Some of the people hoping to live in the university's West Village had a chance this week to say what they would like their houses to look like.

"Do you want a bigger walk-in closet or a bigger master bathroom? How big does your kitchen need to be? Do you want larger bedrooms, or maybe space for a home office?"

Those were some of the questions likely to be posed at workshops earlier this week, said Mary Hayakawa, director of real estate services in the UC Davis Office of Resource Management and Planning. She said a consultant running the workshops for the West Village developer also planned to show a number of exterior design possibilities.

The university is preparing to build West Village at the southwest corner of Russell Boulevard and Highway 113, with the first-phase plan calling for 312 to 343 homes for faculty and staff, and housing for 3,000 students, along with a village square surrounded by commercial services for residents and visitors.

Officials say university employees will have first dibs on the houses. With prices about 30 percent below market in Davis, the West Village homes are seen as a major tool for recruiting and retaining top faculty and staff.

The UC Board of Regents approved the project in November. The campus earlier selected its development partner, a joint venture of Urban Villages-Davis, based in Denver, and Carmel Partners of San Francisco. For this project, the companies go by the name West Village Community Partnership.

The partnership is now working on housing layouts and designs — with help from potential buyers.

Already, more than 1,400 people have expressed interest, and the university invited 30 of them to participate in three focus groups; the first two met Tuesday and the third Wednesday morning.

"We are at a point in the design process where we need to get firsthand input directly from potential future buyers," Vice Chancellor John Meyer wrote in a letter inviting people to participate in the focus groups.

"The purpose … is to better understand the lifestyles and needs of faculty and staff who could be prospective buyers," said Meyer, who heads the Office of Resource Management and Planning.

Hayakawa explained that the house sizes are pretty much set, averaging 1,500 square feet. Therefore, the potential buyers did not have the option of saying, for example, that the houses should be larger. To make one element bigger, the designers must make something else smaller.

"We want to keep them affordable," Hayakawa said, noting the project's goal — to give faculty and staff an opportunity to buy in Davis, where many university employees are now priced out of the market.

As the developer works on West Village's design, Hayakawa, the UC Office of the President and an outside legal team are hammering out the details of the master ground lease and two subleases, one for the faculty-staff housing and the other for the student housing and mixed-use elements such as retail space.

The university will retain ownership of the 224-acre building site, and the West Village Community Partnership will hold the leases.

Hayakawa said the campus is waiting for a signed contract before formally adopting the faculty-staff housing policies regarding West Village home ownership. A cross section of employees, including deans and staff representatives, comprised the ad hoc committee that developed the policies.

The Office of Resource Management and Planning published the policies in draft form about a year ago, invited comment, and subsequently made one significant change, Hayakawa said.

The university added a fourth eligibility pool of prospective buyers — for university employees who already own homes within the Davis Joint Unified School District.

Previously they were excluded, Hayakawa said, because UC Davis' intent in building West Village is to provide opportunity for people who cannot now afford to live in Davis.

"But the UC employees who already live in Davis really wanted an opportunity to live at West Village," she said.

Unlike the three other pools, the fourth one has no allocation of homes, meaning the university would reach into this pool only if there are any homes left after people in the first three pools are given chances to buy.

The three pools with housing allocations are as follows:

• Aggie Pool — Ladder-rank faculty members who have been recently recruited, and staff members who have been recently recruited through national searches. This pool also would include employees who already own homes in Aggie Village, a 37-home project built in 1997. Aggie Pool allocation at West Village: 156 to 172 (50 percent of the total).
• Mustang Pool — All other faculty, members of the Academic Federation, and all other staff. Number of homes: 87 to 96 (28 percent).
• Blue and Gold Pool — The same criteria as the Mustang Pool, but with financial conditions attached, so that the Blue and Gold homes — the lowest priced in West Village — would be reserved for qualified people with the lowest incomes. Number of homes: 69 to 75 (22 percent).

The other draft policies are basically the same as when they came out last year, Hayakawa said. They include:

• Ownership — Limited to full-time employees on the main campus or at the medical center in Sacramento.
• Resale prices — Capped, with the maximum appreciation tied to the faculty salary index or the cost-of-living index, whichever is greater. "We want to keep West Village homes affordable over time," Hayakawa said.

What West Village owners may lose in appreciation, Hayakawa said, they will make up for in other ways — such as less expensive mortgages and no commute.

• Retirement — A West Village owner would be able to stay if he or she worked for UC Davis for at least 10 years. With less than 10 years of service, the retiree would have six months to sell.

Hayakawa said she is developing a frequently asked questions document for the university's West Village Web site, www.westvillage.ucdavis.edu.