The VC Optimists, one of the largest service groups in the community, held their annual installation banquet Wednesday night at Hidden Meadows Country Club.
Elected and installed were Leon Schwartz (president), Russ Oney and John Mc Glynn (vice presidents), Ron Rayhawk (sec/treas), Charley Bell, Mike Murphy, George Martin, Paul Renner, Tom Taylor, and Roger Ramey (directors).
Retiring of past officers and installation of new officers was by the California Governor-South, Richard Rivera.
The Valley Center Optimist Club, which raises money for the children in our community, is probably best known for their smoked hams and turkeys, and the hundred of hours donated to the community in support of our young people.
Master of Ceremonies was Earl Brown. Outgoing president Chris Walmsley thanked the club members for their support. New president Leon Schwartz said he is looking forward to the first fund raiser during his term. Okotoberfest, which is chaired by Dale Waters, will be held at The Community Center Oct. 9. This is the first year that the festival will be put on by the Optimists.
As always, however, it will have lots of family activities, including a classic car show.
For the Dos Valles Garden Club, their Sept. 14 meeting, the first of the 2004-2005 year, was a special one, the 50th anniversary of the club.
One hundred and thirty seven members celebrated with a potluck luncheon at Pikake Gardens, which was provided for the club by Clyde & Connie Childress.
Dos Valles was organized in September, 1954 and has been making many valuable contributions to the Valley Center community for the past 50 years.
In the coming year, the garden club will continue to be involved in numerous projects including, plant sales, annual flower show, Oktoberfest, Western Days parade, Adams Park memory garden, library flowers, and many, many others.
Costco-San Marcos donated cakes for dessert and Calavo donated the avocado dip.
During lunch, members were serenaded by “A Song and A Smile Quartet”, a barbershop quarter that performs throughout San Diego County.
The garden club holds their general meetings at noon on the 2nd Tuesday of each month at the Valley Center Community Hall, 28246 Lilac Rd. Their website address is www.dosvallesgardenclub.org.
By DAVID ROSS
In honor of the upcoming vote of the school board on going forward with a high school theater, choral teacher Laralee Beck sang the Star Spangled Banner to open the meeting Thursday night.
The board unanimously voted to go forward with a 575 seat, $6.4 million joint-use theater— a theater, according to architect Ric Davy, “without a bad seat in the house.”
In about 11 months from the date of the ground-breaking, Valley Center should have a theater.
Staff members representing the school district’s performing arts were at Thursday night’s meeting to show their support for the vote.
The board voted to go forward with the $6.4 million joint use theater. It anticipates that $3.4 million of that will come from matching funds from the State Dept. of Education joint use grants.
This grant requires that the facility be open to use by the community, through a joint-use agreement with the VC parks and rec district.
It also requires that the district raise up to 1.7 million in local donations.
With the announcement Thursday night of a pledge for another $200,000 from an unnamed source, facilitated through Pauma resident Sherman Finger, the district now has $1.2 million in donations.
It must raise another $500,000 in the next year. “Five hundred thousand is a lot, but look at how far we have come,” said Karen Jobe, VC superintendent.
In recommending that the school board authorize construction to begin, Mrs. Jobe commented, “We have spent many, many months on this. This community would be very well served by a wonderful theater. We have a great relationship with parks and rec.”
Mrs. Jobe and architect Ric Davy stressed that this won’t be just a high school theater. It will be a high school theater plus a community theater.
It will have from 574-580 seats, depending on how many must be set aside for handicapped access.
Davy explained that what will differentiate the theater from a high school theater is that it will have a fly tower that will allow it to fly in sets.
“This is fairly rare for high schools, but common for civic theaters,” said Davy.
One item that is being debated is how sophisticated the rigging will be within the fly tower.
“Traditional theaters, such as the San Diego civic theater, and most of the larger ones, have conventional rigging, but nowadays newer theaters are using electrical motors and switches to operate the sets. The most sophisticated version feeds that into a computer which does all that for you,” said Davy.
Valley Center’s theater is in the middle of that range. It could stay with the conventional rigging, or go with the computerized rigging, depending on the cost. It is investigating its options.
Davy explained that the purpose of the design was to get as many people as close as possible to the stage. “That’s what makes theater special. If you can get a lot of people as close as possible to the action that’s good.”
The theater will use stadium seating, like the more modern cinemas, raking the seats up higher. This will fit about 575 people within an area about the size of the interior of the high school media center (library).
“There’s not a bad seat in the house?” asked school board member Patrick Simpson.
“There’s not a bad seat in the house,” confirmed Davy.
Simpson noted that as a matter of comparison, this theater will actually be larger than what some of the area casinos have.
“I say that not to be saying ‘ours will be bigger than yours’ but just to point out that if you follow the acts that they bring in that we can be quite competitive. We could bring in quality acts here and support it quite. well.”
The smaller of the two theaters at the California Center for the Arts holds just over 400 seats said Mrs. Jobe.
Since acoustics has been a challenge at the CCAE’s main theater over the years, The Roadrunner asked what sort of acoustics are planned for this theater.
“Our acoustics engineer says the theater will perform well,” answered Davy.
Scott G. Mortensen, project manager for Lusardi Construction, explained that they want to start construction as soon as possible to take advantage of the fact that they have locked in steel and rebar prices.
This is important, said Mortensen, because last year alone steel prices doubled.
Construction could begin as soon as next month.
At Saturday’s Villages workshop County planning staff gave Valleyites three possible scenarios from which to choose for the future development of the town center.
These include:
• Concept One, which proposes a population of 4,400 persons for the northern node and 1800 for the southern node (see shaded section, this page).
• Concept Two, which proposes a northern node population of 5,300 and a southern node population of 2,700.
• Concept Three, which proposes a village population of 3,400 for the northern node and 3,000 for the southern node.
Probably the most startling and controversial revelation the County’s senior planner Bob Citrano made is that Valley Center will be forced to accept nearly 900 additional units of “affordable housing,” to comply with State of California mandates.
“Affordable housing” is defined as 20-units per acre, although the County is asking for a waiver to lower this requirement to 14.5 units/acre.
About 50 VC residents, including 11 VC planners, and all five members of the design review board, listened to the County’s workshop and gave feedback.
Village subcommittee Chairman Lael Montgomery commented, “I saw new faces at this workshop too. Newcomers to the process are always surprised to discover how much influence a proactive community can have. On Saturday, we talked in small groups about the big issues facing Valley Center. And I think we heard the same main points we've heard for the last few years in GP2020 meetings and Villages Subcommittee meetings.”
The group was not charged with picking one of the three concepts, but to choose what they like best about the three.
The attendees were broken up into five groups. Two looked at the south village and three worked on the north village.
The County will return with a synthesis of the most popular features of the three proposals. They will present it to a special meeting of the VC planning group Oct. 4, 7 p.m., at the lower elementary school.
For example, the subgroups selected which of the three offered the best circulation elements and which has the easiest walkability between shopping centers, residential areas and schools.
The workshop group Saturday included many people who have been working with the Villages subcommittee since its inception about a year ago.
Planning Group Chairman Sandy Smith told The Roadrunner, “I would say that for the most part there were pros and cons with all three of the concepts.”
Many attendees who had expected the County to propose a much larger overall village area for the two nodes were pleasantly surprised to see a less expansive proposal.
One option calls for 6,000 residents in the two nodes, which is 5,500 more than is there today.
“I would say overall that people really liked that the footprint of the villages shrunk from what was presented in April,” said Mrs. Smith. “The smallest was less than half of the original footprint, the next smallest was 66 percent of the size of the original.”
But there is no getting away from the fact that Valley Center will have a large amount of high density housing, about 875 units, forced into its community plan.
State housing policy says that each county must take its “fair share” of such housing or plan for it in currently unbuilt, buildable areas.
San Diego County is required to set aside 40% of unbuilt, but buildable land for this higher density development.
The County proposes to put most of this in the two commercial nodes, with some going in the Castle Creek area. The Orchard Run development, which has been on the books for nearly 20 years, meets about half of this requirement with its proposed 300 units at 7.3 units per/acre
Mrs. Smith said that if John Belanich, owner of Orchard Run, wants more units that he would have to amend his SPA (specific plan amendment).
“We might be more open to that because his property is nearer to the core of the Village.”
Although most people tend to think of apartments when they hear “affordable” housing, the County staff told the group that it also includes detached housing and condos.
“Even so, it’s hard to accept the fact that we have to take that density when the smallest thing we have now is one half acre,” said Mrs. Smith. “But not to do it would violate state law.”
Dr. Montgomery was optimistic about the process: “Valley Center residents say they want to grow gracefully. They want our town centers to reflect VC’s backcountry, small town flavor. They want to grow into a more attractive and better-serviced version of what Valley Center already is. They want traffic to be dispersed across a network of streets, especially in the town center areas. They want commercial, industrial and denser residential contained in as small an area as possible. They want a mix of housing densities, types, and styles. They DO NOT want to look and function like other small towns that have lost their country charm to overgrowth and sameness. These are all possible, and I think desirable outcomes. County planners and professional town planners everywhere tell us that it IS possible to achieve these objectives in our Town Centers -- by design—through land use, zoning and design standards that are being developed in this round of GP2020 workshops.”
The Valley Roadrunner
P.O.B. 1529, Valley Center, CA 92082
Tel. 760.749.1112 Fax 760.749.1688
Website: www.valleycenter.com
Email: editor@valleycenter.com
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