UCSC Will Hold Third Community Meeting On Plans For Long Marine Laboratory On October 4

SANTA CRUZ, CA–The University of California, Santa Cruz, will hold a public workshop on Wednesday, October 4, to discuss progress toward developing a master plan for Long Marine Laboratory and the adjacent 55-acre property purchased last year from Wells Fargo Bank. The meeting will take place from 7 to 9 p.m.in the conference room of the Seymour Center at Long Marine Laboratory (100 Shaffer Road, Santa Cruz).

Anyone interested in this topic is urged to attend the workshop and provide input, share information, or ask questions.

"The purpose of the workshop is twofold: We want to discuss the latest ideas our consultants have developed for the marine site, and we want to continue to receive public input about those ideas," said Charles Eadie, UCSC’s director of campus and community planning. "While this is still verymuch an informal phase in the project, we are discussing a number of alternative ideas for the site, so it’s very useful to receive input from the public as we refine those concepts."

A UCSC planning committee, which includes representatives of the city of Santa Cruz and staff from the California Coastal Commission, has been working since last fall to develop plans for the Long Marine Lab site, including the 55 acres acquired by UCSC in spring 1999.

In December, the committee adopted a set of planning principles for developing the site as a marine research and education center. These principles were first presented to the public at an open house last December and published in a document entitled Planning Principles: Marine Research and Education Center.

The university has hired a consulting team–EHDD Architecture, a San Francisco firm that developed the original Long Marine Lab Master Plan over 20 years ago and also designed the Monterey Bay Aquarium; and BMS Planning Consultants, also from San Francisco–to prepare a master plan for the site. This past spring, the consultants and the planning committee met with interested parties in a series of focus-group workshops. Environmental groups, agricultural interests, and the Terrace Point Action Network were among the participants in the focus groups.

At the second public meeting, held this past June, the consultants and the planning committee presented the input they had received from the focus groups and unveiled six different schematics, showing how the site might be developed as a marine research and education center.

Since then, the consultants have prepared several more detailed refinements of planning alternatives for the site. The schematics offer different ways to incorporate research and educational facilities on the site. They also consider various approaches to preserving open space on the site while providing housing that would support the needs of the marine programs there.

Following the October 4 community workshop, it is expected that the consultants will continue to refine a schematic for the site. Ultimately, the preferred plan will serve as the basis for the Coastal Long-Range Development Plan–and accompanying Environmental Impact Report–that the university will prepare for consideration by the UC Regents and the California Coastal Commission, probably sometime next year, Eadie said.