As you drive into UC Davis from Interstate 80, rounding the curve on Old Davis Road, you are opening the campus's new "front door," more than 15 years in the making.

At least until this spring, when planting is scheduled, you will need to imagine the expansive vineyard on your right, sweeping east to the edge of the Robert Mondavi Institute for Wine and Food Science.

Other parts of this grand entry are already built or, like the Robert Mondavi Institute, still on the rise. The RMI has been under construction since early 2006 and is now just eight months away from opening. Nearby, another contractor recently began work on the Graduate School of Management and university conference center.

The GSM and conference center and an adjacent hotel will sit on one side of the south entry quad, home of the Morris Fountain. The 6-year-old Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts occupies the opposite side, and the 16-year-old Buehler Alumni and Visitors Center takes up another side.

"The south entry started as a parking lot and a building that most people thought we'd built backwards," Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef said, referring to the Buehler, with its back to the heart of campus. But the university had a plan, knowing that the Buehler — which opened in 1992 — would some day be joined by a whole set of new buildings.

"Now it is a wonderful new entrance to the campus, with no one wondering at all anymore about the orientation of the Buehler Alumni and Visitors Center," Vanderhoef said.

The Hyatt hotel, the conference center and the GSM's Gallagher Hall will occupy the east side of the entry quad, and a new university art museum is planned on the south side.

"I am sure every visitor will have the same first reaction," Vanderhoef said: 'UC Davis is a beautiful campus; I want to see more!'"

The beauty will start with the vineyard: nearly 14.5 acres for teaching, demonstration and production, right outside the Robert Mondavi Institute. It also will house the university's pre-eminent departments of Viticulture and Enology, and Food Science and Technology.

The RMI's first three research and instruction buildings — comprising 129,600 square feet and costing about $72.6 million — are scheduled to open in October. Nestled amid the three wings will be a garden like no other: an edible feast.

"This is going to be a landscape that when you see it, your mouth waters," said Sal Genito, director of Buildings and Grounds. "This will be a place to learn about good food and good health."

The RMI plan also includes a research winery, and a brewing and food science laboratory. UC Davis continues to raise money from the private sector for these projects, with a total estimated budget of $16.5 million; officials are hoping for groundbreaking this year, and completion in 2009.

And, just announced this week, the RMI will include a new olive research and education center (see story, page 1).

GSM, conference center and hotel

The GSM's new home will encompass 40,000 square feet in three stories, more than doubling the size of the existing school in AOB4 at the campus's northeastern edge. . The conference center will adjoin the GSM; the total cost for both is $34.5 million.

Late last year, the university announced that the new GSM building will be named Maurice J. Gallagher Jr. Hall, after the Las Vegas airline executive who pledged $10 million to support the project and establish an endowment for the school.

The adjoining two-story structure will house the conference center and a restaurant (total 22,000 square feet) on the first floor, and office space upstairs for various university administrative units (20,000 square feet).

Besides the foundation work now under way, the university plans soon to extend Old Davis Road about 800 feet for site access. The buildings themselves should start to take shape in the spring, and completion is scheduled for the fall of 2009.

The Hyatt Place hotel, behind the GSM and conference center but still visible from Interstate 80, will be built and run by a third party under a ground lease deal with the university. The hotel will comprise 75 rooms in four stories.

Hotel construction is scheduled to start in the spring and is expected to take about a year.

Museum of Art

Dean Jessie Ann Owens of the Division of Humanities, Arts and Cultural Studies, said the university, with assistance from Museum Management Consultants of San Francisco, "is close to completing the planning process" for the UC Davis Museum of Art.

The proposed budget, listed in a draft strategic plan, is $30 million — half from campus funds and the other half from donors.

"The museum builds upon the university's rich legacy of creativity and artistic expression (and) signals the significant presence and importance of the arts at UC Davis," Owens said.

She said she is "particularly excited by the location of the museum in the new entrance to the campus," a location that "makes it possible for the museum to serve both the campus community and our neighbors in the city of Davis and the entire region."

Owens said the museum will build on the 4,000 works of art that constitute the university's Fine Arts Collection.

"We will find a way to honor Richard Nelson, first chair of the art department and namesake of the university's Nelson Gallery, in the new museum," Owens said.

She said the campus's C.N. Gorman Museum and the Design Museum and Collection will continue as independent entities, collaborating with the UC Davis Museum of Art on exhibitions and academic programs.