The Opportunity Site
A few days back I shared a couple of upcoming agenda items that the City Manager had forecast for the May 21st Fullerton City Council meeting.
I observed the reference to a development agreement with some entity called “Frontier” and also to an item simply called “Fox Block.” The two are related, but oddly, not listed together. Fullerton being Fullerton.
What I didn’t notice at the time was another item called “Chapman Parking Lease” another non-descriptive term, possibly not meant to attract attention.
A helpful Friend point out my oversight and got me thinking. Chapman parking? What the Hell is that? Then the other shoe dropped. There is a city-owned parking structure on the south side of Chapman Avenue, between Lemon and Pomona. It was built by the Fullerton Redevelopment Agency back in the ’90s the heyday of Fullerton Redevelopment, when they had so much money they could build parking structures that nobody even needed. Could this be what the cryptic agenda item referred to? Supposedly the facility was meant to help out Fullerton JC and maybe this is the entity with whom a lease was worked out.
The Junior College District has now built parking structures of its own, using our property tax increases to do it. Maybe the Chapman structure is now superfluous.
Could be. Check this out:
This satellite image has been used to accompany information/propaganda relating to the development known as the “Fox Block.” And the violet shape over in the lower left side of the image is the parking structure.
Hmm. Can this possibly be the site of yet another butt-ugly, monstrously overbuilt, under-parked housing project? Why not? It would be the only part of a Fox Block fiasco that could be worth anything to anybody. And since the City can no longer hand over piles of cash to “developers,” they can certainly hand over free land, enriched by the necessary zone changes.
I’m sure it’s all a big secret now. But in a couple days the May 21st agenda will be posted and maybe we can find out what “Frontier,” whatever that is, might be getting gratis from the people of Fullerton.
Oh well, what’s one more 5 story monster when there are already so many. We need housing, right?
And parking, and road repairs, and street sweeping, and park maintenance…
If the City wanted to dispose of underutilized parking structure “land”, they should first do an R.F.Q., “Request for Qualifications”, or an R.F.P., “Request for Proposals”. The idea of someone picking a favored developer smells like a dead rat in the attic that’s unreachable and the smell lingers on, and on, and, well you get the picture.
Yeah, there’s been no public discussion that I’ve heard about that parking structure. I wonder when it go slipped into the “Faux Block.”
Oh, no! Where will the young folk find another cavernous space for skateboarding?
There is no mention of Fox Block on the upcoming agenda, not even that it had been pulled. However, the agenda specifically says the Chapman Parking Structure has been pulled.
I noticed that.
I hope I’m wrong about this, but did I read that the Fox parking structure only going to be 2 levels?
If a whole parcel like that is going to be used for another ugly parking structure, why not at least have the capacity to park lots of cars? 2 levels hardly seems worth all the $$$