Visalia - Visalia’s wait to site a major sports park, with acres of fields for softball and soccer, may be about over. The Visalia city council expected to take up a vote to buy some 83 acres owned by the Shannon family at Riggin and Highway 63 at the July 17 council meeting.
The Shannon orchard is one of two sites being considered by the council to
site a major sports in town - the other being eastside acreage owned by Brian
Blain.
The city planning commission is already processing an annexation request to
bring the Shannon property into the city. The project is a major development
of some 680 acres from Demaree to Highway 63 along Riggin. It would
include about 500 acres of new residential development for the city, a future
elementary school site, and nearly 100 acres of commercial property on the
city’s northern edge. The entire site is currently planted to walnuts.
Near Dinuba Highway (63) and Riggin there would be a major sports park facility.
This week the city planning commission approved a request to forward the annexation application to the city council who will take up the application sent to LAFCO at the same July 17 meeting. The city has been working with the Shannon family and their developer Craig Mangano on the project for about a year. In the past few years the city has suggested it would like to receive requests from property owners to sell their land to the city for a major sports park - the first such park to be built since construction of Plaza Park when the city was less than half its current size. The city did receive proposals and narrowed the choice to four sites. One site on Santa Fe south of Caldwell was purchased by a buyer who sought to keep the acreage in farming. Now the choice is down to two location with the Shannon ranch site expected to get the council’s nod.
Mayor Don Landers notes the city already has budgeted some $1.2 million a
few years ago when the started this process and that fund may new approach
$5 million. “We received nearly $1.2 million from the recent statewide
Parks and Recreation bond that passed last year,” says Landers helping to
bolster the fund. Landers has championed the sports park to help youth
and adult sports activities in a town that can’t seem to get enough of it.
Visalia - The west coast association of Quakers is looking at building a major conference center near Visalia attracted by the local Visalia Friends group offer of donated land, a central state location and oakstudded site with a nature preserve right next door. “They’ve caught onto our dream of Quaker Oaks,” says association board member Bill Lovett, whose offer of donating 23 acres plus a vision of a center that can accommodate 500 or more conferees has led to a formal agreement with the Pacific Yearly Meeting of Friends to pursue the project. Lovett says the value of the complex could easily top $7 million with over 50 acres devoted to the conference center, including a number of acres that would be farmed cooperatively.
In recent weeks the plan moved to the next level with several donations including a $500,000 donation that will allow the project to hire a planner in the next month to submit permit plans to the County.
Already on 2 acres of Bill and Beth Lovett’s property, five minutes east of Visalia next to Kaweah Oaks Preserve, sits a smaller 100 to 150-person meeting house used by the Visalia Friends, three other local churches and by agencies as a retreat facility. But the proposed complex would be scattered over 50 acres featuring a main meeting room, a dining room and kitchen facility and dormitories along with likely seven residences and the cooperative farm out buildings.
The location of the center as a place of nature study has taken root because adjacent the Lovett home is a large apparently natural pond/wetlands area where tules grow and oaks that in the year since the seven-year drought ended have grown in the sandy soil like weeds sprouting 50 ft. tall. The Lovetts are avid gardeners and have a seven-acre Christmas tree farm on the site.
The Lovetts bought property east of town about 20 years ago. Lovett was looking to retire from Self Help Enterprise where he had worked for a number of years having moved here at the same time as Bob Marshall - another Quaker from Pennsylvania. Marshall was to go on to be executive director of the fast-growing farmworker housing agency. Lovett was trained as an architect and builder who liked to meld his skill with his philosophy.
Quakers have a value system that prompts them to pursue “this world” activities putting their hands where their spirit leads them - often joining to push for peace and social justice with the emphasis on local community involvement. A number of Quakers located to the Visalia area in the 50s and 60s to work with the fast-growing Self Help housing group that had been founded by the San Francisco office of the American Friends Service Committee. Besides founding the Self Help Enterprise agency, Quakers sponsored the founding of Scicon conservation camp in Tulare County before it was spun off to the Tulare County Dept. of Education.
So it’s not surprising that Lovett and other local Quakers have decided to
think big again - to found another project that could have long-lasting impact
locally.
After the Lovetts bought their property in 1979, the newly-founded Visalia
Friends group “often met in our backyard and later under a huge valley oak
at our new farm. Thinking to name our new farm, our youngest daughter
jokingly suggested “Quaker Oaks,” and the name stuck.
“Our youngest child and only son, Borton, was just completing High School.
He was somewhat educationally handicapped, but loved machinery and farming,
so we decided to start a Christmas tree farm, making him a partner and future
operator of the business. Sadly, in his senior year he was struck and
killed by a drunk driver, ending that dream, but the tree farm continued,
now growing 7000- 8000 trees.
Lovett continues, “As Beth and I approach ‘really’ retiring we have begun
to look for a future use for this very special place, now adjoined by another
special place ‘Kaweah Oaks Nature Preserve.’ None of our daughters is interested
in farming, so when we pass on they would sell and it would probably end up
as a housing project. That’s not our dream! After much prayerful
searching we have donated our remaining 23 acres to the Pacific Yearly Meeting,
our regional Quaker body, on the condition that it be used as an education
and retreat center open to all faiths, with a strong emphasis on conservation,
social justice, and sustainable agriculture. Pacific Yearly Meeting
has established Pacific Friends Outreach Society (PFOS), a non-profit corporation
to own and operate this facility and our family has a seat on its board of
directors to help insure that the dream becomes reality.”
Lovett describes his vision of Quaker Oaks - “We dream of a wooded campus
with minimal night lighting, with parking well screened from the road and
under walnut trees - no ugly acres of paving! It is our dream that the
meeting rooms, classrooms, rooms and dormitories, needed to shelter several
hundred visitors will be simple, energy efficient and “low-tech” possibly
using natural wood, adobe, straw bales and native stone, screened and shaded
by lots of oaks and other trees. When we first acquired this property
20 years ago there were no new oak trees because the land had been grazed
by horses and cattle. Our peacocks and sheep do not eat baby oaks so
now there are hundreds, some with trunks 12 to 16 inches in diameter.
“Some camping will be offered in the wooded area next to the preserve, as
well as space for the Native American gatherings that have blessed this wooded
area. Camping will enable lower income families to attend the events.
We hope to offer Scicon type day trips of nature and environmental instruction
for younger children. SCICON, the Clemmy Gill School for Science and
Conservation currently serves 5th and 6th graders. It was started by
a Quaker, Charles Rich and others and is now operated by Tulare County Dept.
of Education.
“Friends of the project are purchasing the six 5-acre lots just north of our farm and will utilize the home sites while allowing the bulk of the land to be returned to farming, thus insuring good separation between the retreat center and our current neighbors. It is our dream that much of the fruit and vegetables served at the center will be grown organically on this land.”
Lovett says he believes the regional Quaker group will use the facility for yearly meetings in August, but “run the place like a business” offering the site to statewide groups who want an affordable meeting site that is close to nature. “Nature study is very big today.” Lovett expects it is likely to be used on an all-year basis often with visitors looking to book a block of hotel rooms in town. “The community will enjoy the economic benefit of visitors that come for the weekend and leave their money in town when they go home,” he says.
Currently the statewide group holds their meetings and camps on the coast or college campuses, but a site in the middle of the state that is their own has strong attraction. “There is some hesitation of some who have never visited the site,” says Lovett who says the hesitation is overcome when they see how green the place is with its majestic oaks and rich farmland. Then there is the weather. “We want their visit to be a comfortable one - since the annual meeting is in August,” says Lovett, so the accommodations once they open will be fully air conditioned. “There’s lots of infrastructure work” that needs to be done prior to any building activity. The site will have its own sewer system and large pool for emergency fire fighting - doubling as a big community swimming pool, of course. The warm summer months have been a concern admits Lovett but the yearly meeting is being helped in places like Chico this year - with about the same summer temps.
Lovett says there is probably a year of planning and approval that needs to be accommodated with the County before any of the work moves forward. In the meantime, the group is getting donations and stockpiling the money it will need to carry out the ambitious project. Lovett says that for the project to be fnalized PFOS must invest at least $1 million in the project in the first five years. The contract began about a year ago. PFOS is proposing that the 330 acre Kaweah Oaks Nature Preserve next door will be available to attendees with its own monitored entrance on the west side of the preserve into the trail system - an advantage for Kaweah Oaks owners - the Four Creeks Land Trust who will get additional “stewards” to care for the preserve.
"As the city of Visalia continues its expansion to the east, I feel that
our Quaker Oaks Retreat and Education Center will fill an important cultural
need and serve as a protective buffer to the wetlands and the Kaweah Oaks
Preserve and retain much of the agricultural nature of our area. That's our
dream and our gift to our grandchildren and to yours too."
Visalia - After four years of planning and negotiating developers of a 72-room four-story Comfort Suites hotel have purchased land for the project from the city of Visalia and expect to break ground within 30 days. Leading the investment group is Visalian Anil Chagan, a partner who has also recently developed the Three Rivers Holiday Inn and Hanford Comfort Inn, and is currently working on a new hotel for Tulare. Chagan pegs the value of the Visalia project, located at Church and Acequia, at $4.4 million.
“Since it is in downtown we knew it would take time to work out all the details,” says Chagan who has picked the exact color of the hotel but is working with a group from the Downtown Visalians and Alliance in the next week to finalize plans. Not everybody is happy with the way things turned out. Objecting early on to the design of the project has been council member Jim Harbottle who went on record against it in the last few weeks in a 4-to-1 council vote on changes in the projects parking ratio since he may include a restaurant in the project’s leased space - 5500 sq ft on the ground floor along Church St. Chagan says a mix of retail and restaurant space is likely at the corner across from the Convention Center.
The tension of the project amounted to downtown and city pressure to upgrade the quality of the design to as high a standard that the developer could afford, says assistant city manager Dianne Guzman. “It will have a quality look to it,” insists Guzman. Over the course of the negotiations, talks insured the project would not have in-room air conditioners sticking out the windows, the amount of stucco and other facing on the project, pushing for a slate roof on the tower of the hotel, the entry and exit design and window dressing, she says. Harbottle had complained that the concrete exteriors of the projects in the area created a stark “Soviet style” look he objected to.
With the matter of the appearance of the hotel set, Chagan says the benefit to the city should be to attract families and commercial travelers to downtown with the unique all-suites accommodations. “The Convention Center should also be able to attract larger meetings and conventions,” says Chagan who says there are plans for “joint marketing.” The project is designed to work with the new parking garage next door with its own entrance into the city owned multi story garage.
City redevelopment manager Bob Nance says the agency sold the property for $185,000 that includes no subsidy to the development. Chagan is paying for 75 spaces at the parking garage and 16 in-lieu spaces.
Chagan says the timing of the project is that Clovis-based Covenant Builders will begin their work at the site in coming weeks. “We had to close escrow before we could order steel,” says Chagan who notes it will take 6 weeks for the steel to arrive and an 8-month construction schedule after that. “We expect to be open in April 2001.”
While the project is set at 72 suites, the fact is that a suite can sleep two or more conventioneers per room (each suite has two rooms and a mini kitchen with a sleeper in the living room) meaning that between this project and the Radisson, adjacent to the Convention Center, there is room for 300 plus overnight visitors.
The coming of a new hotel project in town comes even as two other larger properties - the Radisson and the Holiday Inn, are on the sales block and a new Fairfield Inn will soon be under construction at Akers and 198. “We think there is still more demand in the marketplace,” says Chagan, who believes new franchises coming and the conversion of some older properties to new franchises, will boost the whole town.
Chagan, who worked with the city on the project for the past few years, couldn't
have planned the site's location any better. It's not just right across from
the Convention Center and next to the city parking garage, but one block from
Main Street, hoping to spill economic stimulus into the city center.
Visalia - The Visalia City Council decided to reject an offer from Pasadena Developer the Tolkin Group that would have required a subsidy to build a multi-story mixed use development on land across from the Signature Theater. The developer wanted the land to be given to them free but still required a subsidy in excess of $300,000 to develop the city owned lots that span Main to Acequia next to the city parking garage. The council reportedly rejected the offer.
Now, says mayor Don Landers “the property will go back on the market” ending an exclusive deal to negotiate with the developer. The city owns two lots on the block and sought one developer to buy them and build a multi story complex that was expected to include retail, restaurant on the ground floor and offices or residential upstairs. But the rap against the site is that “maybe too small to pencil out” worries broker Doug Burr who says a multi story downtown office twice its size “barely pencils.” It may a “user/owner would be the best option” since the project has little room for margin, says Burr. Burr Commercial is the listing agent on the site.
Landers says he still hopes to attract a national tenant to the site to take
advantage of the location across from the 10-plex movie complex. “My
hope is that there will be some niche, some speciality shop that wants the
site,” says Landers.
Visalia - It’s a new budget year but Kaweah Delta Health Care District won’t likely have an approved budget until the end of the month. That’s not how it’s supposed to work, admits administrator Tom Johnson, but this fiscal year the direct need to make more cuts to balance the budget. While the town’s biggest employer is not looking at layoffs, it may take longer to fill vacant positions. Capital projects like the proposed downtown parking garage are being scaled back or cut. “We’re looking to consolidate where we are on some projects instead of moving to new locations,” he says. Case in point is a plan for a new Alzheimer Center that now will be folded into the new mental health facility on Akers, he says.
Increased workload and decreased reimbursement is part of the equation at the County’s biggest hospital as well. In the past few months a severe on-call physician shortage has prompted officials to scramble to cover all of the specialities that need to respond in the case of emergencies. “We have only three surgeons on-call,” says Johnson.
Johnson says the new budget has additional monies to pay physicians who take call but there is still a shortage. “We are currently recruiting physicians in four speciality areas,” says Johnson.
Helping to boost physicians pay is news that Governor Davis signed a bill to increase pay for physicians treating MediCal patients.
“When we started the budget process we were $17 million short,” says finance director Gary Herbst who says now they have whittled the budget shortfall down using some assumptions. “We expect Congress to approve a 3 ½ or 4½% increase in Medicare reimbursement instead of what is proposed now at a 1.8% increase. In addition we are assuming about $2 million saving from not filling some positions. The operating budget will be about $188 million, up $20 million from the last fiscal year just ended.
But the shortage is enough to prompt Johnson to request local clinics not to steer their MediCal patients - enrolled under Blue Cross or HealthNet to the hospital for elective surgery but instead ask them to refer to hospitals that more physicians who have signed up with the health plans. “Of course that’s not in emergencies,” says Johnson.
But in cases where the health plans have multiple physicians signed up like in Hanford or Tulare, Johnson says. It “just makes sense” for those patients to be referred to those hospitals instead of Kaweah Delta, he says. KDDH has only one general surgeon contracted to manage MediCal at their hospital.
That idea has gotten under the craw of Harry Foster, director of the Family Health Care Network clinics, who says they will be glad to “do our fair share” to meet the issue that challenges “all of us” but that rationing medical care for the poor amounts to discriminatory policy. Johnson says Hanford Hospital gets a higher reimbursement rate for services than Kaweah because it has a larger number (over 25%) MediCal patients while Kaweah has only 17%. “Managed MediCal was supposed to improve health care access, not limit it,” insists Foster, whose clinics care for many low income patients.
In other Kaweah Delta news, the hospital’s board and Visalia City Council
sat down together a few weeks ago to hear a city report on alternative sites
for a new hospital in town. The hospital has purchased a site at Caldwell
and Lovers Lane, but the city report suggests the costs to bring in city services
to the site along with fire protection could be high. They pointed out
that two proposed sites - one expanding on a number of blocks to the west
of the current site and the other - Ben Maddox and Murray would offer city
redevelopment help and lower infrastructure costs. The city also suggested
the hospital at a site on the north side of 198 at Shirk - as it is within
the city limits but not currently zoned for development. Council members
say they favor keeping the hospital in one of the downtown locations.
The hospital has appointed a task force to study the alternatives headed by
Gary Herbst.
Tulare County - Who would have thought? A possible water deal between LA and the central valley region districts? That's what's in the works and unlike some offers to send farmers water to LA - this plan would add MORE STORAGE to capture runoff and help the environmental goal of restoring the San Joaquin River, offer additional water to farmers, including much of Tulare County and for Los Angeles - high quality drinking water. Supporters say it's a "win-win-win."
For local irrigation districts, it offers the chance to work with an agency that is a true heavy-hitter with both financial and political clout - a water agency you'd rather have on your side if you can.
Newly adopted water management partnership principles are forging what their
framers believe will be mutually beneficial ties between the Friant Water
Users Authority on behalf of its 25 member irrigation and water districts
and Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. The agreement
was approved June 21 by FWUA directors and is to be considered July 11 by
MWD's board. It includes important protections for users of Central Valley
Project water in the one million acre Friant Division while creating potential
means for jointly pursuing water supply and affordability improvements along
the southern San Joaquin Valley's east side.
The partnership principles in no way imply that the Friant Division would
potentially lose any of its CVP water supply. In fact, FWUA leaders have made
clear that they will not do anything unless it ultimately means more water
— a bigger and firmer supply — for the 15,000 Friant Division users in portions
of Merced, Madera, Fresno, Tulare and Kern counties.
"The only reason we are entering into this is to explore and discover ways in which all of the Friant Division gains," said Richard M. Moss, FWUA General Manager. "We are hopeful the renewed interest we are seeing in developing additional San Joaquin River storage can be turned into action. For that, we are going to need a major partner. Metropolitan can provide the kinds of resources we need."
MWD hopes to achieve improved water quality for its Southland customers.
Metropolitan provides water to 27 cities and water districts that serve nearly
17 million people in parts of Los Angeles, Orange, San Diego, Riverside, San
Bernardino and Ventura counties. MWD has made it clear that it is not looking
to the valley's east side as a general water supply source. The partnership
principles are consistent with the CalFed Bay-Delta Program's action plan,
which outlines the initial seven-year strategy for finding permanent fixes
to Bay-Delta problems (including water quality), has identified the possibility
of blending southern Sierra Nevada water with flows headed to Southern California
to improve that region's water quality.
After a work plan is developed, discussions and studies would eventually consider
the feasibility of such a program as well as sources of replacement water
for the valley. Those could include such possible projects as new surface
storage facilities, valley infrastructure improvements to import Northern
California water into the Friant service area and expanded groundwater banking.
"We will be looking at all possibilities," Moss said. Every step that is taken will be fully open to public review and comment. The partnership principles state, "The partnership will be carried out in an open process that provides for public participation from all interested parties."
No water rights are to be jeopardized. The principles dictate that FWUA-MWD activities "will not adversely impact water supply, operations or financial condition" of either the Friant Authority, its member districts or Metropolitan. Nor will it "adversely impact the availability, quality or costs of water supplies to other San Joaquin Valley interests, fully recognizing the water rights of members of the partnership." Other provisions guarantee acceptable water quality for each FWUA member and ensure the long-term groundwater management capabilities for all Friant Division beneficial uses and the south valley in general will be sustained. No water banking or groundwater banking program will be pursued or supported if it harms the interests of MWD, the FWUA or any Authority member.
From the San Joaquin Valley's perspective, one of the agreement's most important provisions requires MWD to "coordinate all partnership activities, including partnership activities with individual (Friant) Authority members, through the Authority." The partnership principles prevent Metropolitan from undertaking "any activities within the scope of the partnership with any party within the service area of the Friant Division other than as a part of the partnership."
Other provisions require partnership activities to "be consistent with the
Authority's current consensus-based effort to restore environmental values
on the San Joaquin River" and to not result in significant unmitigated environmental
impacts.
The partnership could be terminated by either party at any. All activities
are to be undertaken by consensus of the parties.
A statement of mutual goals declares the agencies' partnership "will enhance and optimize their respective water supplies and water management capabilities. This mutually advantageous agricultural-urban partnership will explore water management opportunities that have both short- and long-term benefits and address water supply management issues." Activities may include such things as sharing information, consulting on CalFed actions, preparing feasibility studies, conducting modeling and technical analysis, implementing pilot projects, and designing and constructing water management facilities. At the same time, both sides pledge to pursue Bay-Delta water conveyance and water quality improvements.
There are no ties of any kind between the new FWUA-MWD partnership principles and any other valley alliance in which Metropolitan is involved.
The agreement continues a spirit of cooperation between the FWUA, its 25-member
agencies and Metropolitan that emerged during negotiations in 1997. Those
talks overcame objections by the FWUA and many of its member districts to
Friant transfer provisions and related issues originally proposed for a water
banking program between MWD and the Arvin-Edison Water Storage District. Although
the Friant transfer provisions of the program have not been implemented, a
new program agreement meeting all major concerns was approved by the FWUA,
Arvin-Edison and MWD. That agreement helped set the stage for the recent discussions
by assuring MWD and valley interests would work cooperatively in the future
to develop needed water supplies.
$3.3 Mil For VUSD
Visalia - School district received budget approval for $3.3 million for its voluntary integration program - $700,000 less than expected because of Governor Davis’ blue pencil.
Costco Controversy
Visalia’s Costco store may want to move to a new 28 acre shopping center being planned at Demaree and Caldwell. But critics are suggesting that the city council would have to approve a general plan change because the big retailer is “regional commercial” - noted neighborhood center tenant. Mayor Don Landers weighs in by saying that such a move would be a “big departure” from current policy that calls for clustering regional retail on Mooney. Developer Don Orosco is trying to keep them on his proposed Mooney site - south of Packwood Creek. Costco wants a store almost one-third larger and parking for 700 cars, the town’s largest fueling station.
New Tact for UFW
The United Farmworkers are expanding beyond field organizing and into the sheds and processing plants of California in coming months. UFW organizer Lupe Martinez says the labor union is organizing at a number of plants that would come under the jurisdiction of the NLRB instead of the state ALRB. The initiative comes as the union broadens its mission into urban areas, home building and advocacy for non ag workers. In Hanford they champion the case of fired workers in a meat plant - and get their jobs back.
SAT-9 Test Scores Are In
Parents of some 19,000 students in the Visalia Unified School District will be getting their child’s SAT-9 test scores over the next few weeks, says district spokesman Anthony Escobar. All schools test scores in the test will be posted on the web July 17, he says. Escobar says a full report on the district’s achievement levels should be made public in about a week having seen the raw date, Escobar says.
We showed some big improvement in elementary math scores and somewhat less improvement in reading scores. There was less improvement but still improvement in middle and high schools, he says. When the results are in “I think we will be proud of the achievement,” says Escobar. The state has set an improvement of 5% in scores at each school and Escobar says he believes some schools reached that level. Improvement of 5% will get rewards and less improvement could mean penalties against schools that do not improve.
In other school related stories, Escobar says the apparent low bidder for the new high school - Rancho Cucamonga-based Skidmore Contracting who bid around $31 million could be awarded the contract to build the new high school at the last board meeting this month. In addition Escobar reported that the board will certify July 11th that the Mt. Whitney pool is finally completed and available for public use - the best news of the summer.
The above stories are the property of The Valley Voice Newspaper and may not be reprinted without explicit permission in writing from the publisher.
