Krom, The Tunnel
Irvine Mayor Beth Krom may have drawn a few jeers in Orange County for comments that acknowledge the Inland Empire’s emerging strength as an economic growth engine for the area. At the same time, she can’t be faulted for speaking the truth.
More businesses from costal communities are relocating to the Inland Empire and, specifically, cities such as Rancho Cucamonga.
They are drawn by our highly skilled labor pool, affordable housing, safe neighborhoods, high-end retail and our prime location. Office space, growing annually at 12%, is being gobbled up faster than it can be built. Recently, Bass Pro Shops broke ground at Victoria Gardens in Rancho Cucamonga on its first outdoors store in California.
We’re glad to be doing our part to ease traffic into “The O.C.” by providing the new jobs, quality education choices, destination retail and other amenities that encourage our residents to stay put.
At the same time, we understand the Inland Empire’s role in the broader discussion aimed at developing transportation and economic development solutions that make sense for the entire region.
William J. Alexander
Mayor
Rancho Cucamonga
How appalling to read in the OCBJ that the mayor of Irvine is seeking to drive business away from Irvine (and the rest of South County) while misstating the benefits of the “tri-tunnel.”
According to the tunnel idea’s instigator, Bill Vardoulis (former mayor of Irvine, past president of the Irvine Chamber of Commerce, a civil engineering firm founder and one who has served in key rolls on many private, utility and government agency boards and organizations in Orange County), the tunnel project will have minimum to no impact on the mountains. This is one of the many advantages accompanying the concept.
Even the Sierra Club and other ecological groups have been without criticism of the concept. Add to that the fact that it will not impact endangered species such as the gnatcatcher or create any appreciable danger for the wildlife population.
Vardoulis, at one point, had significant foreign investors willing to cover all the cost of development and construction of the tunnel. These serious, big player engineering contracting firms are the ones who build projects on a magnitude of the England to France under the sea tunnel and Swiss Alp mountain tunnels. They function on a global scale with the talent, equipment and funding to successfully undertake such projects.
The entire project was, at one time, able to be built with no government or tax payer money. What a concept. Contrast this with the OCTA alternative of expanding the land locked and overloaded 91 freeway.
Of course, in killing the tri-tunnel approach, OCTA will successfully perpetuate and feed its growing bureaucracy while pursuing its agenda that will cost billions in tax payer dollars while creating years of traffic disruption for the commuter users of the roadway system.
And don’t overlook the added gasoline costs drivers will suffer due to engines running on the gridlocked freeways.
The thrust of the city of Irvine now appears to be one that not only ignores the beneficial reality of attracting new business while retaining and serving the needs of existing business but also in disseminating misleading information about the cost and benefits of developing the tri-tunnel project.
As for the traffic disruption concerns, it would seem the tri-tunnel alternative would eliminate what would otherwise be a traffic access fiasco when attempting to remodel existing toll/freeway routes.
Further, without improved access from the Inland Empire to South Orange County, it is only a matter of time before there will be a virtual shut down of the South County region due to lack of easy access.
Water is another critical issue that will be impacting the growth in Orange County. The tri-tunnel project offers a practical way to abundantly meet future water needs without requiring taxpayer dollars. Additionally, utility companies, rail and potentially even oil-gas pipeline companies will all benefit by use of the tri-tunnel facilities.
The tri-tunnel will reduce truck traffic on the existing freeway link between South Orange County and the Inland Empire area and with it the gross air pollutants caused by auto and truck traffic.
The granite excavate from the tunnel project also has a use in meeting expansion needs of the Long Beach-Los Angeles harbor area.
If ever there was a win-win transportation corridor concept, it is the tri-tunnel corridor.
Taxpayers need to become informed about the revolutionary (for our area but not elsewhere in the world) tri-tunnel approach to serving the needs of multiple transportation and utility service delivery applications and aggressively urge the few who oppose the tri-tunnel to reconsider the facts.
Conway Chester
Principal
Waynan Properties Inc.
Irvine
Art Institute
Volunteer Center Orange County was delighted to read Sherri Cruz’ May 15 article on the Art Institute of Orange County.
We have utilized the school’s Community Arts Resource Exchange, which provides Art Institute students with opportunities to apply their talents to projects that support the needs of the community, exposing them to the value and reward of charitable work while at the same time advancing their educational progress and career goals.
The Art Institute’s graphic design students have designed brochures, fliers, newsletters and posters for us, and its culinary arts students have catered lunch for one of our nonprofit professional development workshops.
We have referred many of the more than 1,800 Orange County nonprofits we work with to the Community Arts Resource Exchange program.
This teaming of students who need a real-world experience of serving clients along with nonprofits whose budgets don’t often allow them to receive such top-notch arts resources is exactly the kind of brilliant, collaborative effort that will assist the nonprofit sector in becoming more professional.
Thank you, Art Institute.
Beth Bloomfield
Program Director
Volunteer Center Orange County
Santa Ana
Oil Drilling
The recent House vote to continue the drilling ban off California’s coast was like d & #233;ja vu all over again for me.
Twenty-one years ago, I was retained by four beach cities and the Orange County Board of Supervisors to organize public opposition to the Reagan administration’s plan to open the coast to massive offshore oil drilling. One hundred phone calls later, 22 GOP mayors and several of the county’s most influential Republican business leaders testified against the government’s plan.
I don’t know for sure, but I’m hopeful members of Congress heard from many of the same people I worked with in 1985.
Denny Freidenrich
First Strategies LLC
Laguna Beach
