California State University Fullerton Healthy Neighborhoods
The City Council will negotiate the price and terms for the Center for Healthy Neighborhoods at 4 pm on July 16.
The Center for Healthy Neighborhoods is located at 320 West Elm Avenue, Fullerton. It has, together with community residents and other stakeholders, aimed to alleviate education and health disparities, revitalize neighborhoods, and reduce the cycle of poverty for low-income children and families. This is a vital resource for many families.
Walk on Wilshire
An issue concerning the Walk on Wilshire, the pedestrianized area downtown in front of Sip & Savor, Mulberry St, Fullerton Brew Co, etc., is coming to the city council this Tuesday, July 16.
“I personally love this area. I think city staff have done a beautiful job with it, and it keeps getting better. It is clearly a beloved part of downtown. Without cars, it is a pleasant place to walk and bike,” said Anjali Tapadia.
The city has spent money on the infrastructure and the city gets rental money from the parklets that some restaurants have set up. It would be fiscally irresponsible to spend money dismantling a small but important revenue source in favor of parking and easements for cars, which only cost the city money.
However some business people, including a certain developer, want it shut down and reopened to car traffic. The reason they give is that the lack of a few car parking stalls hurts their businesses.
If you don’t want to see this beautiful part of downtown shut down, come to the meeting or call in and give your opinion. It’s the last item on the agenda, but as you know, they often move stuff around.
Agenda-5
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Categories: Local Government, Local News
Re: the above editorial about Walk on Wilshire…
Only one restaurant, not “some,” appears to have installed a permanent “parklet” srucdture that comes close to what was required by the city. One has to wonder why the public should support a program that doesn’t seem to interest the restaurants enough to comply with the requirements of it.
Ms. Tapadia’s claim that the area is a “pleasant place to walk and bike” is confusing, given the fact that cyclists are only allowed in the center lane of the closed block or are otherwise instructed, as the sign in the picture above indicates, to walk their bicycles on the sidewalks. The center lane, eventually adopted after years of advocacy from cyclists who objected to a block of the city’s only official Bicycle Blvd. being closed in this block and cyclists being diverted around it, creates a conflict zone between bicycles and pedestrians. I’m not sure where Ms. Tapadia is used to cycling there.
The assertion that “It would be fiscally irresponsible to spend money dismantling a small but important revenue source…” ignores the arguments of opponents of the block closure that it was fiscally irresponsible to spend public money installing infrastructure on it in the first place. All but one of the restaurants on the street ALREADY had outdoor dining on Wilshire prior to the pandemic, and they continue to operate those outdoor dining areas in addition to the city provided areas in the street. For a review of the revenue generated by the closure, I refer to the comments of Mr. Zenger, above.
The editorial attributes efforts to reopen the street to traffic to “a certain developer,” coyly and unprofessionally declining to name this supposed developer, to provide any examples of what this individual has developed, or to ask this supposed developer for his viewpoint. In fact, it was the affected businesses that complained during the July 16 meeting about loss of revenue caused by the cessation of through traffic.
In future, I would encourage the Observer to be more informative and less casually biased in its coverage of city issues like this one.
“conflict zone”
A theoretical concern I assume not based on any real world data… easiest proactive measure is just to extend the green paint all the way through. Because if people are meandering into the bike path so much that it is really causing a problem for cyclists, make the path more visible is probably sufficient.
John, yes, I have requested that the city do just that, extend the green paint along the entire closed portion of the block. As for theoretical, yes, that is how city’s operate–install a stop sign after someone has been injured or killed in an accident instead of proactively trying to prevent one.
“cities,” above, not “city’s”