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| Image: Text/image on the city's ftp site. I ran across the image and text above in a PMC General Plan folder on the city's ftp site. I don't know if it hails from that $65K downtown charrette of yesteryear (or was it $165K?), or from more current general plannish charettifications. It's not really relevant to what I want to talk about, but I think it is pre-PMC (in fact, I feel like I've posted it before). First, I think the planning is pretty and nice. I'll bet it makes some people feel good. A lovely pastel drawing made by the gentle hand of the planning gods reaches out to me. It draws me into the uniformly circular trees that form a phalanx of nature guarding against capitalist expansion. Oh, to live in this Chico. To frolic through the urban woodland, and explore the nooks and crannies of its courtyard centered structures. I imagine walking hand-in-hand with my family, purchasing ice-cream and scented candles at lovely little boutiques. Boutiques owned by lovely little women who hire lovely little coeds to take my money. The stores sport names like "Turn The Cheek" a make-up store owned by peaceniks, "Carpet Diem" an emporium of Persian rugs, and "Bare With Me" a specialty store for nudist supplies (mostly sunblock). Perhaps "Planet Bali Wood" that sells artistic items imported from Bali could reside there. Or maybe "Pot Heads" where you go to buy high end cooking utensils... and medical marijuana. I wonder if anyone out there is creative enough to add to my list of shops? That's an obvious challenge. But alas, I fear my jaunty expedition into this quaintly calculated Chico will never come to pass. There are, of course, several reasons why this is the case. First, the buildings so neatly torn down and rebuilt to meet this dream are privately owned. The wealth required to meet these expectations simply doesn't exist. Second, nobody is going to pay to dig a hole under a building for parking. Obviously, everyone will own flying cars by the time this dream comes to pass so the parking needs to be on the roof. Thirdly, the plan assumes that roughly 25% of usable space, the center of each block, is devoted to parking. This is a complete waste of space, and would likely need to be densely infilled densely. However, it is a pretty picture. |
Picture This
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Lon
About Me: Fasten your seatbelts for an exhilarating trip through Chico's public policy; I guarantee it's marginally better than public access TV.
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I wish I could read your post. There's a red pharmacy ad in the middle of it that won't close.
This worries me. Where are the rows of beer trucks parked in the streets?
Well, how did you know, I was looking for a way to make money off this medical marijuana thing, aaaand, get good deals on cookware. We'll call it, "Mother's Pot Garden".
Andy says, call it Juanita's Weed Shack (or, parley francais, Quanita's Queed Shacque)and put it in the newly refurbished cop shop, for security's sake.
And when I get rich, I am going to build a house out of Sierra Nevada 12 packs filled with mud and straw. So start saving those twelvepacks, mon amis.
There is a CVS pharmacy ad blocking the top part of your post.
Yet another downtown plan. It would be interesting to see how may times they have done this. There are plenty of them gathering dust on some shelve in the Muni Building. The completed on I saw in 1996 was quite through complete with block by block artistic renderings of all the store fronts. I suppose the need for a new plan reflects the abundance of cash they have floating around to actual follow through with it this time?
I don't have control over the CVS expansion, but I'm pretty sure it was okayed at the council level. Another example of mom and pop blogs getting driven out by Big Pharma.
I suspect the web masters at the ER are in panic mode knowing that their flagship blog has been interrupted so abruptly. Heads will probably roll over this.
Lon
I need to get into the orange roof business, especially if almost 90% of downtown will contain orange roofs!
The D,
In reading further into the document it looks like those orange rectangles are giant lava pits. Apparently, the plan is to turn Chico into a Super Mario level.
Lon
OK I think I have a pedestrian friendly business for our utopian downtown. We buy a few beer trucks and have the taps mounted on the outside with swipe card readers. We park them in the middle of the streets to obstruct evil automobiles, effectively closing them off to traffic. Customers just swipe their cards and load up their Clean Kanteens or Chico Cups and get charged by the gallon. When they run dry, there's another one parked just around the corner. Happy patrons buy more merchandise which boosts the economy and local tax base. It's a win win for everybody. I think I'll call it Sustainabuzz. Any investors?
I have another idea for a shop next door to Turn the Cheek. It's called Smite the Other Cheek.