We live in a time when it is very difficult to get something fixed – a lamp repaired, a handsaw sharpened, the battery in an iPhone replaced. Anyone who has had a perfectly good car “totaled” because insurance won’t pay the cost of body work knows what we mean. So it is no wonder that there are many questions and concerns about how to “fix” the Springs. Ever since the ‘90s when the local Redevelopment task force was formed, government agencies have been struggling with it.
Redevelopment identified the Springs as “blighted”, a label few would argue with. Yet inevitably in the effort to fix that, we run the danger of throwing the baby out with the bath water. And in this case, there is considerable disagreement as to the nature of the baby.
Local artist Mike Acker has devoted the last 18 years to chronicling the Highway 12 corridor from Agua Caliente Road to Verano Avenue. His remarkable montages incorporate his own photos taken over time with historic ones, a vivid graphic testament to a century of “fixing the Springs” – preservation, deterioration, new enterprise, decay, neglect, tender care. Before and after many baths, the baby is still there.
No one who has seen the parade of locals walking in harm’s way along the highway to work, school, and the store, disputes that sidewalks were needed in the Springs. Yet the only way that CalTrans knew how to “fix” the pedestrian problem – though the intent was to help those who live there – was to replace the human with the industrial. The new concrete stretch where MidPen is building affordable housing is an over-lit treeless wasteland, a safe but visually sorry fix.
A newcomer from Portland recently introduced an urban renewal concept of “place-making;” most of the examples involve benches situated around a tree or in a cluster of bushes and trees. Had there been a large tree planted in the place of every other street light, that stretch of highway would be a better place for people.
The recent façade improvement program, funded by forgivable loans from the County, exemplifies the difficulty in separating the baby from the bath water. People love or hate Rich Martin’s color schemes and designs, which some thought were “Hispanic.” Interestingly, an informal poll conducted in Spanish on Facebook had over eighty respondents who were about evenly split pro-vs.-con on those new facades, but almost unanimous in saying the facades did not reflect their Mexican culture or heritage. So who gets to name the baby?
Among longtime Springs residents there is fear that the move to “improve” leads inexorably toward gentrification. Both the county Economic Development folks and the Chamber of Commerce seem to be leaning that way. And the rental crisis, fueled by the conversion of rental homes to VRBO-type vacation rentals, points the way of gentrification too. Longtime residents cannot afford to live there.
Recently fifteen citizens, mostly from the Springs, were appointed by the county to the Community Action Team (CAT) to advise the planning consultant hired by the county to develop “The Springs Specific Plan.” Its goal is “a more vibrant, sustainable, and pedestrian-oriented community”. We hope that the CAT will be able to take steps to “fix” the Springs without losing its identity for those who live there and love it.
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