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Photo Opinion

   

 

Larry Cannon’s towers

In the small Tuscan town of San Gimignano, there exists home after home with towers reaching to the sky. Nine hundred years ago families built towers to show their wealth and standing in the community. The towers with different styles and colors of bricks are the ones where the families added to them when their economic circumstances improved.

For Pleasanton, the question why is does every new building have a bell (clock) tower?
The answer is simple, Larry Cannon. Mr. Cannon is an architect that Pleasanton goes to for peer review of plans submitted by local builders. One might wonder why local builders/architects would need peer reviewing in the first place. More appropriately, why would local area architects be peer reviewed by only one architect and one with a tower fetish?

The photos in this issue’s Photo Op are only a few illustrations of Pleasanton’s boring skyline. Mr. Cannon is probably a good guy. He could even be a competent architect. He might even be following directions from Pleasanton city officials. No matter, the boring buildings being built here are making Pleasanton monotonous and that should be a concern to citizens who see Pleasanton as cutting edge.
Finally, the cost of doing business in Pleasanton is directly tied to the cost of development. Peer review is costly with the costs passed on to tenants and ultimately consumers.

That tower at McDonalds at the corner of Bernal Avenue and Stanley Boulevard ends up in the price of the burgers. Storage customers pay for the towers of the U Store It storage facility across the street at Stanley Boulevard and Valley Avenue. The motoring public who uses AAA, Diablo Auto Body’s main customer, ultimately pays for the tower at Diablo Auto Body at the corner of Utah Street and Bernal Avenue. The towers at City Hall on Bernal Avenue, the Senior Center and the assisted living center next door on Sunol Boulevard are paid for by city taxpayers and by assisted living residents and their families.

The invisible cost of peer review (and towers) is the additional cost to developers for time wasting, for plans and presentations, and ultimately the projected expense to build the buildings the city will approve but the builder can no longer afford. Either those projects go away or the costs are applied to resubmitted projects. Regency Centers will ultimately pass on to tenants and then consumers for the stops and starts on the center that had originally featured The Home Depot.


    Opinion Pleasanton Poll

There is grumbling about Pleasanton’s latest blue ribbon committee—the self-appointed heritage committee. The gossip is that the self-appointed arbiters of downtown development may, thanks to a friendly reception at City Hall, be determining the kind, type, and manner of builder’s projects and builders speak out at their own financial peril.

The danger is that the projects will be rendered unaffordable because of city and arbiter demands and will be abandoned. As it stands now, Mike Carrey and Frank Auf der Maur should be thanked for their efforts to put a new patina on downtown with their proposed and approved projects. If they go away, some parts of downtown will remain rough and tumble.

We can only hope that our weekday workers and weekend visitors will not wander too far off Main Street. Their sensibilities might be damaged and their perception of Pleasanton as a quaint and vibrant little city might go into the dumpster. Without downtown, Pleasanton is just a suburban city with a business park, pretty good schools, and gridlock.

Should the self-appointed committee be given the cold shoulder at City Hall in hopes that it will simply fade away, or at the very most, present their views (no endless stream of speakers wearing red shirts) at public hearings?

Yes
No


 

 

 

 

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