Photo and excerpt below from this June 10, 2007 USA-Today item:
Victoria Gardens in Rancho Cucamonga, Calif., is typical of dozens of developments sprouting along the nation's light-rail lines and near subway stations: stores, theaters, restaurants, offices and housing connected by sidewalks to mimic a walkable urban neighborhood.
Just one thing is missing: transit.
There is no light rail or subway in Rancho Cucamonga, about 50 miles east of Los Angeles. Victoria Gardens is typical of most Southern California developments: It's on one freeway and next to another.
Transit-oriented developments are so popular with residents who crave the opportunity to live in a walkable community that at least a dozen cities and suburbs across the USA are embracing the concept — even if they don't have rail.
"I call it transit-ready development," says Robert Lang, director of the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech and author of Boomburbs, a study of large and fast-growing suburbs where many of these centers are appearing. "It's a mixed-use lifestyle center with high-density housing that looks like it should be with light rail but isn't."
Rising gas prices and broadening support for environmental protection in the face of climate change have spurred even more interest in mass transit. Land values around transit stops have skyrocketed as developers pounced on opportunities to create projects that combine residential, commercial and retail elements.
The latest twist is developing the centers before a transit line exists — and even if there are no plans for one. Sometimes it's done in the hope of attracting rail. Other times, it's a way to create an urban pocket in the heart of suburbia to retain young professionals and empty-nesters and create a downtown in suburbs that don't have one.
"The market is changing much more quickly than our policymakers are responding," says Shelley Poticha, CEO of Reconnecting America, a national non-profit group that works to spur development around transit stops. "There is a real pent-up demand for transit all over the country, but these communities are getting built by the private sector."
Building housing near shops and restaurants is "very successful in and of itself," says Randall Lewis, executive vice president of Lewis Retail, an Upland, Calif., company that was one of Victoria Gardens' developers. "It's not transit that makes them successful. If you had transit, it would be the cherry on top of the whipped cream."
The company also is behind an 800,000-square-foot outdoor shopping center to the south in Riverside County. It has movies, food courts and shops surrounded by typical suburban tract housing.
"The builders see a market," Lang says. "There's so much light-rail construction that these are models now for all new retail growth in maturing suburbs."
"Transit-ready" developments are showing up in:
[...] • Ramsey, Minn., a far northwestern suburb of Minneapolis that's a typical bedroom community with no downtown.
In the late 1990s, the city decided to create one. About the same time, discussions for a Northstar rail corridor that would eventually connect downtown Minneapolis to St. Cloud began.
The Northstar line runs behind the Ramsey Town Center, a mix of residential, retail and parkland on a 320-acre former cornfield off U.S. 10. The city of 22,000 tried to get a train stop there but could not show that enough people would use it. The nearest stop is 4 miles north in Elk River.
No matter. Ramsey officials are forging ahead.
Ramsey received a grant to start an express commuter-coach bus service to downtown Minneapolis. It plans about 2,400 town houses.
"Ramsey was never included in our initial study, but it's on our radar screen for our next round of stations to be built," says Tim Yantos, executive director of the Northstar Rail Project.
The politicians never really, until after the Kuraks had closed the deal with the Nedegaard LLC, said for certain that Ramsey was not currently planned for a stop.
There was that before and after met council thing with the renderings put on the Ramsey website - not lying explicitly, but suggesting something false, by implication without telling the entire story.
This is what we were told/sold and it was during the James Norman tenure as City Administrator, with the long term mayor on board, with the Town Center Task Force leadership as it was. And they were telling us what they were saying.
And that screenshot of the spiffy train stopped at the platform with the "RAMSEY" sign in blue in the center, it was pulled from the website at the time this post went up. When hat in hand some of the people who were telling us those things are still around begging for Ramsey to get permission for a stop of the kind that was presented as it was at the start.
It is still there, as "promising" as ever.
Have you ever heard of the term, "Truth in advertising"?
Or just, "Truth." Truth in government. Truth in dealing with citizens. After all, citizens are the sovereign. Our State Constitution says so. It opens with the start of the Bill of Rights, this way:
ARTICLE I -- BILL OF RIGHTS
Section 1. Object of government. Government is instituted for the security, benefit and protection of the people, in whom all political power is inherent, together with the right to alter, modify or reform government whenever required by the public good.
No bureaucrat should ever forget that. It should be carved into the stonework above the entry to the Norman castle [aka "Municipal Center"] that government exists for the benefit and protection of the people "in whom all political power is inherent."
At the very least, it means we should not be lied to or misused by those holding information and responsible to us for how they use it.
_____UPDATE_________
I don't buy that planner-speak love of "walkable" plastic-made-by-fiat stuff that the USA-Today item spiels out too heavily, and I do not buy the idea that a Train Stop for Ramsey is necessary, or necessarily a good thing. There are pluses. There are minuses. I have lived in walkable urban areas, and they evolve that way - they are not prone to being manufactured by planners and politicians, who too often are not the best and brightest among us. And they needed urban transit, not commuter rail. They were urban, not suburban locales.
Surely, Jim Deal owning what he does of the real estate where he owns it, he thinks it is a wonderful idea to have a Train Stop next to his raw vacant "for sale" land. It would make a wealthy man wealthier, so since he's that man, would you expect him to not want a Train Stop? But for Ramsey - the rest of us, what's the benefit? I have not seen that cogently spelled out by any Town Center or Northstar advocate. It's fine with me if Oberstar spends the money other ways, there probably are more meritorious projects out there needing federal fund dollars.
And a bridge between two over-crowded highways, without local jobs on either side of the river is not much of an answer to those saying conserve energy, live differently. It is not an answer to those who would do that, but businesses moving locale, etc., is a reality and the commute shed for Ramsey is something worthy of its own separate post. Where do Ramsey people commute, ditto for Anoka people, Andover people, and what does Northstar offer by way of an alternative to driving for the commute sheds, as they really exist? The data exists. The maps can be easily generated online. Those telling us what's good for us have not featured such information, and we should wonder why. More on that Crabgrassing dimension in the future.