Vol. 21 No. 02 Feb 2006

A San Diego historical society’s lawsuit over a housing development on a site the society considered historical has been dismissed by the Fourth District Court of Appeal. The appellate panel upheld a lower court, which dismissed the case because the historical society had neither submitted the administrative record nor filed an opening brief.

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All California governors try to turn into Pat Brown sooner or later, so it’s not surprising that Arnold Schwarzenegger has now done the same. What’s surprising is not that Schwarzenegger is using Pat Brown’s legacy, but that he’s using nearly the same suburban model as Pat Brown did almost a half-century ago.

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In an unprecedented effort at regionalism in California, a task force appointed by Gov. Schwarzenegger is attempting to address the many problems troubling the San Joaquin Valley.

The governor has assigned no fewer than eight cabinet members to the California Partnership for the San Joaquin Valley, of which Business, Transportation and Housing Secretary Sunne Wright McPeak is the chair.

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Redevlopment Law Reform Gains Momentum At Capitol; Loma Linda and Monterey County Voters Decide On Development Projects; Sierra Club Settles Lawsuit With The City Of Stockton; Death Row EIR Upheld; Revised EIR Water Analysis Likley To Face Appeal in Santa Clarita

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Civic leaders in the Orange County town of Stanton hope that the reuse of a failed commercial strip for medium-density housing and small shops will start a local trend. Developers of the Renaissance Plaza propose 175 townhouses, 25 live-work units and about 18,000 square feet of commercial space on approximately 12 acres.

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The American Planning Association has named the Los Angeles Conservancy as the 2006 winner of the Daniel Burnham Award for the conservancy’s work in preserving cultural monuments, protecting historic districts and promoting historic preservation principles. The conservancy is the largest historic preservation organization in the United States.

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Fontana has broken ground on a large new library that, city officials and library boosters say, could become a building block of downtown revitalization.
At 93,000 square feet, the Fontana Library and Resource/Technology Center will be more than four times the size of any existing facility in the San Bernardino County-run library system.

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A proposed hotel that is consistent with a redevelopment plan, which itself has been the subject of a program environmental impact report, does not require a new environmental study, the Fourth District Court of Appeal has ruled.

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One of the more startling bits of advice I have heard recently came from a financial planner on television who said: “Don’t marry anyone you wouldn’t want to divorce.” The advice, of course, is to marry only someone who is rational and has the ability to cut a deal, if and when the time comes to part. In urban planning, this advice could be translated as: “Don’t build anything you do not want to tear down.”

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The Pleasant Hill Redevelopment Agency’s subsidies for a housing project did not make the project a “public work” that required the payment of prevailing wages to workers, the First District Court of Appeal has ruled.

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