Project would combine UC research, park parking by Patty Guerra Modesto Bee - May 25, 2000 MERCED -- Yosemite National Park wants more places for people to park their cars. The University of California at Merced wants to establish a research facility in the Sierra Nevada. Mike Nelson says he can help with both. Nelson, vice president of development company Destination Villages, is proposing a project that would combine a field research center with a large parking lot and a resort at Hazel Green Ranch in Mariposa County. The proposed project would consist of log-cabin units, summer tent-cabins, a restaurant and a conference center. Destination Villages also would build a 5,000-square-foot facility for research, with residential and lab facilities for UC Merced faculty and students. In addition, Nelson said, his company would fund an endowed chair for a John Muir Professorship in honor of the famed naturalist. Endowed chairs at the University of California cost $500,000 and are used to attract top-tier faculty members. Working with the National Park Service is not a new concept for UC Merced, scheduled to open in 2004. Last year, University of California and park service officials signed a memorandum of understanding to operate the Sierra Nevada Research Institute. Chris Adams, a planner for UC Merced, said the Hazel Green proposal fits in with what the university system is trying to do. "(Chancellor) Carol Tomlinson-Keasey is very interested in getting a strong research basis for the campus even before it opens," Adams said. "Hazel Green is particularly attractive to us, because development of the project there will give us a new facility we can just move our equipment into." The proposal is included in one of the alternatives of the Yosemite Valley Plan, a 1,000-page document prepared by the park service to look at ways of limiting development in Yosemite Valley. One of its aims is to remove parking from the valley and encourage visitors to take shuttles in from lots outside the park. Though the preferred alternative does not include the Hazel Green proposal, Yosemite chief planner Chip Jenkins said the park service is open to the idea. "It's not in the preferred proposal, because we didn't want to have to rely on private property owners and developers to accomplish our goals," Jenkins said. However, it could end up in the final plan when it is released later his year. Nelson said his company's motives are not entirely philanthropic. Offering customers an opportunity to stay next to a working research center would have its own rewards. Destination Villages has found success with a similar project in Hawaii, where a resort is located adjacent to a national history museum, Nelson said. For the project to go forward, the Hazel Green parking location would have to replace the Crane Flat parking lot currently in the preferred alternative of the Valley Plan, Nelson said. That could happen if enough people are in favor of it. Zoning changes and an access road to the property, which is 200 yards off Highway 120, also would have to be approved by Mariposa County.