Our Agency is always conscious of trying to keep down the cost of governmental services to taxpayers.” He added there were “two copies in the City Clerk’s office, and three copies in our office for public use at no cost.” Please enjoy reading those 300+ pages while standing at a service desk. URA director Burns countered, “The Environmental Impact Report is costly to purchase because it is costly to prepare. For instance, the Environmental Impact Report is costly to purchase and there is only one non-circulating copy in the Library.” Dolores Clayton remarked, “We would hope that the Urban Renewal Agency would make much greater efforts than it has in the past to get citizen input into the Project. Odd choices and/or naiveté aside, it seemed Santa Rosa really didn’t want the public to know what was in the EIR. The work was never mentioned by the paper again and was otherwise ignored choosing it to symbolize a project expected to redefine the city into the next century was simply bizarre. From what I can gather from the Press Democrat’s coverage at the time, the Arts Council had a grant to commission a work of civic art and that was the only viable submission. It’s a drawing of a sculpture erected in 1971 near City Hall (a photo can be seen at the end of this article). It’s a lesser quib, but even their logo on the EIR report reflects out-of-town cluelessness. Because of the inconvenience and hardship in either climactic extreme, an enclosed mall was considered a must…one only has to carry a shopping bag a block or so in driving rain to recognize the desirable aspects of an enclosed “shopper’s street.” 1 She commented, “I think it is a little silly today to be espousing that large of an air conditioned area in a city like Santa Rosa that really doesn’t need air conditioning.” Architect Bolles’ answer suggested he thought the city was somewhere in the tropics and beset with monsoons: The climate of Santa Rosa is well known for wet winters and hot, dry summers. Donna Born asked why it needed to be a sealed-up fortress and cited the “energy crisis,” which was the top news story of early 1974. Some of the official replies make you wonder if these experts even visited town. As far as I can tell, none of the interviewees contributed information or expressed a public opinion about the mall and redevelopment project, either pro or con. Instead, the people they spoke to included a pharmacist best known for collecting old bottles a driver’s ed teacher the two women who researched Carrillo family history and the guy who ran the Robert Ripley museum. Not one of the well-informed commenters listed in the sidebar were interviewed. This is chapter eight of the series just about the downtown mall)Ĭritics jumped on the uneven quality of the EIR, but I’ll preface that discussion by noting the consultants didn’t make much of an effort to learn about Santa Rosa or the history of the project. (Here’s also a reminder that this is part of a broader series on Santa Rosa redevelopment: “ YESTERDAY IS JUST AROUND THE CORNER,” which includes an index covering everything on the topic going back to the 1960s. Burns Executive Director of the Urban Renewal Agency (URA) Peter Bolles Shopping mall architect (also son and partner of John Savage Bolles, who designed Candlestick Park) William (Bill) Smith Codding Enterprises attorney who attended every public hearing regarding the mall and redevelopment of the project area For reference sake, these six people contributed most to topics discussed here:ĭonna Born Planning Commission Chairpersonĭolores Clayton League of Women Voters President Remarks from over two dozen individuals, companies and firms can be found in the final EIR but many were technical in nature. In any EIR that last volume is worth a close read because it almost always has more of the real lowdown about what’s going on. Their replies appeared in the final EIR, which was released Oct. Questions were directed to city staff, the project architect or others involved. In the following thirty days anyone could comment on what was found (or not found) in the draft. A 321-page draft version written by a San Mateo company was delivered to Santa Rosa a few days before Christmas 1973. State law requires a study be prepared before construction begins on a major project like that and it mostly addresses the sort of issues you might expect – will the project create air pollution, harm water quality, overload power lines, etc. The document was the Environmental Impact Report (EIR) related to the downtown shopping mall proposed by Los Angeles developer Ernest W. Had City Council members actually read and understood their own report, they might have discovered their pet project was probably going to ruin downtown Santa Rosa.
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