Not For Sale? Yeah, Right!

The abode of F. Paul Dudley, possibly designed by Mike Brady

The anti-recall forces keep chanting the mantra that Fullerton is not for sale, despite all the obvious evidence to the contrary, and that under the Jones, Bankhead and McKinley regime, Fullerton has been very much for sale.

Here’s a picture of an anti-recall sign in the front yard of former Development Services Director, F. Paul Dudley, the man who, for over twenty years, participated in a series of calamitous boondoggles, oversaw the over-development of downtown Fullerton, the cookie-cutter development of Coyote Hills East, and the fake New Urbanism of Amerige Heights. F. Paul Dudley is the man who gave the Florentine family a permanent building on a public sidewalk. Apart from being a dyed-in-the-wool arrogant bureaucrat, Dudley is also a happy member of Fullerton’s $100,000 Pension Club, pulling down a whopping $139,420 for doing nothing.

The original, and the best.

But get this: Dudley now peddles his relationship with the Three Hollow Logs acting as a lobbyist for developers! So you see, for Dudley Fullerton is very much for sale. He and a small handful of people like him need a compliant majority on the council so that they can get massive entitlements and stick the rest of us with the impacts.

 

Slidebar’s Noise Assault: Is It Even Legal?

Ah, late night music in downtown Fullerton. The louder it gets, the more people show up.  And at the Slidebar, the party rocks on every night of the week.

Sure, it’s fun if you’re visiting from the 909 on a Thursday night. But to the rest of the public, nonstop amplified outdoor music is known as something else: a Public Nuisance.

Here’s what the Fullerton Municipal Code’s Limitations on Permitted Uses section has to say about music on outdoor patios:

Accessory Outdoor Dining or Patio.

15.30.040.I.7.c.ii.     No amplified music or amplified entertainment is permitted outdoors, except recorded background music for dining establishments wherein normal conversation is not impeded; no music or entertainment shall be permitted on a patio past 10:00 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, and 11:00 p.m. Friday and Saturday.

So whose job it is to police the downtown bars and night clubs that have patios with outdoor amplified music?

A 4F Record Year

Well, Friends, 2011 was a record year for our humble little blog. We’ve had 2,013,945 visitors, and counting. I wonder what next year will bring for a blog that all began here, the day I questioned the ridiculous and deteriorating Redevelopment Styrofoam light fixtures at the downtown plaza.

See what I mean?

Styrofoam, the Redevelopment material of choice...

That was just three short years ago, and since then we’ve taken on every Sacred Cow of Fullerton’s reactionary old guard – from ridiculous Redevelopment boondogglery to a police department stewed in rampant corruption. And we’re not done yet, not by a long shot.

Stick around as we continue to poniard the pompous and demand accountability from the unaccountable. You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. You’ll experience a whole range of emotions. We promise.

You Said What You Said

Politicians are forever saying asinine things and then denying they said them. Small time politicians like our own mutton head Don Bankhead have been getting away with this sort of thing for years. Televised council meetings have helped expose the intra-noggin confusion that exists in minds like Bankhead’s, but youtube has really been invaluable.

A while back we ran a post that highlighted Bruce Whitaker rightfully taking Bankhead to task for sharing his opinion that Fullerton would be ghost town without Redevelopment. No, no said Bankhead, testy-like. He really said “downtown Fullerton.” Forget that neither would be a ghost town without Redevelopment – that’s just Big Gummint Bankhead passing along all the lies he’s swallowed over the years, and of course his own campaign literature year after dreary year – taking credit for “revitalizing” DTF over and over and over and over and over again.

Here’s what Bankhead really said, verbatim, an insult to the hundreds of businesses in DTF and in the rest of the city that never took a nickel of Bankhead’s largess:

Or, to put it another way:

Another Redevelopment Fiasco That Refuses to Die

Friends of Fullerton’s future have read many pages on this site dedicated to cataloguing the manifest failures of Redevelopment and all the attendant boondoggles it brings with it. Blind support for these disasters is one of the reasons The Three Blind Brontosauruses are being recalled. One of the biggest disasters-in-the-making is the lamentable “Amerige Court” project, another gigantic monster to be plopped down into Fullerton, and a totally staff-created and driven mess.

Naturally Bankhead and Jones have supported this gross example of corporate welfare that we end up paying for. McKinley is bound to go along for the ride.   When he does we’ll be sure to let you know about it. Here is an update.

By Judith Kaluzny as published in The Fullerton Observer

The Amerige Court proposal is not dead yet.   The council will vote December 5, 2011, whether to extend a Disposition and Development Agreement (DDA) first approved February 7, 2006,  the third amended version having been approved by council March 4, 2008.

Since then, two extensions requested by developer Pelican Laing /Fullerton LLC (a Delaware corporation) were granted by staff June 2010 by Rob Zur Schmiede, executive director of the Redevelopment Agency (RDA), and April 1, 2011, by Joeseph Felz, acting executive director.

Meantime, the Laing portion of the Pelican-Laing developers, had been purchased in June 2006 by a company in the mideast country of Dubai, and Laing subsequently filed for bankruptcy in February 2009.

“Amerige Court,” described as “mixed-use development with up to 124 residential units and as much as 30,000 square feet of commercial area” was to be located on the north and south parking lots in the 100 block of West Amerige.  At one time, the project was to be nine stories high on the south side of Amerige, with a five story parking structure on the north side of the street.

A Draft Environmental Impact Report was prepared in 2008 and concluded that there were “no potentially significant impacts that cannot be mitigated.”

Richard Hamm of Pelican Properties said recently, “It has been impossible to make any progress with the project since the State has attempted to end redevelopment.  Of course, the economy has not helped.

“We have four companies waiting in the wings to join us in Amerige Court. We want to get the extension to the DDA as well as a few details worked out with Redevelopment before going forward with a new partner. Amerige Court is still a great opportunity. Downtown Fullerton is still a great place (despite the recent events).

Points in the original contract included:

-Giving $5.5 million from a $6 million bond issue to Pelican Properties to build the parking garage.  The bonds were to  be paid back by the residents and businesses in the new development.  That will cause the businesses to cost $1.93 per square foot more than any other retail space downtown according to the city’s consultant, Keyser Marsten Associates, which advised the city to do “more due diligence” before they entered into this contract.

-The land Pelican will be given the by the  city was not appraised, but agreed as being worth $8 to $8.5 million.

-A guarantee of 10% profit to Pelican on the project.  Pelican can submit a new budget before escrow closes.  If that does not show they will get a 10% profit, they can withdraw from the project.  However, at that point, the redevelopment agency can volunteer to pay the required profit to Pelican.  The Executive Director of the Redevelopment Agency can do this without further input from the city council/redevelopment agency.

-Tearing down the historic properties on the southeast corner of Malden and Amerige Avenues.

[The DDA and amendments are a maze of turgid language:  The Third Amendment provides for a “future amendment,” but if  “a Future Amendment is not approved by Developer and the Agency Board (city council) by April 5, 2009, or such later date as may be approved by the parties in the sole and absolute discretion of each of them, either party shall have the right to terminate the DDA… .”

[The third amended DDA also includes the following language: “However, the Entitlements have not been approved as Agency has not approved the Project or any other project for the Property.  The parties acknowledge that this Third Amendment does not constitute the third amendment that was contemplated under the Second Amendment.”]

Begun in 2001 with a “rendering” commissioned by Paul Dudley, then Director of Development, and shown to city council members in closed session, it has been said that this was a scheme to get more parking for the bars/restaurants downtown.  (In December 2002, restaurants downtown were exempted from having to provide parking or to obtain conditional use permits.)

FFFF has argued for years that this grossly subsidized monstrosity should be killed outright. As I noted, above, the extension of this agreement will become another issue in the upcoming recall campaign: a perfect example of corporate welfare of the type that has characterized massive subsidized apartment blocks in downtown Fullerton already approved by Bankhead and Jones over the years.

Fullerton Redevelopment Whores Line Up To Praise Redevelopment Pimps

Last Tuesday’s council meeting included a comical orchestration in which numerous recipients of taxpayer subsidies ambled up to the microphone to heap praise upon the Three Blind Mice. They have millions of reasons to do so, as you will see in the accompanying video clip to which I have thoughtfully added text explaining who these people are and how much they have to gain by backing the present corrupt and incompetent regime.

Well we say it’s way past time for a regime change!

Just A Matter of Time

IMPORTANT UPDATE: This post was published a little over a year ago. The title, “Just A Matter of Time” was spot on; another example of what happens when city funding for things like trees and such get diverted to things like public employee pensions and the obscene debts that they cause:

And there you have it...

 Original Post, September 8, 2010: 

200 Block of W. Valencia Dr.

In allegedly tree-friendly Fullerton, trees are more a liability than an asset when the city has no funds, or no inclination to prune the trees. Let’s consider the case of Valencia Dr. (Redevelopment area, of course) between Harbor Blvd. and Highland Ave., where the residents of this block, which features 70 year old jacaranda trees have recently witnessed a near fatal accident when a huge limb broke off and almost squashed an innocent woman and her two kids while she was driving down the street.

Unfortunately for barrio residents and motorists, there’s no money in the Redevelopment budget to trim the trees after the Agency blew its wad buying up all the low income apartments just 2 blocks to the west. And similarly, the City blew its wad on its public employee retirement plan that pays guys like Fullerton City Council candidate Pat McKinley and former disastrous Planning Director, F. Paul Dudley, over a hundred thousand bucks per year just to stay at home and watch “As the World Turns” and “ALF” reruns.

It’s only a matter of time before both the jacaranda trees along Valencia and the public employee’s retirement fund comes smashing down causing loss of life, liberty and the of pursuit happiness.

Fullerton College’s New Building Dun Goofed

When this blog kicked off several years ago, one of the first subjects of our discontent was the fake McSpanish horrors being constructed at Fullerton College.

Well,  the buildings are complete and FJC students are submitting their feedback…and boy are things looking ugly. Here’s a hilarious clip of some dudes highlighting a few of the creepier features:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DAVMr9iCds

Contrasts in Architecture Are Rare in Fullerton

Last month I was walking Independence Mall in Philadelphia and admiring the history and reflecting on what it would have been like in 1776.  As I crossed Market Street to go look at the Liberty Bell I looked left and right scanning the streets.  Then something caught my eye.  The antique cityscape had something shiny and new nestled in between two pieces of historic-looking buildings.

The structure has jutting polished metal forming right angles and contrasts sharply against the backdrop of American history.  The building’s unusual placement on the historic Mall speaks volumes of its purpose, though no billboards announce what that may be.

As I circle the Mall admiring the formation of our Country, my mind and camera wander back to the building, now more striking than when I saw it just moments ago. Seeing the building on the Mall and recognizing the unusual beauty of its presence in that location has caused me to question the direction the City of Fullerton has traveled for decades.

A recent FFFF post brought to light the Redevelopment Design Review Committee’s selections of less than inspiring architecture.

I used to have the strong opinion that modern designs just would not work in our downtown.  After long debates and discussions with friends and my visit to Philadelphia I am confident that it can work well.

Entrepreneurs looking to raise the bar and make their place in Fullerton should look to innovative designs which will stand in contrast to our old and confused architecture.  More importantly, when every other building is a bar or tattoo parlor, business owners need to look at ways of setting their establishment apart from the rest of the herd.