02-09-10 Last Tuesday

I met Elaine for our weekly one on one meeting at Parsley Garden, on the northern portion of the Fulton Mall, at 7:30. We had a good breakfast and caught up on the neighborhood revitalization piece of our department's efforts. Elaine is heading out on Thursday and Friday for a San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank Conference on Placed Based Initiatives. Here is a link to the conference: http://www.frbsf.org/community/resources/2010/0211/index.html




At 8:30 I went to the Fresno Coalition for Arts, Science and History monthly meeting, which is held at Arte Americas. Art Dyson was the speaker : http://www.fcash.org/content/arthur-t-dyson-aia-iaa-cid-fara-ala-ncarb



10:30 I took a tour of the Iron Bird Lofts: http://www.muraldistrict.com/ironbird.html  Reza has done a great job with this project. I especially like the townhomes. But all are really nice and it will be especially fun for the residents when the cafe opens. Anyone looking for urban living should take a look.


11:30 Randy Reed and I met to go over the format for next week's taping of a community access show that will feature our downtown revitalization efforts.


12:30 George Smith, our department's Administration Manager, and I met with Economic Development consultant Jill Dominguez to discuss a strategy for Economic Development Administration funding for projects like the downtown public market and other infrastructure improvements.


2:00 The Mayor introduced our next City Manager Mark Scott at a news conference at City Hall. This is a very exciting opportunity to have a Fresno native, who has worked in other cities, come home to use his skills and experience to help us move our community forward.


2:30 We held the Downtown and Community Revitalization weekly staff meeting. This is our time to let everyone know what everyone is up to, and is a valuable time to help keep things as coordinated as possible.


4:00 There is an ongoing meeting of the entities and staff who are involved in the Neighborhood Stabilization Program. This is part of the federal effort to alleviate some of the problems associated with the foreclosure situation. We chose four entities to use the City's portion of the funding (Housing Authority, Redevelopment Agency, CURE, and 2M Construction). One of the goals of our program was to focus about half of the resource into the Lowell neighborhood. We had a lively discussion about how well that concentration of resources was working.


5:30 I met Cliff Tutelian at Austin's (formerly Hero's). Their wings are the biggest and the best I've ever had.