Officials at the soon-to-open campus of the University of California here have an affectionate nickname for the odd-shaped site that is the first phase of their new campus. They call it “the amoeba.”
But while the site, on a former golf course, resembles the basic organism in shape, the political and financial machinations that led to its taking this form in this location were anything but basic.
Initially, leaders of the University of California system had chosen another location: a 2,000-acre site about two miles to the northeast, on a ridge with a view of the Sierra Nevada.
That site, in the northern sector of a ranch owned by the Virginia Smith Trust, was adjacent to a 3,000-acre ranch owned by the Cyril Smith Trust. The 2,000-acre location was attractive because it was big enough to ensure that the 10th campus of the University of California could avoid the space constraints faced by some of the system’s other campuses. And the availability of the surrounding property could allow for a related residential community, which would help provide housing for students and employees while generating income for the university and curtailing urban sprawl elsewhere.
The site, however, also happened to be smack in the heart of the state’s largest contiguous area of vernal pools -- wetlands that are not only one of the few breeding grounds of a rare crustacean known as the fairy shrimp but also home to 14 other endangered species. Environmentalists were outraged. Even biologists from other branches of the University of California system criticized the plan.
By 2000, when it had become clear that federal regulators would never approve such a vast development on the proposed site, university leaders changed course.
Using $5-million of a more than $11-million donation from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the university bought the 5,000 northernmost acres from the Virginia Smith Trust and agreed to protect that parcel from development. It also helped to arrange for development restrictions on the land owned by the Cyril Smith Trust and on other nearby properties, with financial help from the state. All told, about 25,000 acres were placed under development restrictions.
Those moves were not entirely altruistic. University and state officials reasoned that their actions in protecting thousands of acres of wetlands would be taken into account when they began the process of getting approval for the campus in the new location.
That new location is the remaining 2,000 acres in the southern portion of the Virginia Smith Trust, bordering the eastern edge of the county’s Lake Yosemite Park. The tract includes a golf course that the trust had built as a source of income to supplement money it earned from cattle-grazing fees. (The trust, established upon the 1968 death of Virginia Smith, a local landowner, provides scholarships for high-school graduates from the city of Merced. Typically it generates about $150,000 a year.)
Under the new plan, the 910 acres closest to the county park would be developed for a campus over the next 25 years. The 750 acres along the outer edge of the parcel would be left as a natural reserve, to be used by university researchers. Between those two areas, a candy-cane-shaped, 340-acre strip of property would be designated as “campus reserve” in the event that more than 910 acres were needed.
There was, however, still the matter of the “university community,” where officials envision as many as 33,000 people, many of them students and employees, living and shopping.
The Virginia Smith Trust would play a role there as well. Having lost out on an opportunity to develop its own property for a profit, officials of the trust were eager to find another source of income to finance the scholarships. (By the terms of Ms. Smith’s will, the trustees are the members of the Merced County School Board.) Under a prearranged deal, the trust took about $5-million of the payment it received from the university for the land and used it to acquire a 1,240-acre agricultural property, the Flying M Ranch, immediately to the south of the new campus. It then deeded that land to a new corporation, jointly owned by the trust and the University of California. (The trust used the other $6-million of the Packard donation to pay off the debt it had incurred to build the golf course.)
The university now plans to use about three-quarters of the Flying M Ranch and combine it with an adjacent 1,170-acre tract of privately owned farmland to create the residential community. It has engaged a private developer, the Lennar Corporation, to work on a master plan for that site.
“We essentially shifted the environmental impact from wetlands and endangered species to prime farmland,” says Ric Notini, director of environmental permitting for the university.
In December, Merced County approved the university’s request to use the two properties for the residential development, with specifics on numbers of homes, stores, and the like subject to further review. But environmentalists who oppose the plan have sued to have that ruling overturned. The university will also need approval from federal regulators before it can proceed with that development.
Mr. Notini says the university hopes to resolve the wetlands issues by mid-2006 so that development can get under way.
Smith Trust officials are also eager for approval to help meet what they expect to be increased demand for college scholarships fueled by the new university in Merced. Profits from the development of the southern portion of the property would go to the family that owns it, and profits from the northern portion to the new corporation.
“We’d like to make a great big pile of money,” says Terry Bates, director of the trust. “That’s how we’re going to keep our scholarship program growing and hopefully expand it.”
