of The Hodgson Co., the lead developer on the park.
He said he can't disclose the interested parties until it gets approved. “Once we get it approved, we will be able to make some announcements, but we’re not there yet.”
Anticipated to include 2.2 million square feet of commercial, office and retail buildings, the park would eventually create some 7,000 jobs, and have up to 155 acres of residential space that would include about 1,600 homes. The research park is anticipated to get tenants including ag-tech and food science companies interested in proximity to the University of California Davis and more than 100 ag research companies in the area.
The Woodland Planning Commission will conduct a hearing on the plans at a public meeting Aug. 17, and then the plans are scheduled to go to the Woodland City Council for its first hearing Sept. 5 and tentatively Sept. 19 for a second hearing.
Those meetings will cover the research park’s specific plan, financing plan, land use plan and final draft environmental impact report, among other elements.
If it gets all its approvals from the city, the project would then go through the Yolo Local Agency Formation Commission process to have Woodland annex the land from Yolo County into Woodland’s city limits. The property, which is now in agricultural production for row crops, has been in Woodland’s sphere of influence for more than 20 years under Yolo County’s general plan, Hodgson said. The general plan anticipated a business park on this property.
The city hopes to get its application to LAFCO by the end of the year, said Spencer Bowen, spokesman for the city of Woodland.
The Woodland Research & Technology Park was first proposed in 2017.
The land is at south end of Woodland and it is surrounded by the city on its north and east.
The Woodland Research & Technology Park is 7 miles north of UC Davis in a straight shot up Highway 113. A growing number of agricultural technology companies and seed companies have come to the area in recent years to be close to the UC Davis, one of the top agricultural universities in the world. Davis is home to a lot of startups, but if they grow, they typically can’t find office or lab space in Davis, which is generally averse to growth and development.
Woodland has utilities, like water, sewer and electricity, that go up to the property, but building out the infrastructure onto the property with those utilities plus roads is anticipated to cost more than $100 million, Hodgson said.
Once approved, it could take a year or two to build out infrastructure, Bowen said. The project has an anticipated build-out of 15 years.
The research park will be the largest mixed-use specific plan ever to go before the city for approval. The last specific plan approval in Woodland came in 2021, which was for the mostly residential 1,100-acre Spring Lake Specific Plan, which is just east of the research park. Spring Lake is mostly housing, schools and parks, with a total of just 11 acres of office, commercial and retail uses.
The large research park office buildings will be buffered from the new neighborhoods by a greenbelt, then public retail areas and then by apartments and condominiums, Hodgson said. The residential neighboring Spring Lake residents would get residential properties as new neighbors.
