• Baxter Crossing Scoping Meeting

Tonight was an EIR scoping meeting for a project that is tentatively named Baxter Crossing. I say "tentatively" because last year Mayor Ben Benoit was expressing interest in having Baxter Rd's name changed to something like Wildomar Parkway Click here for a video of it.  It would be kind of funny to name a place such as this after a street that no longer has that name, so we'll have to see how that one goes.

A view of the project with the surrounding areas showing.

The project, as it is currently configured, is comprised of 70,000sf of commercial retail. With four sit down restaurants included in the mix. Also, in the north east part of the project will be 204 apartments that go up to three stories. Last in the Multiuse Project (MUPA) is 70 houses.

Pardon me if I'm not overly excited about 204 apartments that are stacked three high and abut the freeway... especially if they come with similar rental price tags as the other new apartments in town have. Those things cost more than a typical mortgage, and hundreds more a month to rent than a typical house. Places well out of reach of the local youth looking for their first place, yet wanting to stay local.

Keep in mind that the new Wal-Mart is supposed to be 200,000sf by itself. Yes, that's a Supercenter but the 70,000sf that is proposed here is barely a third of that. Maybe there is a way to lose 25 of the houses, and 80 of the apartments and put a bit more retail in there.

Oh, I also didn't see any public park area in there either.

A detailed look at the project design.

In this image you can see where the deadly Baxter Rd/Central Ave jackknife will be smoothed out a bit. The dotted line represents the existing road as it stands today. The road is going to need to be better aligned no matter which project goes in due to safety and traffic concerns.

Bad news locals that live where Baxter becomes a dirt road... you won't be able to fly off the paved road at full speed, kicking up clouds of dust anymore.

The Brown house has been factored into the designs of the new retail development. After speaking to a few members of Wildomar's Historical Society I was a bit more swayed into it's value for the city. Like John Lloyd and George Cambero were remarking, the house was built long before there were ADA guidelines, and the house will need to be brought fully up to code. It will look beautiful when rehabbed.

That was in response to my concerns that I would hate to see a less than beautiful building sandwiched into a new shopping area.

The key question with the Brown House is about funding. Where will the money come from for the refurbishment? It's currently owned by Wildomar Historical Society and they have plans to fundraise to pay for the costs.

If you have questions or concerns about this project you can contact City Planner Matt Bassi.

Matthew BassiPlanning Director
Phone: 951-677-7751  x 213
Email: mbassi@cityofwildomar.org

The final day to submit questions for the EIR is Jan 19th, but he can discuss the details any time. He prefers email as the best method of communication.

Here is a link to the PDF file for this evenings information 

There are several more steps for this project this year alone, with a bigger meeting set for sometime in the fall. In the meantime, those that use the area as an Off-Road Park will still have free rein out there. Being at the north end of Windsong we can hear the sound of the action just like it was a scene from that '70s classic movie On Any Sunday.

Take a look at the Mock TV Ad I made for it.

Though I refer to Wildomar's historic Brown House as a Haunted House in the video above, I'm 95% sure it isn't actually haunted... even though it's been at its current location for nine years now and those window coverings are da bomb! ☺

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Try some more. The strawberries taste like strawberries, and the snozzberries taste like snozzberries.

Snozzberries? Who ever heard of a snozzberry?

*We* are the music makers... and *we* are the dreamers of dreams. 
—Willy Wonka to Veruca Salt

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• City Council Meeting April 9, 2014

Tonight's meeting started with moment of silence for Joe Tunstall.

Click for Obituary

Then there was a presentation to Sean D'encarnacao — David A. Brown Middle School THINK Together and some of the players from their basketball program.

There was a proclamation that May is Mental Health Month.

In the Council Communications portion there were many interesting tidbits, so I figured I should just upload the video for you to take in the info for yourselves. Many various things mentioned by the five council members, and comments by John Garrett about May 3rd's Astronomy Night at Marna O'Brien park.

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The next part was Western Riverside County Climate Action Plan Update. 

We already went over this at the Planning Commission meeting... but everything has to be presented to the council, so they had to sit through it too.

Look, it is flat out asinine to think that Wildomar, or Western Riverside County could impact Global Climate Warming Change (or whatever you want to call it now) a single iota. Dialing back on our carbon emissions is utter folly and a complete waste of time.

That isn't to say that any sane person is

for wasting our resources, or in favor of pollution.

You could remove all of Riverside County from the map and it would have  ZERO  impact on Global Climate Issues (real or perceived).

You could remove  ALL  of California, all 38,000,000 of us (which is less than half of 1% of the world's population) and it would still have next to NO impact when China and India are constantly expanding, with plans to build more than 1,000 new coal plants planned worldwide. 

Sorry envirosexualists, but silly little things like that can be found in the WRCOG Climate Action Plan are a complete feel good waste of time. If you insist on thinking the emperor has a beautiful robe on, have at it.

I was happy to see Council Member Tim Walker not be on board with this and be willing to go on the record about it. His comments can be seen starting at  16:40  of the video below. This was a no vote issue, just that the city council receive and file the report.

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Followed by the Murrieta Regional Trail Project. 

Again, if you are interested in this exciting project, take a look at the video (actually, listening will be fine here, there are no true graphics in it). You can always contact City Engineer Dan York and ask to see a copy of the power point presentation. You can also click here to see the highlights that I blogged about earlier on the topic.

http://wildomarrap.blogspot.com/2014/04/murrieta-creek-regional-trail-project.html

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Last of the meeting was Future Agenda Items. 

Ben Benoit had a couple of ideas.

The first was a new one for me. The suggestion to change Baxter Road to Wildomar Parkway. Though "Parkway" seemed to be out of place, when I think of roads like Laguna Niguel's Crown Valley Parkway, that stretches from Antonio Parkway all the way to Coast Hwy. Still, replacing the freeway visible Baxter with something that says the name of our town is appealing. After the meeting, Benoit told me that the suffix wasn't the important part.

Let's put it to a vote... I'd like to suggest Wildomar Highway J/K... Take a look at all these street suffixes and see which one you like best.  http://pe.usps.gov/text/pub28/28apc_002.htm

The second was to get the post office to finally change some of Sedco Hills addresses to Wildomar. Check out the video to hear the details.

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