Come on, let’s work together
I have been involved with Five Points improvements for the past six?years, first as one of the leaders of the work group and later being?involved when I joined the Uptown Partnership Board in 2007. I lived and worked in Five Points until 2008. (I still retain a small?studio-storage space on Columbia.) I was the person who resurrected the name Five Points for the community. (My architecture practice focuses on historical restoration- research.) I also provided urban design for the community pro bono.
There are a few business people in the community who circulated a petition earlier this year which looked to secede from Uptown Partnership. It ultimately contributed to the demise of future work in the area. Petitions are of course fine and encouraged, but the facts of the petition were not correct. In my recollection, the petition falsely claimed that Uptown Partnership was not using the parking money for the Five Points Community, had done nothing for the community and plan to tax everyone. The fact is Uptown Partnership has funded and worked with the neighborhood in a capacity greater than the revenue generated in the area. In my eyes this is why it its important to have a larger pool of money, Uptown general fund, so disadvantaged areas such as Five Points can have extra money for needed work.
Interstate Five and the airport create noise and pollution that is a severe handicap in this area. Through Uptown Partnership leadership, the community had 25 new parking spaces installed in Nov. 2007 and produced a community plan for the area in?2009. Others in the other Uptown areas were upset that we spent more money on Five Points than Park West or Hillcrest. Together these individuals effectively made funding for work in the Five Points area in?2011 and beyond severely limited.
I volunteered much time to improve the area along with a number of good people in Five Points. It was great to work with these individuals: Janet Fairbanks, leader of Study for Uptown Partnership (recently deceased and will be missed.); Jackie McGurk and her husband, Jim; Bill Zilch; Sean (on Columbia St.); Tom Littell; Chris and Mary Gluck, Wine Vault and Bistro; Paul Crawford, Shakespeare Pub; Judd, Blue Water; Aaron, Gelato Vero; and Richard Stegner of Mission Hills business district. Big thanks to Lydia A Guoularte-Ruiz of Redevelopment Agency for providing funding for a large area study involving professionals Joe?De La Garza and Nick Delorenzo. The above people deserve credit for the success we had. I will miss participation with them.
We still have a valuable community plan outline which can be a guide for?future improvements when reasonable people decide to work together?rather than divide people. ?
John Eisenhart
San Diego
An insult to our intelligence
Your front page story about the recent opening of a “Fresh and Easy” in North Park is appalling (“Thinking outside the big box,” Oct. 1). Opening a giant chain retail store in a strip mall style building and putting the words “neighborhood market” on it is “thinking outside the big box”? You have got to be kidding me. North Park Produce is thinking outside the big box. OB Peoples Market is thinking outside the big box and is eco friendly design,
http://www.obpeoplesfood.coop/aboutframe.htm
Simply because you used a few “energy star” products (which the media has revealed is a big scam) or LED lights inside this corporate stucco box does not make it eco friendly design. Look at Peoples in OB. They have used oriented strand board in the entire design and construction, which is all recycled wood. They used recycled content steel, recycled and sustainably harvested building materials, photovoltaics on the roof and on and on
This is an insult to our intelligence. Let me guess; they probably received “redevelopment” dollars to build this. That’s why Jerry Sanders is quoted in here. I’m appalled.
FYI I have a master’s degree in architecture and I continue to see this particular “style” or lack of style being built with tax dollars and praised as “redevelopment” when it is quite simply “development” at its worst. Other cities that have figured out how to develop successfully, like Portland, Oregon, would never build this sort of garbage.
Christine Mann
North Park
