E.S.R.I. has just completed the sprawling new addition to its already expansive headquarters in Redlands. The building houses corporate offices, an auditorium, and state-of-the-art demonstration theatres.
http://www.ArmantroutArchitects.com/ESRI.html
The campus is located one block South of the proposed local rail station at New York Street.
Speaking of which, the stylish new San Bernardino International Airport is within weeks of completing its new international and executive terminals and customs facilities, which will join the refurbished existing terminal and the new 150,000-gallon fuel farm.
The executive terminal features 14,000 square feet of hangar-integrated office space.
http://www.pe.com/localnews/inland/s....461873f.html#
Counters and kiosks are in place, ready to sell tickets and check in travelers at San Bernardino International Airport's newly refurbished passenger terminal.
High-definition TV monitors display place-holder arrivals and departures, escalators and decorative water sculptures are in motion, and a high-tech security room monitors for suspicious activity. A booming recorded voice tells visitors not to leave bags unattended.
One thing is missing from this picture: The airport has yet to land a commercial airline to bring revenue-generating passenger service to the terminal.
Fifteen years after the 1994 closing of Norton Air Force Base, local authorities are close -- yet in many ways still very far away -- from turning the abandoned military airfield into a productive enterprise that generates jobs and tax revenues.
Non-aviation development has generated hundreds of jobs and brought big-named companies to the project. Still, it produces nowhere near the 10,000 direct jobs of the airbase's heyday, not to mention the ripple impact those positions once generated.
More than $180 million has been spent on aviation-related base renovations -- $80 million of which has been spent or committed to the nearly completed passenger terminal, whose cost has more than doubled from original estimates. Final work on the passenger terminal, tarmac and parking lots will be completed by year's end.
Officials for the past year have said a seriously interested but undisclosed domestic passenger carrier could announce new service for the terminal at any time. But in a still brutal economy for the airline industry, even if a carrier arrives this year, airport authorities and aviation economists say the local facility could face unknown millions more in investment costs to make commercial air service viable.
Authorities say they've boosted the San Bernardino airport's prospects considerably with the recent hiring of New Jersey-based AvPorts to oversee local airport operations. The firm, once part of Pan American Airlines, has an 80-year track record that includes managing seven airports, mostly on the East Coast, as well as one of the larger passenger terminals at Newark International.
"This is a crucial launch point for the airport," said Pat Morris, San Bernardino's mayor and head of a joint-powers authority that oversees the air base refurbishing, referring to the new hire.
Starting Sept. 1, AvPorts' top priority is to use its expertise and industry contacts to bring in the mix of passenger carriers, private aircraft, cargo and support services that the local airport must have to become economically viable.
"Our experience is that people who want to come to an airport want to be able to deal with one entity," said AvPorts Chief Operating Officer John Harden, referring to companies the airport will be looking to attract. "We work well that way, as a one-stop resource."
TOUGH JOB AHEAD
For years, San Bernardino airport development has come in fits and starts. As the economy nosedived, authorities have increasingly found themselves offering financial assistance to keep crucial aircraft support businesses afloat.
Experts say it may take even more international lobbying and enhanced financial incentives to get airlines to operate locally, at a time when carriers have been cutting flights drastically at airports, including Ontario International.
"The economy we're operating in is much different now than it was just two years ago," said Scot Spencer, who has been overseeing improvements to the main terminal since 2007 and who leases and subleases space in the airport's service hangars. "For us lately it's been for every two steps forward, it's maybe one-and-a-half steps back."
In some ways, the Norton renovation has been a tale of two projects.
On the outskirts of the airfield, more than 3,000 jobs and millions in new tax revenues have been generated by offices and distribution centers operated by companies such as Stater Bros., Mattel, Kohl's and Pep Boys in projects master-planned by Texas-based Hillwood Development.
That revenue, combined with federal transportation and development grants, has fueled the bulk of work done so far on the airport.
"If it weren't for those industrial projects, I don't think we would have what we have now on the airport side," said Don Rogers, interim executive director of the Inland Valley Development Agency, which oversees projects tied to the Norton refurbishing.
POSSIBLE SCENARIOS
To improve passenger service and other on-site business prospects, the San Bernardino airport may need to do more financial pump-priming.
Michael Burrows, assistant director of the Inland development agency, said officials are in the "very preliminary" stages of figuring out how to financially assist businesses on the airport grounds and lure new ones. That might include setting up a loan or matching-funds program with the help of government grants.
Local officials may need to go well beyond previously discussed start-up incentives, such as reduced landing fees for carriers.
"To get someone to add flights, you would probably have to pay them a lot of money to do that - maybe $2 million a year," said Darryl Jenkins, a former airline business professor at George Mason University near Fairfax, Va., who is now an airline consultant. "You would probably have to find a way to guarantee them no losses for at least a couple of years."
Alan Bender, an airline business expert and professor with Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Fla., said San Bernardino may have to offer airlines a way to share the risk of setting up new service. For instance, some smaller airports have set up ticket banks, through which businesses guarantee they will buy a fixed number of tickets per year to ensure the airline makes a set level of revenue.
San Bernardino may need to emphasize leisure rather than business travel, and it may become a good tourist alternative to the Palm Springs airport when the economy improves -- for instance, as an arrival point for mountain ski resort visitors. Major carriers likely won't be looking to add new business services in the current economy.
"There's a large number of people for whom San Bernardino will be the most convenient place to fly out," Bender said of leisure travelers.
Commercial airline arrival is expected at SBIA
http://www.sbsun.com/news/ci_13277806At San Bernardino International Airport, confidence abounds that a deal to bring a commercial airline to the facility will be announced by the end of this year.
"We have it basically completed," said Donald L. Rogers, SBIA's interim executive director. "We have an expectation of commercial airline service at the end of the year."
On the left of this image is San Bernardino's city center and the light-rail/D.E.M.U. tracks of the Redlands Subdivision, as well as their relationship to the existing passenger terminals of San Bernardino International Airport at Third Street and Tippecanoe Avenue.
This image shows the proposed route for California High-Speed Rail in the Greater Los Angeles area.
On the left of this image is the high-speed rail route (denoted by the blue line) and its relationship to San Bernardino International Airport.
Just to the North of Loma Linda is the Riverfront District of San Bernardino, the main commercial, business, and financial area in the city. Three sbX stations are planned here.
Back at the city center, a professional baseball stadium is located a block South of the multimodal transit station, which combines sbX, Metrolink, and light-rail/D.E.M.U. with improved local bus service.
This stadium is within walking distance of most areas within the Vision & Action Plan boundaries.
Another more historic stadium is located about a mile South at the National Orange Show site where Lewis Development will open its project in 2014. The stadium, itself, which has hosted everything from football games to horse shows to Presidential speeches is the recipient of funds from President Obama's Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which will go towards enhancing the versatility of the venue, retrofitting it seismically, and restoring it to its original stateliness. And, again, the site is only about a hundred feet from the sbX station there.
General overviews with further annotations are available here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pragmat...7606105868674/
... and here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pragmat...7606105868674/
Expanding upon the American Sports University, which currently occupies several blocks in the city center is the "superuniversity" campus, an interdisciplinary space right in the heart of the urban environment and comprised of student and faculty housing, as well as student-life and educational facilities shared among Loma Linda University, San Bernardino State University, and the University of Redlands, as well as the city's creative and technical schools, in addition to the preeminent medical centers and research hospitals of the valley that are all connected by sbX.
These are preliminary concept plans for the new Celebration Square and for new infill retail at Heritage Row, as well as the adjacent garden resort that expands on the existing Maruko hotel by creating the elaborate pool area on the roof of the existing parking structure and by sharing those amenities with the Pelli-designed City Hall adapted for hospitality reuse. Both towers would receive new facades consisting mainly of transparent glass replacing the mirrored windows and new balconies overlooking the activity in Celebration Square and the pool area.
While the porte cochere for the Maruko property faces the 215 freeway, the valet area for the Pelli building is oriented to the San Bernardino International Airport. In fact, vistas along the 3rd Street arterial greenway will dramatically terminate with the former City Hall.
Heritage buildings to be integrated into the dynamic and contemporary fabric of this area include:
The stodginess and datedness of the existing street furniture and light standards will be replaced in order to create a series of vibrant and appealing outdoor rooms for bocce ball, chess, al fresco dining, etc. available to both resort guests and the general public, including nearby loft residents and office workers, as well as shoppers and diners drawn to the appropriately-anchored existing and new retail surrounding the remodeled square and extending to the historic courthouse, adapted for reuse, and the plaza there, which will be activated with new civic uses such as street festivals and a differentiated open-air market.
Initial phasing for the Vision & Action Plan concentrates on Theatre Square and areas to the East of E Street, but the cancer that has been eating from within the core of San Bernardino for so long has been the Victor Gruen-designed Central City Mall, the quintessential dead shopping center, which is to be demolished in phases while preserving certain key buildings.
Since the County of San Bernardino has outgrown its current site and since the City of San Bernardino needs to seismically-retrofit its City Hall, both governments have decided to combine their efforts in order to create an iconic Civic Square/Festival Square near the proposed Gateway Park. Typically-seen as stodgy, these government uses will, instead, be recast as active civic environments with supporting retail and public-realm amenities at street level and in the upper reaches of the towers.
Gateway Park, including the new lake and flume, leads to the Civic Square/Festival Square, which is designed to host large festivals, concerts, and other events.
The archway is intended to frame views of the flume from the square and to function as a bowl for concert acoustics at night and on the weekends.
This land-use diagram of the area within a half-mile radius of the multimodal transit station better explains the way that the "greenfield" tracts, owned by the San Bernardino Economic Development Agency, relate to the rest of the city center, as it has been configured by the Vision & Action Plan.
Most all of the area to the South of the railway alignment is currently vacant or underutilized. And, the contiguous City-owned lands immediately East of the 215 freeway embody the major, high-intensity employment corridor whose organizing features are the luxurious artificial wetlands and lakes.
Particularly interesting to me are the transit-convenient high-density apartments and condominiums that overlook the existing baseball stadium on one side and the proposed lakes project on the other.
I just learned that the Lewis Group of Companies has moved the completion date for its 143-acre mixed-use project on the site of the National Orange Show from 2014 to 2012.
The development will include 1,050,000 sq. ft of office-industrial space.
All historic structures on the property, such as the Orange Pavilion, the stadium, and the exhibition halls, will be preserved, and the existing festival will be repositioned as an upscale street fair and parade since, by State law, the site is required to host an annual citrus exposition of one sort or another.
The site is served by the North Mall Way sbX station on the southwestern corner of the property and the new Mill Street rail station on the northeastern.
As part of the sbX project, the E Street Corridor, including E Street, Hospitality Lane, and Kendall Drive will be improved with new landscaping, decorative paving, and street furniture, as well as new public art, and will be re-branded as "The Esplanade."
The proposed plant palette for the the Riverfront District is...
And, the palette for the city center is...
The current Omnitrans conventional buses, which have hybrid electric engines and are powered by 87% cleaner-burning natural gas, will continue traveling along the E Street Corridor and serve as jitneys between the sbX stations, which are spaced about a mile apart on average.
Here's an Omnitrans conventional bus traveling through Shandin Hills, along the proposed E Street Corridor:
These are development standards for areas around sbX stations:
Here are views of some of the traditional neighborhoods surrounding the sbX stations in the City of San Bernardino. While some of them currently have an extensive system of bike lanes and urban trails, more will be added, especially to facilitate movement to and from the sbX stations. Flex cars, like Zipcar, are also anticipated in many locations, including the universities.
While additional infill development is expected in some of these old-housing-stock neighborhoods, especially as part of the "resort district" designation, new traditional-neighborhood-development is anticipated in the Verdemont/Glen Helen area, where one new and large master-planned community already exists and where several million-dollar homes were added during the most recent housing boom. These neighborhoods will be served by the northernmost sbX station, at the Palm Avenue exit to the 215 freeway, where a park-&-ride lot will also be located.
sbX and the revitalization of the city center are also expected to bring about conversion of renter-occupied homes to owner-occupied status while providing an increasing variety of sustainable housing options that meets every need and budget.
Additionally, the sbX stations and the revitalized city center are anticipated to catalyze upgrades and improvements to older homes and/or the clearing of older residential sites for new infill construction.
Definition for physical therapist/massage establishment
Quote
