LEECE GETS IT WRONG ABOUT EL CAMINO CENTER
Once upon a time, some developers thought that it would be a good idea to put small neighborhood shopping centers on the inside of large tracts of homes. You can still find a few of these in Riverside County (they're the buildings with all the graffiti and gangs around them) and you can still find one--El Camino Center--in Costa Mesa, in the middle of Mesa del Mar (where Councilwoman Katrina Foley lives). VIEW
Most of these centers are failures. The stores in them just can't compete with similar stores out on the main drags of their larger communities, and they can't get enough auto or foot traffic to their stores, short of giving their goods away for free, because of their inside the tract locations.
The El Camino Center has been empty and boarded up for several years and has had a graffiti covered fence around the perimeter of the property for just as long.
It's a big eyesore and should be razed and replaced with homes. After years of talk but no action from various owners, developers and the no-City Council, residents in Mesa del Mar are now fed up and are circulating a petition to ask the no-City Council to do something. Yeah, that's likely, this gang of nitwits has become part of the problem in this city and not part of the solution.
If you're a big developer or if you own industrial buildings on the Westside Bluffs, the present no-Council will protect your interests. But, if you're an ordinary citizen of Costa Mesa you'll get little but sweet talk from this incompetent no-Council.
In an article about the El Camino Center in the Daily Pilot today, we hear more talk, but no signs of action, from the present owners of the property, Oxbow 101 LLC. LINK
Councilwoman Foley suggested to the Pilot that the owners could be goaded into action by denying them an extension on their pending extension of their subdivision agreement with the city, unless the owners show good faith by tearing the center down. Foley is on the right track with this. It's just too bad that she isn't always on the right track about things on the Westside, and only seems to pop up about things in her own neighborhood or with things such as collecting food for people in South County.
What concerns us, though, is that City Councilwoman Wendy Leece told the Daily Pilot that she favors giving the owners an extension because they've told her they're moving forward.
Well, Ms. Leece, let the owners tell the citizens what they told you in private and let us see if what they have to say is persuasive. Let's see a simple Gantt chart from them (example of Gantt chart is shown above).
Our guess is that Leece just heard more talk from the owners with no firm dates to do anything.
Speaking of being bothered by Leece. She's starting to bother more than a few Improvers. They complain that she never seems to do anything but talk about school issues and she hasn't even come forward with anything concrete to fix the Westside where she lives.
The only reason Leece is on the no-Council is because Improvers worked to put her there. And, they expected much more from her than happy face talk about the latest conference she's attended about schools.
Action, Ms. Leece, action. You weren't elected to be a PTA mom or to just do nothing. If you think that you're doing something because you attend a lot of school related meetings, we're here to tell you that you're just spinning your wheels. We're paying you and we expect to see this city improved in meaningful ways. You're not on the School Board anymore, Ms. Leece.
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Those are our opinions. Thanks for reading them.
