Vet surgery clinic, new Chipotle get OK
Also, details on a clay studio, senior fitness option, opening date for Açaí Fresh, and another tiki bar
A veterinary surgical clinic can open in a Mace Boulevard business park, the Davis Planning Commission ruled on Wednesday, overturning a denial of the application by the city’s Community Development Department.
The unanimous decision came with some tough words from Planning Commission Chair Greg Rowe, who voiced his frustration with the city’s handling of the matter, and apologized to the applicant for the delay.
Kelli Mayhew owns Peak Veterinary Surgery, a mobile service she started in 2019. She’s turning it into a brick-and-mortar business. Her husband Phil is a professor of small animal surgery at the UC Davis vet school. They have been Davis residents for 14 years, and have three children in local schools.
Kelli Mayhew and other speakers noted the great demand for specialty surgical offices like this. The waiting list for most surgeries at the UC Davis hospital is reportedly months long. The clinic would handle small animals (mostly dogs and cats) in need of orthopedic, soft tissue, trauma and cancer surgeries. It would not handle emergency services.
At the beginning of the year, she applied to the city approval of a 4,900-square-foot surgery center at 305 Mace Blvd. It was denied, citing zoning restrictions. The address is zoned for industrial administration and research.
Senior Planner Eric Lee said, “In some cases it’s very simple, other times, it’s ambiguous. In this case, we determined that this proposed veterinary use was not consistent with the zoning.”
He and Principal Planner Dara Dungworth said city staff members took a conservative approach when interpreting the zoning code. Though the General Plan includes medical offices for this area, it’s not defined in the zoning language. And even if medical uses were allowed, they considered that to apply to humans, not animals.
Dungworth said it was city staffers who suggested that the business take the appeal to the commission, calling it “the quickest, easiest path forward. It was determined that rather than going through a three- to four-month process to get a zoning interpretation from the Planning Commission,” she said, costing Mayhew thousands of dollars, “it was actually be more expeditious for staff to deny the request, and then they could appeal it, and we could be far more nimble and far more expeditious.”
Chairman Rowe responded: “That’s very interesting. Make an administrative decision to say no so that we can get it expedited.”
The space at Mace Boulevard and Alhambra Lane shares a center with Nugget Market corporate offices, a BASF ag research facility and Symmetry Laser, which makes metal tubing for medical use. The clinic would be at the back of the building that houses Symmetry. The building, one of three at the business park, is at the rear of the property.
A representative of Symmetry Laser was the only speaker opposed to the new business, saying the center was zoned for light manufacturing, not for dogs and cats at an overnight surgical center. “We’ll probably lose business,” he said. “The optics aren’t great.”
Several other speakers mentioned the need for the service, the 20 jobs it would bring and the tax revenue it would produce. And commissioners were overwhelmingly in favor of the proposal, saying the city staff’s view was too rigid.
Rowe said in the almost seven years since he’s been on the commission, it was the first time that it’s had an appeal. “I’m really disappointed that we got to this point,” because of an ambiguity of how the permitted use is determined. “Davis has a perception around the whole region as being anti-business and I don’t see how this (staff) decision helps that – at all.”
He said city staffers were needlessly splitting hairs on a site that has been vacant since it was built five years ago. “It’s a professional office. To me, for the city to deny this is unfathomable.”