Joe’s Neighborhood Tour of Davis: West Davis

 

WEST DAVIS

If you’re west of Highway 113, welcome to West Davis, home to the following communities: Stonegate, Village Homes, West Manor, Westwood, Aspen and Evergreen. Stonegate is the furthest west, so we’ll begin there.  Stonegate has it’s own Country Club, sans golf course. Its pride and joy is the man-made lake of the same name. At night the twinkling lights reflecting onto the water from the lakefront homes are a beautiful sight. The club features tennis courts, a soccer field, a fitness room, outdoor swimming pools and a community center.  Sailboats and canoes are available for use, too. Stonegate was built over a span of many decades, so the established homes on the southside near Russell Blvd. share little with the newer homes of the 80’s on the north end. Stonegate includes two rather quiet condo developments, Lakeside Greens, and Stonegate Woods, aka Woods Circle.  

Village Homes is a world reknowned passive solar neighborhood built on a former tomato field. Built in the late 70’s, the developers, young Michael, later to become mayor, and Judy Corbett fought the city planners on a number of issues, from streets perceived to be too narrow for emergency vehicles (in an attempt to reduce summer temperatures with less pavement), to lack of storm drains, (the common back yards dip into swales to catch storm runoff).  Supposedly, the year after Village Homes was completed, much of West Davis flooded with the exception of Village Homes. The Village has been visited over the years by a few traveling dignitaries, Rosalyn Carter and Francois Mitterand to name a few. Village Homes is replete with orchards, community gardens, common lawns and an outdoor swimming pool.  Far from cookie-cutter production, no home is replicated more than once in the neighborhood, and in an attempt to de-emphasize the auto, most homes were built without garages.

The West Manor neighborhood, sandwiched between Village Homes and Stonegate, features homes built by Stanley Davis in the 70’s. The street names are rivers of the world, such as Tiber, Feather and Ganges (Eel Avenue and Eel Place are peculiar choices). West Manor Park is surprisingly large, due to the fact that it’s rather hidden from any main street. It features tennis and basketball courts, a playground, a picnic area, an athletic field and a roller hockey ring. The West Davis pond, another great birding spot, lies to the northeast of the neighborhood.

East of West Manor is Westwood, a collection of larger homes on spacious lots, built in the 70’s on streets named for U.S. presidents – Buchanan, Eisenhower, Fillmore and the like. The neighborhood’s southern boundary is Russell Blvd. and its scenic black walnut tree-lined bikepath which connects to the UCD campus. A new mixed-use UC Davis community, West Village, is planned for the farmland south of Russell and west of Highway 113.

The newer Evergreen neighborhood lies at the northeast corner of West Davis, just west of Hwy 113 and south of Covell Blvd., and traversed by Shasta Drive. The majority of homes have a Mediterranean style of exterior with stucco walls and tile roofs.  Arroyo Pool, with its highly popular water slide, and Arroyo Park are at the southern edge of the community. Patwin Elementary sits west of the pool. The eastern portion of Evergreen is within the Willett Elementary boundary line and there’s a most convenient bike and pedestrian bridge over Highway 113 leading to the school and adjacent park.

Tucked to the west of Evergreen is the Aspen Neighborhood which includes Muir Commons, “the first cohousing community newly constructed in the United States,” according to its website. The remainder of Aspen is mostly larger, custom and semi-custom homes on cul-de-sacs bordering either a greenbelt, or the West Davis pond, nice choices to have.