Council approves community benefits agreement for Aggie Square as group announces it will drop lawsuit

The Community Benefits Partnership Agreement for Aggie Square is announced in a March 25 press conference.

Innovation district result of five years of work by Mayor, Chancellor and Councilmembers

Sacramento (April 6, 2021) Mayor Darrell Steinberg and members of the group Sacramento Investment Without Displacement Tuesday announced that the group would drop its CEQA lawsuit challenging the UC Davis Aggie Square innovation district planned to break ground later this year next to Oak Park.

The announcement of the agreement came shortly before the Sacramento City Council voted 7-2 to approve a groundbreaking agreement for Aggie Square that will bring more affordable housing, jobs and other benefits to Oak Park and other neighborhoods surrounding the UC Davis Sacramento campus.

In the hours preceding the vote, Mayor Steinberg, Vice Mayor Jay Schenirer and Eric Guerra — assisted by the City’s legal staff — negotiated with SIWD on ways to increase the reporting and accountability on Aggie Square and also to pursue an additional City ordinance to require such community benefit agreements going forward on projects involving significant City investment. The ordinance will come back to the City Council for a vote.

“We are tonight moving from the posture as litigants to partners,” said Mayor Steinberg.

Gabby Trejo, president of Sacramento Investment Without Displacement, said the Community Benefits Partnership Agreement for Aggie Square would serve as a model to the state and country. “Moving forward, we are saying, ‘Our families matter,’” she said.  

Crafted by UC Davis Chancellor Gary May, Mayor Steinberg and Councilmembers Schenirer and Guerra over the past few months, the agreement between the City, UC Davis and Wexford Science & Technology includes a minimum of  $50 million for affordable housing along the Stockton Boulevard corridor. It also commits Wexford to the goal of filling at least 20 percent of the 3,600 permanent jobs at Aggie Square with local residents and providing training for those jobs. It also commits to improving biking, walking and transit access around the UC Davis Sacramento campus on Stockton Boulevard. 

Beyond these commitments, an ongoing Aggie Square community fund will be used for neighborhood priorities that residents will help decide.

Scheduled to break ground in late 2021, Aggie Square will replace a surface parking lot on the UC Davis Sacramento campus with four buildings containing 1.2 million square feet of space, including research labs leased to the university and private firms; a building dedicated to lifelong learning and training programs for the entire community; and a public plaza.

“If you’re a new startup, there will be leasable space where you can grow your business and stay in Sacramento,” said Aggie Square Planning Director Bob Seger..

The development, where researchers are expected to do cutting-edge work in the fields of life science, technology and healthy communities, represents the largest potential infusion of well-paying jobs the city has seen in recent history and will be a catalyst for Sacramento’s post-COVID economic recovery. Click here to watch a video about Aggie Square featuring Chancellor May and Mayor Steinberg. 

An analysis by Economic Planning Systems found it would contribute $5 billion annually to the regional economy and result in the creation of 25,000 ongoing jobs.

“UC Davis is finally coming across the river in the way we have imagined,” Mayor Steinberg said. He noted that he started pitching the idea to May as soon as he was announced as the new UC Davis chancellor in 2017. That same year, Mayor Steinberg traveled to Atlanta to learn about a similar development, Technology Square, that May had overseen as Engineering Dean of Georgia Tech.

On Tuesday, Chancellor May said the CBPA “delivers on our commitment to ensure that neighborhoods are considered, that local residents are included in the success story that will be Aggie Square.”

The billion-dollar project is being built by Wexford Science & Technology, a leading developer of university-based innovation districts in such cities as Philadelphia and St. Louis, in partnership with UC Davis.

The Community Benefits Partnership Agreement was approved Tuesday along with the creation of an an Enhanced Infrastructure Financing District for Aggie Square. The EIFD will allow the City’s portion of the increased property taxes created by the development of Aggie Square to pay for up to $30 million of infrastructure – a modest contribution for a long-term investment by UC Davis and Wexford expected to total more than $1 billion. Twenty percent of the funds generated through the EIFD will be dedicated to building affordable housing in the surrounding neighborhood.

$50 million for affordable housing

One of the agreement’s major provisions is the commitment of more than $50 million to build affordable housing along the Stockton Boulevard corridor and to stabilize existing residential areas with such programs as down payment assistance and help with repairs. The fund will be comprised of at least $16 million present value ($29 million over 45 years) in property taxes from the EIFD, $29 million from the City of Sacramento and $5 million from a fundraising partnership of the City and UC Davis for anti-displacement programs in the adjacent neighborhoods.

UC Davis has also committed to building at least 200 beds of student housing as part of the Aggie Square project, with the primary goal of addressing the housing needs of undergraduates and graduate students and easing the demand for off-campus housing.

Thousands of jobs

Job creation, job training and access to jobs for local residents is a major focus of the Community Benefits Partnership Agreement. For the first 10 years, UC Davis and Wexford have committed to filling 20 percent of the anticipated 3,500-5,000 ongoing new jobs at Aggie Square with nearby residents and members of disadvantaged groups. After 10 years of operations, the goal will rise to 25 percent of expected new jobs. To achieve this goal, UC Davis, Wexford and the City will partner with community-based organizations, industry, workforce development groups, organized labor, and community colleges to provide job training and a pathway for residents to access these job opportunities.

Progress will be tracked by a workforce metrics dashboard that will be made public and updated twice a year. The initial phase of Aggie Square will include a Lifelong Learning Building, which will serve as a focal point for the workforce training. A one-stop hiring solution will make it easier for local residents to identify and apply for jobs.

Separate from the Community Benefits Partnership Agreement, Wexford’s general contractor partner is completing an agreement with the Sacramento Sierra Building Trades Council to ensure that local residents, particularly those from adjacent ZIP codes, are hired to fill the potential 5,000 construction jobs needed to build Aggie Square.

Transportation

The City and UC Davis have an agreement to work together to improve mobility and connectivity between the surrounding neighborhood and the campus and to use a variety of incentives to reduce the number of people commuting to the campus in single-occupancy vehicles.

UC Davis will contribute up to $1.1 million, or 50 percent, of the cost of funding improvements to the intersection of Stockton Boulevard and Broadway as recommended in the City’s Stockton Boulevard Corridor Study. The university will conduct a study to create better connections with surrounding neighborhoods and grant the City easements to build bike lanes and off-street parking along Stockton Boulevard. Wexford will build a new parking structure to serve Aggie Square and reduce the demand for on-street parking.