Which Way, Covina? II

Which Way, Covina? =

Part II

On Tuesday night, July 5 the Covina Redevelopment Agen= cy (aka our elected City Council) was finally poised to discuss Civic Park in open session. Since November 16, 2= 004, when the Town Center Specific Plan (TCSP) was passed, Civic Park discussions have blossomed only in closed session, where they’ve pored over multi= ple proposals for the ‘redevelopment’ of Civic Park. They will at some point vote to negotiate exclusively with Polis-Niemann Builders to do precisely that.

Voters elected these people partly because they promis= ed they were not aware of any plan to demolish Civic Park. Lots of people showed up to hear t= he item and speak on it, so the item was postponed and continued to the next council meeting, scheduled for July 19, also at 7:30pm.

It is not an accident that Covina’s parks are all zoned R1 for residential development, nor is it a mystery why we still have= no parks and open space zoning. = On a related note, Covina recently annexed Charter Oak Park from the county, so = it’s a city park now too, complete with resident= ial re-zoning. There have been pl= ans to build on part of that land since the annexation process began in the 1990’s. Coming soon, to a park near you.

Why is all this happening? Our Planning Commission, City Coun= cil, and Redevelopment Agency all voted late last year to redevelop the downtown= historic district, which today is composed almost entirely of 50 to 120-year-old buildings, many in need of seismic analysis and structural retrofitting.

The plan spins on the Redevelopment Agency’s redistribution of public parklands for private use. It aims to re-create downtown Covin= a as a ‘Transit Village’ and ‘replace’ Civic Park at a more convenient location, further south. It proposes up to an eye-popping 800 new = downtown homes in the 157-acre TCSP area.

No analyses or estimates have emerged as to the expect= ed return on this investment. La= nd valuation, environmental impacts of planned demolitions, eminent domain and= public infrastructure costs all remain unstudied.= This means that no impact mitigation fees can be calculated to assess upon these developments either.

For some perspective, Azusa recently negotiated the Mo= nrovia Nursery/Rosedale project: 1250 dwelling units on 520 acres of vacant land, complete with parks, a community recreation center, a new K-8 elementary school, a fire station, and acres of permanently preserved natural hillsides, all developer-paid-for.

I am not aware of any coher= ent business relocation proposal in Covina’s TCSP. This may be due to the sad facts: = Very few downtown business and prop= erty owners attended the TCSP public hearings and none submitted formal comments= . Fewer still, if any, have studied = the TCSP’s Final Environmental Impact Report (FEIR)= .

These were only a few of the more serious concerns tha= t citizens expressed during the strangely foreshortened EIR process. Concerned citizens submitted exten= sive formal comments and all comments submitted were opposed to the TCSP. Still, our elected officials and t= heir appointees voted to go forward and they continue to insist that the TCSP co= mplies with Covina’s General Plan. I strongly disagree, as would anyone who had actually = read and compared the two documents. T= he Final EIR for the TCSP, the TCSP itself, and the General Plan are available= for study at the City Library, but try to sit near an exit, because structural engineering reports reveal that the library has been de= clared potentially hazardous also.

Locals may want watch for the July 19 City Council and= Redevelopment Agency agendas, and be prepared to come and listen or be heard.

Pat Duff

Covina, CA

(626) 331-4666

= ;

duff@electduff.org=