Category: Fullerton’s Design Standards

Stucco, stucco, and stucco, Fullerton likes a da stucco and brick veneer

Posted onDowntown Fullerton

Harbor Blvd.: Open for Pedestrians

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Think of all the great people-oriented downtowns in Southern California. Old Town Pasadena and Orange. Westwood Village and San Diego’s Gaslamp section. Visit downtown Santa Monica or cruise PCH through downtown Manhattan Beach or Laguna Beach. Have you been on the main streets Beverly Hills or Balboa Island?

Think of the great people-oriented shopping and entertainment districts. Can you name just ONE that does NOT allow parking, passenger loading, valet service or even handicap access on its main business street?

There is only one: Fullerton.

After nearly a century of easy, convenient parking on Harbor Blvd. (called Spadra until 1960), parking was removed in 1982. The traffic engineers held sway then, and were more concerned about increasing traffic speeds than the survival of downtown businesses.

Now, 25 years later, their mistake needs to be rectified. Let Harbor be Harbor. Let it be a living, breathing people street by restoring access along Harbor Blvd! Let it be like Pasadena’s Colorado Blvd. or many other pedestrian oriented streets in thriving downtowns.

Downtown entrepreneur Sean Francis (Slidebar, Continental Room) has a plan to restore access on Harbor Blvd., between Wilshire and Commonwealth. This plan is supported by hundreds of signatories to a petition requesting a hearing before the Traffic Commission. Designed by KOA Engineering (who has done extensive work for the city) this plan would free up room for parking, loading zones, valet bays and handicap access in front of Harbor Blvd. businesses—while keeping 2 lanes of traffic.

This plan has been bottled up by mid-level City staff so far, but deserves a hearing before the Traffic Commission and City Council. And it deserves support.

Harbor Blvd. Parking Plan

Think if you owned Branagan’s.Your address is 213 N. Harbor, but when new customers find it, they can’t park there, or even stop to unload their kids or elderly grandmother. They must make a right on Amerige, another right into the rear parking lot, then try to find your rear entrance. This would all change with Sean’s plan. Opening Harbor would not add new parking spots, but it would allow room for valet service and passenger unloading. That convenience would mean a lot for business owners and their customers—as well as the general ambience of Harbor Blvd.

“Harbor Blvd.: Open for Pedestrians!”

Let Sean (who’s paying for the design study out his own pocket), your elected officials, your appointed traffic commissioners and the Downtown merchants know that you support restoring parking on Harbor Blvd.

A street is more than just a traffic pipeline. It must also serve the community through which it passes. Let Harbor be the street it once was—the kind of street it is yearning to be again!

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Posted onFullerton's Design Standards

GOVERNMENT AND GOOD DESIGN RARELY MIX

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And now, loyal Friends of Fullerton’s Future, we return to a theme a bit neglected of late, namely: our built environment, with an emphasis on both aesthetic and policy issues. In the past we have spent some time highlighting some really good examples of appalling public architecture and design paid for by the taxpayers.

Now let us cast our attention to an example of bad design foisted on a private commercial development by Fullerton’s own tasteless planning bureaucrats. Most of us have come to associate strip center developments with crappy design. Some folks blame the lack of aesthetic achievement on the tacky taste of commercial center’s owners, and there is no doubt that this is often a fair assessment. But what is not commonly appreciated is the role of government planners in the strip center development.

A case study is unfolding on Rosecrans and Euclid where an existing commercial center is undergoing a “facelift” (as Barbara Giasone would call it). In the coming weeks we will pictorially document progress on this site, although “progress” seems like such an inappropriate word!

Oh no! God-awful, tacked-on rooflets of various shapes and sizes – nothing more than useless vertical appendages enclosing wasted space and consuming perfectly good construction materials. The only redeeming thing about this work is that in twenty year’s time it too, will be torn away and replaced with something else.

We can see from the framing just what is being added – nothing of use. We may recall Louis Sullivan’s old saying: form ever follows function. Well, here Friends, is form with no function. “Ah, but what about beauty” some uninitiated readers may be inclined to cry. To which we can only reply that too many people are satisfied that a remodel of some kind is a guarantee of aesthetic improvement. We will document the emerging hodgepodge of roof add-ons and see if our readers agree with us!

Finally, we must relate the saddest part of this story. For some reason the owner of this project was required to undergo bureaucratic design review that apparently consisted of a low level planner foisting his own aesthetic preferences of design propriety for this site onto the owner. We believe what is emerging on Rosecrans and Euclid shows all the design traits of bureaucratic interference. We are not sure why this review was even necessary in the first place; its effectiveness will soon be very evident, indeed!

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