Will Westwood work in Fullerton? Does it work in Westwood?
The City of Fullerton and Califronia State Univeristy of Fullerton are teaming up to promote a plan called College Town, and it has some residents of the city up in arms. The general idea is to transform an area at the southern border of the university into “a place where campus life and city life converge,” according to the “Vision” section of the College Town document available on the city’s website. CSUF has been a nearly exclusively commuter campus since it was founded, but in recent years the university has added dorms to provide on-campus housing for more and more of its students. The idea of a quasi-school space that spills out into the city around it, providing the feel of an actual college town, is certainly attracive for many reasons, but there are also some good reasons it doesn’t exist there now.
The most inconvenient impediment to this plan is Nutwood Avenue’s automobile traffic. The planners behind College Town would like to eliminate that traffic to create a cluster of mixed use buildings and plazas north of Chapman and east of Hope University. Residents in the area are fuming over the prospect of vehicular traffic moving over to their streets to reach other freeway onramps when a portion of Nutwood is closed.*
There is a steady press by the city and the university to promote College Town. Last month CSUF President Mildred Garcia welcomed community leaders, senior city staff and department heads, and university staff to a reception at the El Dorado Ranch.
At least some attendees perceived the event to have been scheduled, at least in part, to gently lobby community leaders to support the College Town plan.
Monday night, May 12, it’s City Manager Joe Felz’s turn to pitch the plan to local residents. Without a current Community Development Director, it falls to the City Manager to respond to the concerns of many local residents who say that their neighborhoods are already overburdened with traffic.
Neighbors United for Fullerton (NUFF), a local political action committee (PAC), invite you to hear Mr. Felz speak about College Town and “other projects that are in the process or slated in the future for development in the City of Fullerton”.
“What About College Town” begins at 6:45 p.m. and ends at 8:30 p.m. at the only remaining branch of the Fullerton Public Library, in the Osbourne Auditorium (the windowless one downstairs). There is no charge to attend.
*An earlier version of this story erroneously stated that access to the 57 freeway from Nutwood would be closed entirely.
fullertonrag.com 
The Traffic from Fullerton college and CSUF is ruining fullerton. The schools enrollment numbers surpassed what should be allowable in this area a long time ago yet continue to grow every year with little or no concern for the rest of the community. Traffic on chapman and on St.college is already beyond maxed out. Eliminating the nutwood entrance to the 57 would be an absolute disaster backing up traffic on chapman and causing everyone in the community(including all the students) to use chapman which would be a huge mistake.
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Thanks for the update. It is refreshing to see a report on this development that does not simply recite City staff talking points.
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Thanks again for the update on “College Town”. It is hard to believe that the city “officals” don’t understand the uprising that would follow should College Town continue down the planning pipeline. It seems that the city has forgotten about a little thing called Coyote Hills. The giving away of Nutwood to the CSFU group for a park is insane.
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This plan appears to be a developer’s dream. Because CSUF has raised the parking fees, it has been unable to fill its parking structures and the students have flooded the local neighborhoods and shopping centers with their cars. Creating this problem is supposed to prepare us, the East Fullerton residents and homeowners, for the College Town solution. We are to simply cede direct freeway access via Nutwood and turn over these lanes for the “betterment of all”. We are asked to accept busier streets and intersections, the intrusion of multistory structures upon our neighborhoods, and an influx of thousands of additional residents in this relatively small area that will impact our sewer and water systems.The real beneficiaries here are the developers who will be able to pack more rental property in the land parcels in the adjacent areas and generate a healthier cash flow at OUR EXPENSE.
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