Riverside Downtown: The annexation by Orange County has been called off

An interesting thing happened at the Cultural Heritage Board meeting yesterday. You see, in a Press Enterprise article on the controversial Fox Plaza project scheduled to be completed downtown sometime during this century, it appeared that the only people commenting for the most part were those who supported the project.


What a shock that at the meeting out of 20 people who spoke on it, 19 opposed it and the majority of the 80 or so people who attended raised their hands in opposition when asked. People objected to tearing down historic buildings like the Stalder building across the street, the traffic and how the project either didn't fit with the rest of downtown or didn't honor its heritage. On paper at least, the mixed use project looks pretty damn ugly and definitely out of place downtown.

It's not that developing downtown is a bad thing, it just would be nice if those making the decision actually cared about Riverside's identity rather than wanting to imitate what they consider to be the latest building trend in Orange County. If you asked the people who attended the meeting how many of them wish to live in a faux version of Orange County, how many do you think would raise their hands? How many residents of this city would do so?


So anyway, what happens when you actually get people to a public meeting is that you usually have opinions expressed which are somewhat different than what the usual designated pundits say.



(excerpt, Press Enterprise)



The residents opposing the project, many of them members of the nonprofit Old Riverside Foundation, a preservationist group, said it was too tall and block-like for downtown Riverside.

Resident Bill Gardner likened Fox Plaza to an odd-looking camel, which has all the parts of the animal but comes out looking weird when assembled.

"It's like a wall along the street," he said. "It does not fit the cultural heritage of Riverside."

The development calls for as many as 532 residential units in buildings six stories tall with even taller turrets, as much as 76,000 square feet of restaurant and retail space, and as many as 1,693 parking spaces in garages. It would occupy two partial blocks and one square block on Market Street between Mission Inn Avenue and Fifth Street.

A Hyatt Place hotel that would go on Market at Fifth is the only part of Fox Plaza that has been approved by the City Council.

The board discussed the environmental impact report for the entire project but discussed approval of only a portion of the project, the two partial blocks on the east side of Market, minus the hotel. That part of the project would entail demolition of the historic Stalder Building at the corner of Mission Inn and Market.




Most of those on the board who spoke on the project didn't like it either. Which might spell trouble for this board which in the past, faced attempts by some city council members to gag its members from speaking out at public meetings if they weren't in the majority on a decision, in one case ironically that was to pass guidelines making it harder to protect older, and historic buildings.

And given the city council's worship of anything Riverside Renaissance, an adoration that interestingly enough may have hindered the abilities of two former councilmen from getting reelected to their positions. The latest development is surely not going to make City Manager Brad Hudson any more pleased than he was over the city residents' revolt over his renovation plans for the downtown library and museum. If these were city employees, perhaps an administrative leave might await them for asking the wrong questions, but members of the public aren't so easily controlled.

Still, the Planning Commission meeting this morning could perhaps provide him with some project fans. Perhaps not.







Columnist Dan Bernstein of the Press Enterprise comments on the Fox Plaza project which has been hit hard by the housing market's near collapse.


If the city's developer can't sell the residential units, he with the city's blessing will rent them out.


(excerpt)



As pitched during the housing boom (RIP), a Fox Plaza condo of about 1,000 square feet, plus parking, would sell for up to $400K. Then, kaboom!

Those kinds of prices, says Empire economist John Husing, are yesterday's news. Current prices will be "off from those levels, no question about it." Getting financing for such a project (this one has 500-plus residential units) "would be difficult. They (developers) might have to wait for the market to recover sufficiently to get the returns that would justify it (Fox Plaza)." Husing doesn't see an end to market distress until 2010.

Siavash Barmand, the developer: "We still have a bank that is interested and positive and ready to go." And the first phase still includes a parking garage, hotel and 40 residential units. (Original groundbreaking date: July 2007.)

But now there's what Barmand calls a "back-up plan" for the 40 residentials: "Try to sell them, but if the market doesn't respond, we will rent them. Both the city and the bank are on board about this."




Briefs about the brief city council meeting here. I guess there's not much to say about it because not much happens in the public meetings.




State Attorney General Jerry Brown released this opinion that the Riverside County Sheriff's Department must release the names of its deputies involved in shootings.

The article states that this department is the only one that hasn't released the names, but that's not technically true lately. The Riverside Police Department has not released the names of the officers involved in the last two nonfatal shootings. One where an officer was shooting at a man he was pursuing in the downtown area and one in Casa Blanca where an officer shot at a man inside a car earlier this year.



(excerpt, Press Enterprise)



In Riverside County, a former Human Resources employee plead guilty to embezzlement charges.




The Hemet Unified School District is treating some of its employees unfairly according to allegations raised.



Lake Elsinore is battening down its financial hatches.




Eight Riverside Police Department employees and other law enforcement personnel were honored at these awards.




Will service workers at the University of California, Riverside strike? And over at the Riverside Community College District, the Board of Trustees continues to fight over who won't be the next chancellor.




If you are a police officer in Los Angeles and get suspended, don't worry, you can purchase a form of suspension insurance through the police union so you can turn your suspension period into a paid holiday.







Another police officer who worked for the Maywood Police Department has been busted. Ryan Allen West, who worked for the department until March has been arrested on rape charges in connection with three female victims and occurred when he was onduty during a two-year period.


He was arrested in Riverside County.


If you recall, the Maywood Police Department has been the focus of numerous investigations by outside agencies including the State Attorney General's office. Some of its serious problems center around its controversial "second chance" hiring practices which led to about one-third of the force being comprised of officers who were either fired from other agencies and/or arrested and prosecuted for crimes including two interim police chiefs. A threat of litigation from the State Attorney General's office finally led to Maywood's city council appointing an acting chief who didn't have a criminal record.



A change of venue filed in the prosecution of former Orange County Sheriff Michael Carona has been denied.



(excerpt, Los Angeles Times)



Carona's lawyers argued that the hosts of "The John and Ken Show" made it impossible to find impartial jurors because the hosts had urged listeners to lie to get onto Carona's jury, then vote to convict him.



U.S. District Judge Andrew J. Guilford ruled that the commentary was inappropriate but would not prevent Carona from finding 12 honest jurors in a county of 3 million people.

"The advocates of such lawlessness are not nearly as important as they pretend and their listeners are not the gullible audience they suppose," Guilford wrote in his opinion. "The court will not overreact to bait offered by largely satirical commentators."

Carona lawyer John D. Cline had suggested at a hearing that it would be impossible for attorneys to determine whether prospective jurors had taken the advice of hosts John Kobylt and Ken Chiampou to lie to get seated.

"Most people won't lie because of 'John and Ken' on the radio, but all it takes is one. Only one of them needs to lie to corrupt the process," Cline said.





More trouble involving Orange County Sheriff's Department deputies with another being charged with writing false reports.






Drew Peterson, the former Bolingbrook Police Department sergeant has been charged with a weapons violation.



(excerpt, Associated Press)



The arrest warrant had been issued Tuesday. Brodsky said the arrest was part of an effort by state police to harass Peterson.

"Any inconvenience they can cause him, so much the better," Brodsky said as he waited outside the jail. "They might believe it's a tactic to shake him up."

The gun, a semiautomatic assault rifle, was one of 11 seized during a search of Peterson's suburban Chicago home Nov. 1, shortly after Stacy Peterson disappeared in late October. Authorities say the rifle barrel is too short under Illinois law.

Brodsky said that Peterson, now retired, was still a police officer when the weapon was seized and that officers are exempt from the length provision of the law.

Will County State's Attorney spokesman Chuck Pelkie would not say whether police are exempt from the law, but said the charge against Peterson is valid and appropriate.

"An illegal weapon might be put back on the street and we can't let that happen," Pelkie said.



Peterson is also the focus of a probe into the disappearance of his wife, Stacy who's been missing since last October. Not to mention an ongoing probe into the homicide of his third wife, Kathleen Savio whose death was initially ruled an accident.



Did the president of one of the New York City Police Department unions break his promises? The New York Daily News Editorial Board thought so and scolded him over the paltry increases in the salary scales during the past several years.