College Town – Still Not Ready for Prime Time
It’s back! Thanks to our tireless activist Joshua Ferguson, who snapped this picture up during a recent visit to City Hall this morning:
College Town originally came up before the Planning Commission on February 10, 2016. Opposition was so strong to the plan the opposition’s “Our Town Not College Town” signs started springing up faster than mushrooms and the Planning Commission meeting was packed with angry residents opposed to the proposal (full disclosure: I played a significant part in organizing the opposition to that plan). In the end, five members of the Planning Commission agreed that adding 10,000 residents while diverting even more traffic to Chapman by closing a portion of Nutwood was a ridiculously ill conceived the idea and the proposal was tabled.
So what is the new and presumably improved plan for College Town? Your guess is as good as mine, but the early picture isn’t encouraging.
See that website on the picture? The one that says www.collegetownfullerton.com? Go ahead and click the link. Here’s a screen capture of what you found when you checked as of todays’ date:
According to Google’s English/ Japanese translator the phrase above translates to “Chat lady’s job contents and rewards.” Your guess is as good as mine what that actually means, but I’m pretty sure it doesn’t mean “so tell us what you think about College Town.”
So how did this happen? Apparently, the City registered collegetownfullerton.com back in 2011, but they apparently allowed the domain name to lapse, allowing Chat lady here to swoop in an take over the domain around September 15, 2016.
A little personal anecdote: back in the 2012-2013 timeframe, the City complied with the notice requirement by sending out notice for around a dozen meetings with a smaller number of invitees (just 2 or so blocks at a time would be notified of each meeting) rather than inviting everyone in the affected area to one single meeting. The “informational” meetings would then be set up in the Chapman Park clubhouse, and they would set up for a full house, even though only a few people would actually show up, which the City used to create the impression that opposition to the concept was non-existent.
As infuriating as that strategy was, I had to at least admire its ingenuity. Personally I would have preferred that the City and Cal State Fullerton actually listened to residents before trying to shove their little sandwich down our throats a second time, but it is at least comforting to see that the Ernst Blofeld-level strategist behind the original campaign has been replaced by Dr. Evil. Off to a heck of a start.
Is that a shit sandwich?
Ummm.
And the lesson? It’s never over until staff says it’s over. Oh well, one more demerit for the hapless Karen Haloopa.
Word is Haluza’s been calling her predecessor who is now in Riverside, trying to get a job there.
Well, yes, technically, that is what it is. But the tomatoes are imported fresh from the Central Valley. And I love olives. You like olives too right? College Town has something for everyone.
“It’s never over until is over”
It is never over in Fullerton. The Fullerton club members will let it cool off for a period and come at you again.
College Town is nothing but a giant lobbying mechanism for Curt Pringle who’s run out of gas in Anaheim – mostly because there’s nothing left to heist.
Chat lady= paid phone friend… possibly with benefits… this is a recruiting site for ladies, includes details about a fake company you can tell your parents you work for, and how to handle being shy, also if you want to work via email or live cam.
Just FYI…
Thank you City of Fullerton you made my day with this one.
Always, always, always check your domain registration, before you post fliers.
She will love you a long time.
Actually there seems to be a great similarity between the new user and Fitzgerald’s seamy operation.
Thanks for the laugh. I needed one.
No problem. Brightened my whole day.
If indeed this monster is back it behooves everybody to find out WHY, and by whom? We know Fitzgerald was behind this and no doubt dropped it because of the election year. But who, besides her, wants it back?
Whitaker? Sebourn? Silva? let’s hear it.
Oh boy, now you people are against expanding our job base and our educational opportunities for our youth? Public transit? How can anyone be so antiquated in their thinking. Fullerton is by and large a progressive community and Jennifer Fitzgerald is moving us in the right direction. I am proud of the development plans we have for this community. The chamber of commerce is ecstatic about the prospects for economic growth in Fullerton. You all should be happy to live here.
Starting out a dissertation with the phrase, “you people”, is something contempuous that I can hear one of the JF’s (Jennifer Fitzgerald or Jan Flory) saying to a resident that sees right through their bullshit and calls them on it.
Either way, your not in good company when your acting like one of them.
Like your parents always told you, you’ll be judged on the company you keep, and let’s face it, these two hang out Jeremy Popoff, which IMHO, is the creepiest guy in
Fullerton.
Just sayin…
You, people. Strange strangers, how cannot you be exalted and go along with God’s plans?
And how does building massive high density apartments expand a job base or educational opportunities for “our youth?” It benefits developers and potential Pringle clients and that’s all SparkyFitz cares about. It does nothing for the people that already live here.
Fitzgerald is moving us down the crapper. The budget is busted and so are the roads. Fitzgerald is done. I can’t wait to see the look on her face when she gets served recall papers.
Gretchen Cox.
Apparently you think that there will be no down side to building College Town. That it’s only going to expand the job base and provide enhanced educational opportunities. Lets look at few minor issues that the College Town supporters don’t want to talk about.
For starters, if College Town is built as per the design pushed by the city, all of the businesses on the east side of the Chapman/State College intersection will be gone. Therefore, before you can start adding up all the expanded job base, you will need to factor in the 40 plus business that will be gone, along with all their employees. Next, according to the city plan, all the office/professional buildings on the north side of Chapman between Commonwealth and the 57 freeway will be removed. This will be at least 90,000 square feet of office space along with the businesses they house. Do you seriously think that all of these business will stick around and pay higher rent, just to stay in the same location? Assuming, of course, that there will be business/professional spaces to rent.
The big push from the city for College Town is money. All the new buildings will have current tax rates. No more Prop 13 for the old real estate. Therefore, higher rent for the businesses if they chose to stay. Next, the builders of all the residential units will need to pay a park dwelling fee of almost $12,000 per unit. Per unit, not per building. The city will have a one time windfall in the millions. Judging from past history in parks and rec, I have a hard time believing that this amount of money will be well spent, but maybe another park will need a multi-million dollar bridge and stairway. And I guess that Jennifer can always use all that money to continue to claim that the budget is balanced.
The other, and in some ways more important, issue is the businesses that will be closed. They all have employees who will be out of a job. Many of these businesses cater to a lower income demographic. College students usually aren’t rich, often just surviving. Tuition and fees at CSUF have gone up over 95% in the last 10 years while inflation has been 17%. And most of us don’t even want to think about book prices. For many, if not most people, wages haven’t kept up with inflation. Look at the neighborhoods in the area south of Chapman. Where do these people shop? Look at the businesses that will be displaced and see who will be hurt.
For starters, the only market in the area is the Smart and Final Extra. If replaced at all in College Town, it will be by a much poorer stocked and expensive “7-11” type of store. A telling point about who shops in these stores is that a Big Lots, a 99 Cent store, a Dollar Tree, along with a Goodwill thrift store can all thrive at one intersection. These stores help lower income residents survive. Please don’t try telling us that all will be replaced, with the same selection and same prices, in College Town. And I also think that a large number of the Office Depot customers are CSUF students who are happy to do business with Office Depot, with the larger selection and lower prices than the Titan Bookstore.
College Town suspiciously looks like a way for a developer to make a buck (or many bucks) and then leave without needing to live with the mess they’ve made of the city. High density traffic? Not my problem, I don’t live here. I always find it interesting that the minimum number of parking spaces required for developments over time always proves to be way under what is really needed. Not the developers problem. They’ll just go happily on to the next project/city and foist another development on to another group of unsuspecting residents.
But you can bet that the lobbyists will always get paid.
Well said, Lab Rat, actually very well said.
It will be fun to ride the trolley
If there’s a trolley look for Pringle’s fingerprints.
Clearly “Donna” is being sarcastic because she knows that most people that read this site are not idiots
CollegeTownFullerton.com allows residents, students, and other interested stakeholders a new way to share ideas, provide feedback, and make recommendations on a broad variety of issues impacting the new CollegeTown mixed-use sub-area.
CollegeTownFullerton.com uses new interactive web-based technology to better engage and listen to participants. “We are always looking for ways to better capture input and ideas from citizens. CollegeTownFullerton.com is a great way to interface with those people who would not typically attend a public meeting” said Charles Kovac, Project Manager from the City of Fullerton. “We are looking forward to hearing your ideas!”
That makes sense. The biggest idiot in City Hall saying the dumbest thing you’ve ever read. And now it’s not even true.
Bob the Builder, Seriously?
I suppose it is true those little Japanese girls being told to lie to their parents won’t be attending Fullerton public meetings.
And I suppose it’s true that a city government and its supporters who have perfected the art of lying to its citizens have no problem supporting this website. It is shocking that colleges, especially a Christian one, support it. Shows Fullerton has deteriorated into a hellish combination of incompetence and debauchery.
Could it be that there was never any intention of reading any comments on the website?
Yup, I can believe Fullerton would promote a website that teaches little girls how to lie to their parents about the way they are making money.
“CollegeTownFullerton.com uses new interactive web-based technology to better engage and listen to participants. “We are always looking for ways to better capture input and ideas from citizens. ” So Chat Lady is the city of Fullerton’s Orwellian way to capture input from citizens?