Saturday, March 17, 2007

Things That Make Me Say, Hum.

According to Mr. Bisno's current plans for Ponte Vista at San Pedro, he wants to build 2,300 homes within buildings on 20 lots. Buildings will have different numbers of units in them with the smallest building having 67 units and the largest building having 187 units.

Throughout most of last year and until just recently, the project's plan called for 20 buildings of between 4 to 6 floors each. Mr. Bisno said just this past week that now the buildings would be 3 to 4 floors each.

How can 2,300 homes be built in buildings with so much fewer floors in them?

Mr. Bisno and others within the Bisno Development have stated that the smallest home at Ponte Vista would be approximately 600-650 square feet. The smallest conceptual floor plan found on the Ponte Vista Web site illustrates a "studio" type home of 850 plus or minus square feet.

Why is there no illustration of the 600-650 square foot home Mr. Bisno claims will be built at Ponte Vista?

Included in the illustrations on the Ponte Vista Web site are 3 and 4-bedroom units. If you look at the illustrations you will see that those homes appear to be on the corners of the buildings.
The majority of homes proposed to be built at Ponte Vista, by Mr. Bisno himself, consist of either 3 or 4-bedroom units. If you look at the site plans for the project there are 20 buildings listed on the site. Each building has four corners and each corner can have two units per corner.

How can there be so many units built on corners when there appears to be too few corners available for the number of units Mr. Bisno plans?

Walking is something that is good for folks to do. Senior Citizens walk just like almost everyone else does. Many seniors might like to walk from their home at Ponte Vista to the nearby shopping center a bit south of the southwest corner of Ponte Vista.

Why didn't the planners of Ponte Vista put the Senior Housing closer to the shopping center so seniors would not have to walk so far to go shopping?

Why would I even suspect that any of these questions will be answered by anyone who is in a position to know the real answers?

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

You can never trust what Bisno says. That is part of his "talking points."

Anonymous said...

I agree with 12:16.

Do you really need Griego? There was a quote in the newspaper from at least one member of the CAC who said the CAC didn't need his (or these) services anymore. If this is inaccurate in your opinion, are you going to complain to the councilwoman? Didn't she say just a couple of weeks ago that you (CAC) or the community is not just going to react to the developers plans etc. etc. Seems to me the developer is continuing to snub his nose and steamroll the community by publishing a misleading poll and now canning the facilitator and possibly putting in a puppet. IMHO this is egregious and it's time for the CAC to stand up to him.

And thank you MW for your continuing work on this issue.

Anonymous said...

Yes, of course. Everyone should realize it immediately. Any study that demonstrates a viewpoint other than that expressed by this anti-everything clique is "flawed".

And, MW, you wonder why it takes 5,000 hits to finally get a post supporting R-1 only. And it is also the first post that wasn't ripped to shreds by you, or another commenter.

At least you were correct about the "clown" aspect.

M Richards said...

Anonymous 9:18 PM, I am curious to know who is a member of "this anti-everything clique" you mentioned.

Certainly it can't be me or most of the folks who comment on this blog, because I have called for compromise, more senior housing units, different ideas, more community input, and other measures that do not include only R1, if proper mitigation is achieved.

I think you may be trapped in the very old and extremely flawed "You are either with us or you are with the enemy" concept that has proved to be quite wrong-headed, IMHO.

Too many folks who call themselves "supporters" seek to have only Mr. Bisno's current vision of the project built, without being willing to use their own minds to actually think of compromise. If you don't believe me, just come to one of the CAC meetings and listen to them. They all seem to have the basics down to a drone and only Ms. Mary Jo Walker, a member of the Ponte Vista Board of Advisors has actually used the word "compromise" in a comment before the CAC.
Carol Rugnetta, also a member of the Board, used the word in a letter to the editor.

Perhaps you are the same "anonymous" that provided me with the survey results. For that, I thank you again.

Surely you may have read some comments I made that I would consider a "ripping to shreds" type of comment. I hope you saw the comment where I chastised a person you would call an opponent for the use of an extremely bad word when writing about the women who work for Bisno Development. Or, perhaps you can only see comments about "supporters" and not opponents.
If you have been reading long enough, I definitely shredded a really stupid individual who wrote very offensive comments last year on this blog.
It is true that this blog can be a bit troubling with comments, just like when the March 2007 Ponte Vista Newsletter used only a partial comment and decided not to use the complete comment about what the CAC is actually looking at.
It also has become very apparent to me that Mr. Bisno finds anyone and everyone who doesn't agree with his currents plans to be "opponents" to him. I still don't find enough balance on his part considering what he is asking of the entire community.

Please, Anonymous 9:18 PM, remember that I do not support any plans that would build 2,300 homes at Ponte Vista and I wish more folks felt the way I do. This blog is my creation so it stands to reason that this blog reflects my opinions. If you don't like what you read, thank you very much for reading what is written, have a nice day, and don't contribute any more visits to this blog.
MW

M Richards said...

Anonymous 6:24 PM, Thank you for your comments, too.
I was not pleased to read about Ms. Hahn's position in the Breeze on Saturday. I have made my feelings known to certain parties and, hopefully, something positive will happen this week.
The one member of the CAC, Jerry Gaines, has much more experience on commissions, committees, and the like for him to not feel the need for a facilitator. I do not have the experience or the skills Mr. Gaines has in these types of committees yet, so I feel I need an independent facilitator.

During the last CAC meeting, three groups drew up three different conceptions of what Ponte Vista might look like. All three looked different than Mr. Bisno's current plans and all three included different types of housing not now being considered by Mr. Bisno. I think that does show some independence from Bisno Development, but circumstances since that meeting have shown me that our CAC needs to basically put a bull into Mr. Bisno's China Shop if he continues attempts to have more influence on the CAC than I think he should have.

I don't know, as of this writing, what is going to happen this week. I will stay and fight for the CAC as long as I can. I feel that for the folks who care about the project, I and the rest of the CAC owe it to ourselves and the community we live in, to keep this thing going.

The CAC is a group that is in front of the public. It does have a limited scope to offer recommendations that may or may not be used. Still, it is one of the only committees or groups that has some independence from the developer that the public can look to and make comments to.
MW