October 23, 2009December 29, 2009Arts & Architecture

God-awful “Fox Village” Gets Even Worse!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUWTXt0TRkQ

Remember those horror movies when the outraged villagers grabbed their pitchforks to have at the monster? What the “Fox Village” monster could use are a few more angry villagers.

At the City Council “workshop” on Tuesday the new plans for the existing city-created empty space behind the Fox Theater were rolled out. And while the reception by the public wasn’t pretty it wasn’t enough to kill off the monster, either.

What was rolled out were several elevations that raised the curtain on a hideously confused jumble of themes and materials that were supposed to be modernish, but that had that certain flavor of architectural renderings done by crazy people.

A hodgepodge of shapes and veneers with no apparent cohesion and not a whiff of aesthetic originality. Stone veneer on the first floor obligatory.

Have Fox Villagers gone insane? What a mish mash!

Why are they still trying to move McDonald’s? Didn’t the Council put that idea to rest? And yet here it is again! Can anyone say “insubordination”? Guess not – in Fullerton! And look a parking lot on the corner. Just what downtown needs – another permanent hole in the building fabric of downtown Fullerton.

Ah, the inevitable “pedestrian paseo.” Just lookit all the happy, bedazzled consumers. And that fountain! Precious. Makes you want to make a wish and toss three coins in.

Folks if you aren’t ready to go grab your pitchforks by now, we suggest that we stick a fork in you – because we think you’re done.

October 23, 2009October 23, 2009Arts & Architecture

New Parking Structure Approved. More Brick Veneer in Our Future

by The Fullerton Harpoon8 Comments

On Tuesday our City Council took up the matter of the proposed parking structure on Santa Fe. Since we first reported on this issue City Staff has maintained its ludicrous attachment to the brick veneer panels, and its equally ludicrous position that fake brick somehow satisfies some sort of CEQA requirement – even though WE HAVE COMPLETELY DEMOLISHED THE MYTH OF BRICK AND REALITY OF BRICK VENEER IN DOWNTOWN FULLERTON.

Such a lame approach insults not only our aesthetic sensibilities, but it also turns the whole environmental review process into a pantomime that just provides staff cover for what it really wants: fake brick.

CONSIDER THIS: THE MONEY SAVED BY ELIMINATING THE USELESS BRICK COULD GO TO ESTABLISHING SOLAR PANELS ON THE BUILDING AND ENHANCING ITS SUSTAINABILITY QUOTIENT.

September 25, 2009September 25, 2009Arts & Architecture

Happy 50th Anniversary Sunny Hills H.S.!

by admin12 Comments

POST UPDATE:

A Taste of Sunny Hills

Our 50th Anniversary Celebration will officially begin with “A Taste of Sunny Hills: A Taste of Talent, Food and Reunions”, on Saturday, September 26, 2009 from 4:00 p.m. until 8:00 p.m.

Bring your family and join us on the Sunny Hills campus for:

– “Tastes” from local restaurants include: Beach Pit BBQ, Chomp, Cafe Hidalgo, Slidebar, Heroes, Phan 55, Koba Grill, Hashigo Sushi, El Matador Cantina, Top Class Pizza, Twin Dragon Chinese Food, Rutabegorz, EHF Fundraising, Lascari’s, and Cajun Swamp!

– A special “KidZone” sponsored by the agriculture department with carnival games and a petting zoo. Jamba Juice will be available in the “KidZone” along with kettle corn and a “candy store.”

– “Reunion Row,” a special place to reconnect with classmates from years past and relive high school memories.

– Live entertainment venues featuring music, comedy and dance from incredible Sunny Hills student and alumni entertainers.

– 50th birthday cake will be served with coffee provided by Starbucks.

Admission for the event is free.

I have received several emails from Friends inquiring about examples of sustainable design in Fullerton. Sunny Hills High School is a great example of sustainable design.

Concrete structure, steel framed windows both on the north and south sides of all the classroom buildings were built to last; a great cantilevered roof design provides ample shade while still allows natural light and ventilation to pass through thus not needing HVAC all the time.

The roofs have the perfect pitch and design to accept solar panels for future conversion. When I found out that SHHS opened 50 years ago today, it confirmed the theory that good design will assure that buildings will last for as long as the materials they were built out of will let them.

The new school just around the corner is just 5 years old, and is already starting to fall apart – but more about that in a separate post.

September 20, 2009October 20, 2009Arts & Architecture

Oh No, Brick Veneer Again!

by The Fullerton Harpoon16 Comments

UPDATE: THE CITY COUNCIL IS SCHEDULED TO TAKE UP THE MATTER OF THE PARKING STRUCTURE AND ITS DESIGN AT TODAY’S MEETING. SINCE WE REPORTED ON THIS ISSUE CITY STAFF HAS REFUSED TO CHANGE ITS LUDICROUS POSTION THAT THE FAKE BRICK SOMEHOW SATISFIES SOME SORT OF CEQA REQUIREMENT – EVEN THOUGH WE HAVE COMPLETELY DEMOLISHED THE MYTH OF BRICK AND REALITY OF BRICK VENEER IN DOWNTOWN FULLERTON.

SUCH A LAME APPROACH INSULTS NOT ONLY OUR AESTHETIC SENSIBILITIES, BUT IT ALSO TURNS THE WHOLE ENVIRONMENTAL REVIEW PROCESS INTO A CHARADE THAT JUST SECURES FOR STAFF WHAT THEY WANT: BRICK VENEER.

CONSIDER THIS: THE MONEY SAVED BY ELIMINATING THE USELESS BRICK COULD GO TO ESTABLISHING SOLAR PANELS ON THE BUILDING AND ENHANCING ITS SUSTAINABILITY QUOTIENT.

They just can’t seem to help themselves. Not long ago the City held a “stake holder” gathering that was supposed to display three alternative plans for the proposed new parking structure on Santa Fe Avenue. No sooner had the meeting begun than it became apparent it was going to be one of those typical “here’s what we’re doing so sit down and shut up” meetings.

The image above shows what the City wants the building to look like. The architectural elements look okay except for the hideous brick veneer – that tomato soup colored stuff you see on the building. Brick veneer. The lazy Redevelopment bureaucrat’s material of choice. We recently wrote about it in a pithy post here .

Why would anybody put a brick veneer on a concrete parking structure? Who would put lipstick on a pig? Brick panels spanning impossibly long spaces look simply idiotic – even to the layman who could sense intuitively that brick has little tensile strength; but unfortunately this type of masquerade is par for Fullerton’s aesthetic course – displaying once again the curious parochialism of Fullerton’s taste makers.

But brick veneer is not only stupid architecturally, but is a big waste of money, to boot. And it contradicts the General Plan Advisory Committee’s adopted “sustainability” policy in the General Plan Update, since it serves no function and will have to be replaced when it falls off.

Fortunately it’s not too late to make the right choice here. But we’re not holding our breath.

September 19, 2009December 30, 2009Arts & Architecture

Downtown Fullerton: The Brick Myth, The Reality of Brick Veneer, and The Legacy of Schlock

by admin27 Comments

We published a couple of posts a few days ago on the new parking structure planned on Santa Fe Avenue, and how it is proposed to be faced with brick veneer here and here .

You may remember that I got to thinking about why the city staff would tell the RDRC that the $40,000,000 parking structure must have brick veneer; and that I asked one of the RDRC Board members that very same question, and the answer I got was that staff told the Committee that the City has to use brick veneer because it was a “State” requirement to meet the CEQA guidelines. (I also noted that the use of fake brick is in complete contrast to the sustainable design the General Plan Advisory Committee has spend the last 3 years discussing and recommending to the City Council).

CEQA? Yes CEQA he said, because there’s a provision in the CEQA guidelines that requires mitigation of any visual impacts. In other words, since the new parking structure was being built with structural concrete, and the surrounding downtown has many brick-looking buildings, using the brick veneer would cause no visual impact on the environment. I say “brick-looking” because so many of the buildings in downtown Fullerton are faced with fake brick veneers, facades that are not historic, and some of which, in fact, were stuck-on older buildings during the course of Redevelopment in the last 30 years. And many of these were subsidized by the taxpayers of Fullerton.

How do I know this? I did a building facade survey of downtown from the RR tracks to Chapman and from Malden to Pomona. I documented the principal “building skin” of each structure. The results didn’t surprise me, but they may surprise you; they should shock the Redevelopment and Planning Department “experts” who not only have been tolerating, but actually promoting this material over the years – seemingly in an effort to keep downtown “historical” looking. Boy, did they get it wrong.

Here are the results of the survey:

24 Brick veneer

2 Flagstone veneer

9 Real brick & clay block

3 Glazed & fluted brick

24 stucco & plaster

20 Concrete, concrete block & terra cotta

And here is a useful overhead image with the various exterior materials colored in on each of the building’s footprint. Notice how few real brick buildings there are; and of these only a couple are red brick – the crap of choice among Fullerton’s bureaucratic tastemakers. The buildings with substantial brick venerers are pink.

Using CEQA to bolster the poor design choices of the past is pretty bad. Let’s hope this post will help end the travesty of bad and cheap looking architecture based on erroneous assumptions, and that California’s environmental laws will never be used again by city staff to foist this garbage on us.

August 28, 2009December 30, 2009Arts & Architecture

The RDRC and Jay Eastman Take A Curtain Call

by admin16 Comments

Don’t say we didn’t warn you. Because we did. In previous posts here and here, we tracked the progress (if you really want to use that word) of the strip center at Euclid and Rosecrans. Well, the scaffolding has come down and what’s revealed ain’t purty.

Our theme here was wasted space and building materials and of course, The City’s dubious commitment to the idea of sustainability. And our purpose was not to dwell upon the poor aesthetic choices made by the owner of this center. Instead we chose to focus on the City’s role in this aesthetic disaster. For some reason the Development Services Department (they serve developers) decided that this non-subsidized, private remodel needed to go to the hapless Redevelopment Design Review Committee – even though it is miles from a Redevelopment area.

Planner Jay Eastman made it clear that the RDRC intended to impress its preferences unto this site – no doubt assisted by Mr. Eastman himself. Let’s let Barbara Giasone help us with our narrative from a May1, 2008 story:

“The proposed remodel was reviewed by the Redevelopment Design Review Committee last week, but the panel felt the design was commonplace and didn’t reflect the character of the neighborhood, Acting Chief Planner Jay Eastman said. The architect was asked to look at the surrounding neighborhood with terms like “country,” “rural” and “equestrian,” Eastman added.”

Country. Rural. Equestrian. Got it?

The ensuing visual train wreck of disjointed parts, shed and gable roofs, the weird confusion of masonry veneer and stucco, and all the wasted attic space with its dinky windows provide a suitable denouement, fifteen months later, for this cautionary tale. If the property owner had been left to his own devices it is hard to conceive anything worse being done – and it could have been done a lot less expensively.

We wonder just what sort of idiots our staff and their RDRC think inhabit rural equestrian areas.

August 26, 2009September 11, 2009Arts & Architecture

Fullerton Junior College Subjected to More Horrors!

by admin18 Comments

Just in case you thought the North Orange County Community College District couldn’t possibly inflict any more architectural damage to what was once a quite lovely campus at FJC – you’d better think again.

The latest addition to an already overbuilt campus is this multi-storied monstrosity that bears all the hall-marks of the new bond-built FJC buildings: hollow and stuccoed walls, fake arches, and an overbearing presence that sort of sucks the life right out of you. No need to guess what’s coming:McSpanish Dinosaur!

Pretty soon all those wasteful hollow metal stud walls will be wrapped in lathing and then plastered to present the appearance of masonry; Styrofoam cornices will be tacked on to gratify the sort of taste that demands a hat on a mannequin; phony wrought iron accoutrements will be lagged into the plaster and then the administration can pat itself on the back for another job well-done.

Geez, that's really gonna be awful.. — Another embarrassing erection at FJC...

By the way, if you look carefully you’ll notice some sort of cupola emerging on the roof. Is another foolish clock tower avec dome on the way? We’ll be sure to keep you up to date on the latest architectural embarrassment at FJC.

August 21, 2009December 28, 2009Arts & Architecture

Redevelopment Hard at Work on South Raymond? Big Toy #1?

by The Fullerton Harpoon4 Comments

Hey, that's not a bad looking elevation!

Fullerton has a whole gaggle of Redevelopment “project managers” looking for something to do. One of them, Nicole Coates, was quoted in an August 4th, 2009 Barabara Giasone Register article with regard to the sale of the old Stone Container plant on S. Raymond Avenue –part of the new redevelopment expansion area. Hmm.

Supposedly the property is being sold out of a bankruptcy court to a Newport Beach developer for a song. According to the article the new owners are going to try to use the physical plant on an interim basis, until it can be demolished – and, presumably, redeveloped.

But redeveloped as what, and with whose money? In the article, the new owner makes no promises after “demolition.” Will the land remained zoned for industrial use? Maybe. Maybe not. Barbara didn’t ask.

We’re picking up the strong vibe of a big new toy for our redevelopment staff to play with that will provide job security and lots of new property tax increment. What kind of toy? Use your imagination. “Mixed Use” springs most readily to mind, although the site is a loser for commercial retail – which means the usual formula would be applied: lots of housing and some facade commercial just for appearances.

But they did such a nice job at the Platinum Triangle!

It seems pretty obvious that the Redevelopment expansion map-makers have had their eye on this site for some time. We wonder if discussions with redevelopment staff were going on before the City Council even voted for the Redevelopment expansion.

And we wonder what they are planning for us.

August 19, 2009January 4, 2010Arts & Architecture

The City is Violating Its Own Law in Hillcrest Park

by Fred L. Olmsted7 Comments

If you’ve driven along Brea Boulevard lately you will have noticed that the north hill side of Hillcrest Park has been completely scraped as part of the so-called Lions Field improvements. Well, the hillside was suffering from total (and I mean complete) negligence on the part of the City for decades. What is being built, are large retaining structures to “stabilize” the slope. The only problem is that what the slope needed to stabilize it was appropriate landscaping – a solution that the parks Department ignored for years.

The addition of retaining structures in the park is inappropriate. More than that, it’s illegal. Hillcrest Park is a designated Fullerton Landmark (#6) and as such the types of alteration being proposed should have been reviewed in a public hearing by the Landmarks Commission. This never happened. It’s true that Hillcrest Park doesn’t fit into any of the categories included in the watered-down version of the Landmarks Ordinance passed by the City about 12 years ago. But adherence to the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards is one key. Another issue is that of demolition and replacement of historic elements. Even the watered down code has a spirit that has not been observed.

Once again the City has ignored its own laws, laws that you or I would be expected to follow. It has specifically ignored the Landmark Ordinance once again, a part of the Zoning Code that the City has habitually and serially abused over the years (if you want I’ll make a list).

For years the City has turned over the park to pervs and low-lifes while ignoring the historic built environment. And now it seems they are embarked on another form of abuse of an historic resource.

August 14, 2009December 30, 2009Arts & Architecture

The North Platform Fiasco – Allegro Molto e Vivace

by The Fullerton Harpoon12 Comments

Loyal and Patient Friends, our sad narrative of The Great North Platform Disaster now draws to a merciful conclusion. We have shared all the dismal failures of the landscape architect, Steve Rose, the Redevelopment manager in charge, Terry Galvin, and Design Review Committee members that were evidently incompetent or unqualified.

Trees and planters block the platform; staff obstruction was almost as bad.

The design failure was complete and palpable. Yet as diverse groups of citizens displayed their unhappiness with the ludicrous and costly elements of the project, the City Staff dug in their heels in a rear guard action to deflect blame by ignoring the obvious and fighting to keep the mess they had created. Newly minted City Manager Jim Armstrong led the effort to defend the indefensible. He went so far as to accuse one of the leading critics of the design mess of “making the City look like shit.”

Former Fullerton City Manager Jim Armstrong shovelling hard. — Former Fullerton City Manager Jim Armstrong doing what he did best: shovelling hard.

The City Council, to its credit, would have none of it. They ordered construction halted. Even the Fullerton Observer demanded to know who was in charge. In what may have been the last show of independence by a Fullerton City Council, the majority demanded that the incongruous and useless elements be removed. The lone dissenting vote was that of Molly McClanahan, the eternal staff suck-up, who as Mayor tried backdoor sabotage with the State – which was also providing funding for the project. City staff was going into attack mode behind the scenes.

well fed and ready to attack... — Honest citizen tastes like chicken?

In the end the Council (with the sole exception of Chris Norby) lost its collective nerve and settled on a partial removal of the worst offending aspects of the project. The huge planter was split into pieces, allowing platform access through the middle.

The miserable trees were completely removed.

Look ma, no trees... — The urban forest retreats. Civilization on the march...

The canopies were salvaged though the construction of alcoves cut out of the still useless block bulkhead wall.

Fullerton platform "alcove" designed by our City Council...

The wretched benches and comical little trash cylinders remain to this day. Go to the depot. You can check it out for yourselves.

It was never disclosed whether Steve Rose was back-charged for the cost of all the changes that had to be made, or whether he actually billed the City for remedial design work. Thousands upon thousands of dollars were wasted on building useless construction and then having to remove it. And what happened to the parties responsible for this complete fiasco? You mean you can’t guess by now?

We'll be hanging on to this card... — Oh, we'll be hanging on to this...

Nothing, of course. The proponents of sensible and functional design were blamed by staff for making the City look bad; the whistle blowers were turned into the villains of the melodrama. Chalk up another big win for the escape artists at the Fullerton Redevelopment Agency.