Aric Sleeper here, envisioning the final form of the Campus Town development in the works in Seaside, or as it will be called when it’s complete: Pacific Landing at Seaside.
Danny Bakewell Jr., president of the development firm KB Bakewell, recently brought Monterey County Weekly Editor Sara Rubin and me on a tour of the first phase of the massive, roughly 120-acre development. This part, between 1st Avenue and General Jim Moore Boulevard, is just starting to take shape after about nine months of work.
“What you see is all of the infrastructure,” Bakewell said as he pointed at the still sandy construction site marked with different colored indicators for sewer, gas, electrical and water lines.
He said that the streets, curbs and gutters will go in within the next 30 days—tentatively—and then it will be much easier to imagine the site’s ultimate shape. “I can see it,” Bakewell says. “What was in our minds 10 years ago, now is actually happening.”
Bakewell mentions that the project was delayed by many factors outside of anyone’s control, including the pandemic, or as he put it, “A whole lot of unfortunate circumstances,” but that he is “glad to be here now.”
Many of the streets in the development will take the names of Seaside residents past who have contributed to the community over the years, such as former Seaside mayors Ralph Rubio and Jerry Smith and community leader Helen Rucker, among others. Including the name of the city in the development’s name, Pacific Landing at Seaside, was also a priority for Bakewell.
The 16-acre strip of the development on the outskirts of the city will contain 242 homes, a mix of single-family homes, as well as attached and detached and townhomes. The goal, Bakewell says, is to pack it with amenities for the future residents like retail, restaurants, sports fields and walking-biking trails, which will make it more of a “destination place.”
The entire Campus Town project, which has a price tag of approximately $400 million, is slated to take about 10 years to complete, with the first phase of the project that we toured estimated to be finished in three to four years. Bakewell says the first phase will start to “go vertical” this summer and they will begin taking applications for the new homes this fall.
The first delivered units of the project will be off-site, Bakewell mentions, at Greater Victory Temple Church of God in Christ in Seaside, where a 100-percent affordable, 21-unit apartment building will be constructed—hopefully by the spring of 2027. At the complex’s groundbreaking on Saturday, May 16, Bakewell says that about 150 community members showed up alongside a slate of local leaders and elected officials.
Having covered countless housing developments in the Monterey Bay Area, where many developers only seem to prioritize maximizing their profits at the expense of the community, it was refreshing to speak with a developer who prioritized cooperation, not only with governmental agencies and elected officials but also with the present and future residents of Seaside.