A happy logo. Don’t you feel included?
It isn’t listed on the City of Fullerton’s home page, but the Downtown Core and Corridors Specific Plan Advisory Committee (DPAC) is scheduled to meet from 4:30 until 8:30 today somewhere in the new Community Center. (Readers can find the announcement on the single page calendar on the site). The committee with the long name and lopsided membership has met sporadically for many months to review the city’s DCCS plan to tear down small, old buildings located on Fullerton’s main streets and replace them with cheap, dull, mixed use retail and high density housing. The DPAC is, of course, only a formality required to rearrange deck chairs while the ship of the city boldy collides with a future of overcrowded streets lined with big box apartment complexes. Although some notable Fullerton residents on the DPAC have courageously raised objections to the efficacy of the plan’s stated goals:
“- Better landscaping, lighting and sidewalks.
– Improved public spaces.
– Improved connections to our neighborhoods.
– Enhanced city gateways.
– Thriving stores, restaurants and businesses.”
the plan rolls merrily on by distracting the more pliant committee members and the public with promises of landscaped street medians and pretty “gateways” while working to facilitate sanctioned higher density development. They needn’t bother. The DCCSP hasn’t been finalized or presented, let alone approved, by the Planning Commission or the City Council, while the irresponsible developments it will foster are approved month by month anyway.
The DCCSP was routinely referenced by city planning empolyees to justify developments to the Planning Commission and City Council until even they couldn’t, with a straight face, pretend that something as claustrophobic and monolithic (later changed to duolithic) as the recently approved Harborwalk was somehow consistent with establishing “improved connections to our neighborhoods” or “improved public spaces.”
But show up anyway if you can, and let the consultants hired to corral public opinion and shape it into a forgone conclusion know that you aren’t buying the song and dance they’re being paid mightily to perform.
fullertonrag.com 