01-26-10 State of Downtown Breakfast

I arrived at The Grand in the Trade Center building (historic name: San Joaquin Light and Power) at 6:30 to check on the set-up of the State of Downtown Breakfast this morning. The event was sold out and over 470 people were on hand to listen to the Mayor give an update on where we are and where we are headed in the revitalization of Fresno's downtown.



Take a look at a building's transformation as designed by Suzanne Bertz Rosa that was featured in the PowerPoint presentation: http://www.bertz-rosa.com/transformation This is a great image of how we can transform using what we have. It also illustrates that the job isn't so difficult, when it is done in stages.


At 9:30 I stopped in on John Ostlund, whose building is next door to the Trade Center. John had called me last Friday about a potential Earth Day event for downtown this April, so we talked about how this can be accomplished.


10:30 I met with Carl Jones from Cynthia Sterling's office to give him and update on the Fulton Corridor Specific Plan and the Downtown Neighborhoods Community Plan.


11:00 John Dugan, Wilma Quan, Elliott Balch, Elaine Robles and I met to review our presentation for Thursday morning's Council meeting and to review questions that were being raised by Council Members and others so that they could be incorporated into the presentation.

I had a quick meeting with the Mayor to give her our updates on the Specific Plan.
1:30 We had our monthly interdepartmental meeting focused on the Lowell neighborhood revitalization effort. This month we had a special guest Bill McEwen, Bee columnist and KYNO 1300 radio host. Bill has had a longstanding interest in the Lowell neighborhood and he was very interested to see what the City was doing and how it is being done different from past efforts. The presentation by all of the departments is very compelling. the power of people working together is remarkable.


3:00 I met with Michelle Tutelian and Stan Martin of Civic Center Square to discuss parking issues. The Raisin Administrative Committee recently selected CCS as their new headquarters location. We are thrilled to have the return of agribusiness to downtown!


Back at the office we continued our coordination of Thursday's City Council item. I met with City Attorney James Sanchez to get some of our language approved and put into proper legalese.  I returned phone calls and emails from the day and made it home before Jeopardy!