CP&DR

Native Americans Agree To Follow County Rules

Dec 1, 1999

Deals, Morris Newman, Vol. 14 No. 12 Dec 1999

"I don't have to talk to you," the developer says to the public official. "I have the right to build whatever I want, wherever I want it." How many developers, exhausted or hamstrung by local government, have longed to say those words? And how can local government respond, when a developer actually does say those words to them — with the full support of federal law? As it turns out, at least one group of developers in California actually can say those words, and back them up: Na...

Paseo Pasadena: A Retail Mall Turns Urban Village

Nov 1, 1999

Morris Newman, Places, Vol. 14 No. 11 Nov 1999

Architects and planners like to think they are building "for the ages." Recent experience, however, suggests the very opposite. The culture, the economy and fashions in urban design all appear to be in a rapid state of change. Perhaps the Internet and advances in telecommunications are shortening the half-life of cultural events. Perhaps we're just getting older and the world seems to be getting faster. Notwithstanding, buildings that exemplified urban life only 20 years ago are rapidly becoming obsolet...

Roy Rodgers Meets Marks-Roos in Murrieta

Oct 1, 1999

Deals, Morris Newman, Vol. 14 No. 10 Oct 1999

I need to start this column with some personal disclosures: I have never shot fish in a barrel. I deny ever having stolen candy from a baby. (Actually, it depends on how you define "stolen.") And I have never rolled off a log, at least not as an adult. So, I don't really know how easy all these things are. But then again, none of them could be easier than finding the flaws in the City of Murrieta's plan to provide about $115 million in bond financing for the RogersDale theme park to be built in the R...

The Imaginary Cyclist's Guide to the New Portola

Sep 1, 1999

Morris Newman, Places, Vol. 14 No. 09 Sep 1999

I have found myself studying, of all things, a site plan of a bicycle path in the City of Portola. Why would a small-town bike path be interesting, particularly one that exists only on paper? Perhaps because site plans, like all maps, seem so static, while the dotted line that represents the bike trail suggests movement and freedom. It is easy to imagine ourselves as tourists on bicycles in this small mountain town in the Sierra Nevada, tooling through the historic district, and then crossing the bridge...

Movies as Economic Development? Dream On

Aug 1, 1999

Deals, Morris Newman, Vol. 14 No. 08 Aug 1999

DEALS: THE UNRAVELING OF DREAMWORKS AND WHAT IT SAYS ABOUT PUBLIC-PRIVATE ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT DEALS Economic development and motion picture development are not alike. Economic development is a slow, often bureaucratic, process involving the collaboration of many people, including government, real estate interests, and big employers. Motion picture development, on the other hand, is dominated by a handful of powerful personalities, predominately studio heads, who can simply axe a project if they have...

Housing Plasn Suits Retired Factory to A (Model) T

Jul 1, 1999

Morris Newman, Places, Vol. 14 No. 07 Jul 1999

RICHMOND RE-INVENTS A FORD PLANT AS HOUSING Thirty years after the start of the historic preservation movement, a debate has arisen in the preservation community on how best to save old buildings. Two camps have emerged: let's call them the Authenticizers and the Pragmatists. The Authenticizers are purists in preservation matters, and believe that buildings should be maintained, or returned, as closely as possible to their original condition and use. The Pragmatists, for their part, see ...

Did L.A. Overbid at Job Auction?

Jun 1, 1999

Deals, Morris Newman, Vol. 14 No. 06 Jun 1999

The gavel came down last year on the greatest job auction of all time: The State of Kentucky agreed to give Willamette Industries up to $8.8 million in tax credits for each new job the company would provide in the City of Hawesville. As it turned out Willamette created 105 jobs instead of the required 15, so the subsidy was only $1.26 million per job. In that light, the $35 million subsidy approved last month by the Los Angeles City Council to the developer of the Playa Vista development seems l...

The Difficult Birth of a Transit Village

May 1, 1999

Morris Newman, Places, Public Transit, TOD, Vol. 14 No. 05 May 1999

FRUITVALE: THE DIFFICULT BIRTH OF THE TRANSIT VILLAGE One of the ongoing issues of modern architecture ï¿½ and one of the story lines that keeps modern architecture interesting after so many false starts and blind alleys ï¿½ has been the struggle to arrive at a consensus on what exactly is the "right" form for new types of buildings. Imagine the situation of architect and urban planner a century ago. They had never dreamed of a gas station, a drive-in restaurant or a multiplex theater. Here is Henry v...

There's Nobility in Simplicity

Apr 1, 1999

Deals, Morris Newman, Vol. 14 No. 04 Apr 1999

We have grown suspicious of simplicity. We late 20th Century folk have come to equate complexity with competence. We tend to give the benefit of the doubt to things that have been over-intellectualized, over-wrought and over-papered. We want massive documents with hundreds of appendices that only consultants can read and interpret for us. The trend has given rise to a kind of info-snobbery: If a non-expert offers us an opinion, we tend to give it less weight than if a specialist weighs in on th...

Richmond City Center: The Virtues of Simplicity

Mar 1, 1999

Morris Newman, Places, Vol. 14 No. 03 Mar 1999

Heavens, how did we ever design cities before marketing existed? Sarcasm aside, let us observe that the Main Street movement, despite its harkening of the past, has not necessarily encouraged simplicity. In today's marketing-driven urban-design culture, it does not seem to be enough to bring back housing and commercial uses. We must also bring in giant retail centers and brand-name retailers (usually the same 50 or so names you find in regional malls). Then the city itself must be...

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