A proposed 351-acre scientific research park and residential community won its first approvals from Woodland’s City Council.
At its meeting Tuesday, the council agreed unanimously to a laundry list of approvals that included having the land annexed into the city from Yolo County as well as certifying an environmental document and adopting a specific plan for the project with 2.2 million square feet of commercial and office buildings.
The project will come back to the council Sept. 19 potentially for final approval, to create an office and research park for ag-tech, food technology and food companies, which already surround Woodland.
Developers have tried for years to put this kind of development in Davis, home to the University of California Davis, but Davis residents tend to oppose development and traffic generators.
Woodland residents at the public hearing generally supported the proposal, although there were some concerns about water runoff during flood years.
The city hopes to capture employment opportunities related to ag-tech and food technology careers with the new office park, said City Manager Ken Hiatt. The office park is expected to eventually create some 7,000 jobs.
Yolo County is a global hub of agricultural research and seed and crop development due largely to the research and scientific legacy of UC Davis attracting domestic and international companies to open labs there. The Sacramento region has more than 100 seed companies, according to Seed Central, an initiative of SeedQuest and the Seed Biotechnology Center at UC Davis.
Public financing will fund $255 million in infrastructure and development costs, which will eventually be paid by tenants and owners in the plan area. The plans call for 155 acres of residential development that would include about 1,600 homes. The homes would be next to the neighboring Spring Lakes subdivision, which is mostly residential. The research and office buildings of the park would face Highway 113, the main road between Woodland and Davis.
The Woodland Research & Technology Park was first proposed in 2017. The land, currently in agricultural production, is at the south end of Woodland, surrounded by the city on its north and east. The project will also partially pay for a freeway offramp and overcrossing of Highway 113 south of the current city limits.
The city hopes to get the annexation application to the Yolo Local Agency Formation Commission by the end of the year to move the land from Yolo County into Woodland’s city limits. The project got unanimous approval from the Woodland Planning Commission last month.
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.
At the meeting Tuesday, the City Council certified the environmental report for the project, amended the city’s 2035 general plan, adopted the park’s specific plan, adopted prezoning for the park for annexation by the city from the county, initiated annexation of the property, approved a public infrastructure financing plan and approved a development agreement with five landowners of what is currently ag land.
