The Record Article
University Park on the road to redevelopment

STOCKTON - Much of the 102.5-acre parcel that is University Park looks a mess - heavy equipment is roaring around, cutting up, moving or spreading the raw earth.

But it all looks like progress to those who have been watching the slow but sure redevelopment of the former state mental hospital site, which was turned over to the California State University system nine years ago for a metamorphosis into a Cal State Stanislaus satellite campus.

"It is absolutely remarkable all the changes that have taken place," said Dave Hamlett, director of CSU Stanislaus-Stockton Center. "We get comments from our students all the time." The property had served for 150 years as a state hospital for the developmentally disabled before being shuttered in the mid-1990s. CSU made a bid for the land, took possession in summer 1997 and launched classes soon after in a small core of buildings on the central part of the property.

The CSU operation takes up about 14 percent of the campus, with much of the rest devoted to eventual development of a mix of government, businesses, nonprofits and so on that can generate revenue for the school. And there were two major recent construction projects on the south end of the parcel:

• Stockton Unified School District just opened Richard Pittman Elementary School.
• A two-story, 63,000-square-foot office building was built last year for the Valley Mountain Regional Center, a nonprofit private corporation that provides and coordinates services for children and adults with developmental disabilities.

Invisible development
Mostly, though, it's what you don't see these days that makes the most striking difference more than five years after Stockton developer Fritz Grupe's company took over redevelopment of the site, dubbed University Park.

Although 18 of the original buildings - many of them historic ones with classic looks - were saved, gone are 38 institutional-looking buildings, mostly made of thick, concrete-and-steel construction worthy of war bunkers. "Those old buildings had the, you know, mental-hospital feel," Hamlett said.

The campus now has a lovely, open look, said Hamlett, who has worked there since December 2000. Plans call for quite a transition to new development within the next few years. Demolition vaporized about 480,000 square feet of, well, basically ugly space.

That will be replaced over the next few years, it is hoped, with about 500,000 square feet of office space, 50,000 to 70,000 square feet of small retail space (likely small businesses and eateries or coffee shops), and 180 condominiums or apartments. "It's the current plan, but it could change next month," said Dan Keyser, a Grupe Commercial Co. senior vice president overseeing the University Park redevelopment project.

Marketing is already in the works. Oh, and there will be an artificial lake, a longtime trademark of The Grupe Co., whose residential projects typically sport designer waterways to help add upscale flavor to developments.

Water feature
The lake, being carved out on the north end of the property, actually amounts to a big solution to a big problem that arose during development: how to handle storm-water drainage.

An artificial lake seemed a cheaper - and better-looking - solution than an ultraexpensive series of underground pipes to hold drain-off until it could be discharged into the city storm-water drainage system, Keyser said. "Aesthetically, it's a huge improvement," Keyser said.

Redevelopment also been a challenge because of an enormous amount of unknowns with an ancient property, he said. Crews found everything from underground tanks no one knew about to, earlier this year, the century-old bones of mental patients buried on the property. "It was never-ending," Keyser said. Still, he said, everything has been going well and according to plan.

One giant breath of relief is that a one-time $10 million state grant for the redevelopment appears to be ample for the renovation work, he said, adding that The Grupe Co. has invested its own money in the development as well.

Redevelopment work has included landscaping, new lighting, signage and wrought-iron perimeter fencing, as well as decommissioning an ancient central steam-heat plant and replacing that with heating and air-conditioning systems for each major usable building.

Recycling center
The redevelopment also has entailed much recycling. The building demolitions alone yielded more than 100,000 tons of concrete, which was broken up on-site into aggregate for use in University Park construction work ranging from underground utility trenches and roadbeds to under-building foundations.

"It indeed is saving money to grind it up into aggregate on site," Keyser said.

Asbestos and much wood had to be disposed of, and scrap metal was taken to recyclers. Crews even took the time to remove original tiles from roofs for reuse elsewhere, and they saved bricks as well.

About 56,000 cubic yards of excavated dirt from the lake project is being used to fill up some former basement space, to raise building foundations and pads, and to landscape. "We wanted to make this project as green as possible," Keyser said.

CSU Stanislaus-Stockton Center has more than 1,000 students this fall, and Hamlett said he doesn't think that new development to the north will detract from the feel of the Cal State Stanislaus operation. The lake will not only be great looking, he said, it also will be redolent of Cal State Stanislaus' Turlock campus, which features a large lake at the entrance and smaller bodies of water about campus.

Vice Mayor Gary Giovanetti has lived two blocks from the University Park site since 1985, and he said he's enthusiastic. "Grupe Co. was just the perfect company to take on this project," said Giovanetti, who sits on the site authority panel that oversees University Park. "Their projects always have a very high quality to them." Although he would have liked to have seen the redevelopment progress faster, he's still very pleased.

The Grupe Co. did a lot of work to clean up the old site and put in some aesthetic improvements, he said, and the city has done its part to try to clean up the surrounding neighborhood, which had been plagued with crime problems and blight.

Increased police work in the area has helped cut crime, he said, and code enforcement, paired with many new homeowners in the neighborhood, has greatly improved the area.

Commercial potential
"The central location being close to downtown might be attractive to a lot of commercial entities that might want to be downtown but want the amenities of new space," Giovanetti said. "The potential is very promising."

Shelly Cannon-Keely, a CB Richard Ellis office space specialist, said there's limited prime office space in the Stockton area, and development in the next five to seven years is tight.

That's favorable for leasing the University Park space, said Cannon-Keely, who is the listing agent for the commercial space. The office market also has remained strong, even with the slowdown in residential, she said. The park will offer a great environment for businesses, she said, once the lake, some retail and amenities are in place. Some businesses need locations right off the freeway, Cannon-Keely added, but University Park is only 10 minutes from Interstate 5.

"The signs are that should be a good project," she said.

Jerri Randrup, spokeswoman for nearby St. Joseph's Medical Center, said hospital officials have talked in the past with The Grupe Co. about "a variety of options" involving space at University Park. The redevelopment work also is improving the area, she said.

"Certainly, its proximity to the medical center makes it of interest to us," she said. "We're always looking for smart growth options."

To reach Bruce Spence, phone (209) 943-8581 or e-mail bspence@recordnet.com