After several years of planning, the University of California, Davis, is ready to open its doors to research companies and public organizations that promise mutually beneficial relationships by locating on campus. The campus is proposing that a private developer build a research park on 27 acres on campus land south of Interstate 80 off Old Davis Road. The goal of this "enterprise campus" is to invite research enterprises to locate at UC Davis to enhance academic programs and enrich the research environment, while at the same time providing economic benefit to the region. Although there are other research parks or potential for such parks in the region, this park would be complementary rather than a competitor, said Mona Ellerbrock, campus director of research outreach. "We are a public land-grant university, and therefore we have a commitment to the people of the state of California, and a mission of teaching, research and public service to uphold," she said. "Participating in economic development through the enterprise campus can enhance the application of our mission, contribute to the regional economy and provide opportunities for our students through internships and collaborative research." Locating on campus will be attractive to certain companies, said task force member and private entrepreneur Charlie Soderquist of West Sacramento. "Within the great city of Davis you've got three proposed research parks, and there is lots of land in Dixon controlled by developers interested in similar parks, but in the enterprise campus, you've got a 27-acre piece of land that is contiguous to campus -- it's a bicycle ride away. That makes it unique." The concept, developed by a UC Davis task force headed by Kevin Smith, vice chancellor for research, has also been endorsed by faculty through the Academic Senate. "All of this makes sense if you have the right kind of business enterprises that clearly have a relationship with our academic enterprise," said Jeffery Gibeling, chair of the Academic Senate and a member of the task force. John Yates, special projects director in the UC Davis Office of Administration, said the master developer could be chosen as early as the end of the calendar year. The developer would construct and lease facilities to various public and private research entities approved by the campus. The university will have final oversight and approval for development, carried out by an enterprise campus board composed of academic and administrative campus leaders. The business structure is designed to allow for market-driven decisions to be implemented efficiently. At the same time, proposals must either cost the campus nothing or create revenue. When the 1994 Long Range Development Plan was written, about 70 acres were included for potential research parks. Twenty-seven of the acres are located south of I-80, and the remainder are west of Highway 113. "Companies have been interested in coming to UC Davis for several years," Ellerbrock said. "We've been working on the process and the programming to make that happen." The task force tapped Soderquist's experience on a similar committee for UC Santa Cruz, which is developing a research park on former Fort Ord property. In the process of developing a proposal for UC Santa Cruz, Soderquist visited UC Irvine, which has chosen the Irvine Co. to master-develop a piece of campus property into a research park, and UC San Diego. The concern for UC campuses is how to use these valuable pieces of public property so they play an integral role in the core mission of the university and don't become simply a vehicle for outside economic development, Soderquist said. Soderquist believes the UC Davis plan will not only offer the opportunity for shareholders and businesses to create wealth, but for the campus to provide good-paying high-tech jobs for its graduates, and for interaction between the campus and the private sector. "And, since many of the companies are in the life sciences and computer sciences, these companies are doing things that are flat-out good for society," Soderquist said. The campus should be able to handle the conflict between a private enterprise's need to compete by maintaining proprietary information and a university's mission to freely exchange such knowledge, says senate Chair Gibeling. Those concerns can be dealt with through communications from the beginning and by the graduate students choosing dissertations in areas that don't pose a conflict, he said. Many faculty members already have consulting relationships with private companies based on early negotiations that result in agreements acceptable to both parties, says Gibeling, a professor in the College of Engineering where many such relationships exist between faculty members and the private sector.