City Ventures Development in La Habra

Continuing with my plan of being a pesky neighbor, I sent this letter to the planning department in La Habra to encourage them to go along with a new development which is being proposed. 

                The City Ventures development is exactly the sort of project La Habra needs so that it can create a decent downtown. While the Civic Center and Church site is better for the city than the office building site, both are a huge improvement over what we have today and should be encouraged to proceed as quickly as possible.

                The best part of this development is that it is high density housing within walking distance of a lot of underutilized commercial space. It will bring hundreds of customers to the area bringing it new life. At slightly greater than twenty homes per acre, this development is high enough density to encourage a vibrant walkable neighborhood. It might be possible to fit a few more homes into the development but under no circumstances should that number be reduced. La Habra needs all the new housing it can get.

                Another encouraging feature is that the design includes large number of three story townhomes. This type of construction makes very efficient use of space and should be encouraged across La Habra.

                If only one of the two options is to be chosen, the superior option is the civic center and church site. Not only does it bring twice as many new homes to La Habra, but it uses land unlikely to be used for a better purpose. The office building site would be better used for a large mixed use building with apartments on top and retail fronting La Habra Boulevard.

                Surface parking is a low value use of space which should be discouraged. This project does a reasonable job of avoiding excessive use of it, but thought should be given to relaxing the city parking minimums or putting the parking in a parking structure to free up space for more homes.

                More thought should also be given to ensuring a walkable design. There are several Cul-de-sacs in this proposal. Those are fine for cars, but really interfere with pedestrians by increasing the walking distance to nearby destinations. A grid of pedestrian paths should be created by installing paths between adjacent streets anywhere a cul-de-sac is present. This is particularly true for the office building site; Pedestrian paths to La Habra Boulevard, and Euclid Street are needed to ensure that residents can quickly walk to nearby businesses.  On the Civic Center site, pedestrian paths are also needed to reduce walking time to the Library and to connect the cul-de-sac near the corner of Euclid and Florence to Euclid Street.