{"id":229173,"date":"2016-12-16T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-12-16T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sdnews.com\/frustrations-of-a-grantville-advocate\/"},"modified":"2016-12-16T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2016-12-16T08:00:00","slug":"frustrations-of-a-grantville-advocate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/frustrations-of-a-grantville-advocate\/","title":{"rendered":"Frustrations of a Grantville advocate"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Doug Curlee | Editor at Large<\/p>\n

Navajo Planners get an earful from fellow board member<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dan Smith is frustrated. He\u2019s about $30 million frustrated.<\/p>\n

The longtime Grantville developer and property owner has fought for years to clean up and develop the areas of Grantville that desperately need cleaning up and developing, and he\u2019s near the boiling point.<\/p>\n

Smith\u2019s property just north of Interstate 8 on Mission Gorge Road is continually flooded every time there\u2019s a rainstorm that causes Alvarado Creek to overflow its banks. He has pushed for years to get the creek widened, or deepened, or whatever it will take to fix the problem.<\/p>\n

At Wednesday\u2019s Navajo Community Planners meeting, Smith asked a question that\u2019s been on his mind a lot: Where is $30 million worth of developer impact fee money that Smith thinks \u2014 justifiably \u2014 ought to be spent in and around Grantville.<\/p>\n

\"Dan<\/a>
Dan Smith (right) looks over flood damage at one of his Grantville buildings he owns after a strom last winter. (File photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cThis money is somewhere,\u201d Smith said. \u201cWe assume it\u2019s sitting in a designated special account, but we don\u2019t know that. This was collected from developers in Grantville, and it ought to be spent in Grantville.\u201d<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, it doesn\u2019t always work that way.<\/p>\n

Matt Adams, chairman of the Navajo Planners, countered this way.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat money can be spent anywhere within the Navajo Community Plan area \u2014 it\u2019s not earmarked for Grantville.\u201d<\/p>\n

Smith knows that, but it doesn\u2019t make him happy.<\/p>\n

He had hoped to confront city staff about it, but none were there at the meeting.<\/p>\n

What did get accomplished was a decision to write letters to the city, and to Councilmember Scott Sherman\u2019s office, to see if a meeting, or series of meetings, with all the stakeholders in the Grantville redevelopment plans at the same table to see what can be hammered out to get something, anything, actually underway.<\/p>\n

Those meetings would necessarily include the city, CalTrans, the county, the regional Water Quality Control Board, and possibly the U.S Army Corps of Engineers. The Environmental Protection Agency would also be interested.<\/p>\n

There are major plans afoot for development in Grantville, which is why almost all the zoning there has been changed from industrial to commercial and residential applications.<\/p>\n

There will be a lot more money in developer impact fees collected as redevelopment proceeds, and Smith would like to see a coherent plan for spending that money wisely \u2014 and locally.<\/p>\n

Where would Smith start? That\u2019s easy.<\/p>\n

\u201cNothing can really be done in Grantville until the Alvarado Creek problem is solved,\u201d Smith said. \u201cThat\u2019s gotta be first on everybody\u2019s agenda, because that creek flood control problem affects nearly every project in Grantville.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014Doug Curlee is Editor at Large. Reach him at doug@sdcnn.com.<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Doug Curlee | Editor at Large<\/p>","protected":false},"author":766,"featured_media":229174,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11558","_seopress_titles_title":"Frustrations of a Grantville advocate","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11547,11558,11551,11550],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-229173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","category-mission-times-courier","category-news","category-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/766"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=229173"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229173\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/229174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=229173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=229173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=229173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}