Clear the room?
I still haven't talked at length to our brand new reporter Rob Burgess about how the whole day went Tuesday as he sat through hours of talk about the UVAP - yes, no honeymoons around here, you arrive from the Midwest, you get a notebook, you head to a day-long talk-fest on one of the most important development issues before us.
Anyway, among other things in Rob's story, I was struck by Supervisor Kendall Smith's notion of clearing the room if the audience doesn't behave. Smith must watch too much TV and too many cops shows where judges routinely threaten to "clear the court." Who's going to clear the room at the supervisors? I can just see a bunch of deputies being called to "clear the room" only to have at least half the folks immediately sit on the floor and wait to be carried, Vietnam era-style out to the hall. Right. Tom Allman's worst nightmare.
Now that we know which alternative the supes are going to get more study of, I say it's time for the people against the proposed development at the Masonite plant to start thinking about what they do want if it goes forward. A mixed use zoning gives a lot of leeway. If we're going to have new retail out there - and I think there's a good chance we will - then why not start planning the best, most green retail area we can think of with some affordable apartment housing upstairs, complete green construction and energy efficiency, and open spaces. Make it bus friendly and limit parking so that people are forced to use public transport to get there. DDR really wants this project and I bet will spend a lot of money to get what it wants. Now that there's a study under way, rather than just insisting that the project can't be mitigated in any way - which would be an obvious way to try to block it - why not figure out a way to get something good for our community in the long term.
Let's not forget the new state mandate on greenhouse gases. Attorney General Jerry Brown is already wielding a big bat on development in the state, citing the new law. No reason the county can't begin from a completely environmental viewpoint and demand that DDR build a state-of-the-art mixed use project from a green standpoint. It would certainly set the bar for our area. Just a thought.