Three-and-a-half years after Redlands city officials in their zeal to see the former Redlands Mall redeveloped surrendered a key element of their municipal authority to Village Partners without a fight, the Newport Beach-based company has sold the 11.5 acre property to Jack and Laura Dangermond.
The entitlement to build what was called State Street Village granted to Village Partners Ventures runs until September 2027, the date to which the Dangermonds presumably have to break ground on a project to be located on what is widely perceived to be one of the most visible pieces of ground in the now 137-year old city. For many, the sale of the land poses the question of whether the Dangermonds, whose undeniable talents lie in a direction generally untied to property development, can accomplish in 22 months what Village Partners Principal J. Donald Henry and his team of direction of construction management Roger Stevenson, director of development Kaitlin Morris and construction manager Clarke Campion could not carry out in 42 months or what Village Partners’ predecessor, Brixton Capital, was unable to accomplish over a period of eight years.
That central question is surrounded by a series of others, extending to how thoroughly the Dangermonds, who while rooted in the tradition of Redlands’ past and embodying the cutting-edge technology of the first three decades of the Third Millennium, are willing to deviate from the lost past grandeur of Redlands’ Downtown toward a denser urban environment some but not all futurists envision.
The Redlands Mall, which was completed and opened in 1977, was once considered to be an asset to Redlands’ once-grand downtown district, but has lain fallow since 2010, a year after its anchor tenant, Gottschalks, filed for bankruptcy and shuttered its Redlands store.
Following the end of the recession in 2014, Brixton Capital proposed the redevelopment of the mall property. Brixton, however never performed.
With the property at the center of the city remaining blighted, city officials grew increasingly desperate to see the fallow mall property transformed, consistently moving toward tolerating development proposals that a core of Redlands residents considered to be beneath the standards the city should accept.
City officials, nonetheless, highly conscious of the lack of enthusiasm in the investment and development sectors in reinvigorating the mall site as a commercial center and bowing to pressure being exerted by state officials in Sacramento for California cities to accommodate the demand for affordable housing to offset the housing crisis in the Golden State, latched onto the concept of mixed use development to allow commercial development on the ground level to be capped on the second, third, fourth, fifth and conceivably even the sixth floors with apartment units.
Simultaneously, the city had adopted a strategy, known as the Redlands Transit Villages Concept, calling for the city to encourage the development of three heavily populated districts within the city, all of which are located within walking distance of the commuter stations along the yet-to-be-fully-realized-and-actuated regional rail system urban planners are seeking to create on the existing train line running from Los Angeles to Palm Springs. Three such transit villages are envisioned for Redlands, one downtown surrounding the city’s historic train depot, one on New York Street and one near Redlands University. The transit districts will entail a series of high-rise apartments to house individuals who travel most often not by car, but use public transportation. A debate as to whether those residents were to be families or mostly unmarried individuals or couples without children languished in the background.
With the signing of Senate Bill 330, known as the “Housing Crisis Act of 2019 into law with the goal of expediting residential construction in California, cities were prohibited until 2025 from denying approval of a housing project on what was termed “subjective standards” if the project otherwise meets objective general plan and zoning rules and that housing projects be expedited.
In the aftermath of the Brixton debacle, Village Partners Ventures LLC and its subsidiary, VPV State Street Village, made overtures about reclaiming the mall property with a project that was in keeping with the Redlands Transit Villages Concept. Village Partners Ventures’ State Street Village proposal was for the mall site to be converted into a mixed-use project that includes residential and commercial uses within five new multi-tenant buildings. The project called for demolishing existing on-site buildings and improvements; erecting five mixed-use buildings up to four stories high; building up to 700 multifamily dwelling units, i.e., apartments and condominiums, to include studio, one-bedroom, two-bedroom, and three-bedroom, and live/work units; constructing an approximately 6,000 square-foot recreational amenity building, including a pool and other private courtyards for residents; creating up to 71,778 square feet of commercial floor area on ground floors to include retail and restaurant uses, as well as a rooftop restaurant; constructing up to 12,328 square feet of office space on upper floors; establishing a pedestrian plaza totaling approximately 22,742 square feet on Third Street; constructing a five-level above-ground parking structure with 686 spaces; and excavating to build two subterranean parking garages with 269 and 225 spaces. Included in the plans were public and private open space areas to involve landscaping, shade trees, street trees, and pedestrian improvements, as well as related site improvements to include sidewalks, driveways, landscape, lighting and street lights, storm drains, flood prevention features, and public and private utility connections.
State Street Village qualified as the most intensive land use proposal in Redlands’ history when measured by density and height.
There was an outpouring of opposition to the essence of what Village Partners Ventures LLC and VPV State Street Village was asking for, which was less than fully defined, particularly architecturally. In addition, multiple elements of the project were contrary to or in direct defiance of development standards that had been put in place over the previous four-and-a-half decades by Redlands residents as a means of limiting the intensity of development in the city and to preserve Redlands’ design, architectural and aesthetic standards.
The back-and-forth dialogue between the city and Village Partners took place over the course of multiple public hearings, at which point a provision of and Senate Bill 330/the Housing Crisis Act of 2019, which mandated that a decision on a project, yes or no, had to be made with the fifth public hearing, was brought to bear. City officials were faced with the alternative of ending the consideration of what Village Partners Ventures LLC was proposing or approving it. While there was a general impression throughout the city that the city should make use of the opportunity to reclaim the mall property, there was still misgivings, expressed by Carole Beswick, who was on the city council for eight years including six as mayor, former Mayor Karl “Kasey” Hawes, Redlands resident and the former executive director of the county’s transportation agency Deborah Barmack,
Redlands-based building preservationist Brett Waterman, former City of Chino Hills city engineer and Redlands resident Garry Cohoe, Redlands residents Ben and Darla Dillow, John Paul Beall, Kathleen Beall wrote, LuAnn Benton and Michael Layne that the nature of what Village Partners was proposing did not fit the character of the City of Redlands, did not comply with the architectural guidelines the city had traditionally sought out, was an unacceptable blurring of the distinction between residential and commercial uses and was substituting a “massive” profile in the city’s core for an “aesthetic one.” Planning Commissioner Joe Richardson lamented that the city was surrendering control over the approval process to the extent that it was exercising no authority over the architectural standards.Many in the city were unhappy with the project’s proposed density. The city council, however, was concerned that any further effort to negotiate on those issues would breach the five-public hearing limit in the Housing Crisis Act of 2019 such that the opportunity to secure the redevelopment of the mall would be lost.
In addition, city officials felt they were under the gun to comply with the state’s Regional Housing Needs Assessment Survey mandate that Redlands allow 4,487 dwelling units, of which 1,248 are to be priced to be affordable to those with very low income, 789 for those with low income, 830 for those with moderate income, and 1,620 for those with above moderate income, by October 2028. Accordingly, city staff did not press Village Partners Ventures to revamp the project’s architectural elements or render specific changes that Beswick, Cohoe, Barmack, Hawes and Waterman or others indicated they thought would be appropriate.
There was, of course, some hard feeling among Redlands residents over the approval of the Village Partners project. To the extent that Redlands residents had to that point and to today registered their sentiment with regard to development, they rejected 2020’s prodevelopment Measure G, which called for relaxing or dispensing entirely with the provisions contained in and passage of slow- or controlled growth Proposition R in 1978, the equally slow- or controlled growth Measure N in 1987 and slow- or controlled growth Measure U in 1997. Since 2022, many Redlands residents have expressed skepticism over the motivation of city officials in pushing for the State Street Village project, which embodies a multitude of features in conflict with the measures previously put in place by the city’s voters. At least some residents have taken the 2023 vote to approve the State Street Village project as an indication that city officials are answering to an entity or entities with undue sway over them and that the vote was a demonstration of how the governmental decision-making process in Redlands is tainted by a pro-growth attitude contrary to that of a majority of Redlands’ citizens. Recurrently expressed by Redlands residents who have dwelt on the May 2022 council vote regarding the State Street Village project is that it was driven by a combination of political grease, an attitude that there should be an accommodation of development and an unwillingness to resist the authority of state politicians in Sacramento intent on applying general land use standards dictated from distances of hundreds of miles away from the localities where those decisions have the greatest impact.
That Village Partners, having been granted tremendous license in the manner in which it could undertake the State Street Village Project and opportunity to achieve a substantial profit in doing so, did not move forward with the project is baffling to many. The city surrendered, in the unorthodox approval of the project, an unprecedented degree of land use authority, giving Village Partners virtual carte blanche in how it could proceed. That the company squandered that opportunity is explicated, perhaps, by the consideration that Michael Morris, who with Henry was a principal in Village Partners and took the lead in getting the State Street Village Project entitlement, died in February 2023.
Jack and Laura Dangermond are widely considered Redlands’ leading citizens and are certainly among its wealthiest. They founded Environmental Systems Research Institute [ESRI], a geographic information system software company, in 1969. Originally intended to perform land-use analysis, the software Jack Dangermond created saw its focus evolve toward geographic information storage and analysis, providing the ability to manage, examine, analyze, visualize and apply data relating to physical locations. In this way, with the rapid evolution of data and information processing that took place in the 1970s and 1980s, ESRI was in on the ground floor of computerized geopositioning and monitoring capability. ESRI is at present the supplier of geopositioning systems to 350,000 businesses, orgainations and government agencies worldwide. At present, the Dangermond’s net worth is set at somewhere in the neighborhood of $9.8 billion.
Jack, whose actual name is Paul Jacob Dangermond, and Laura, have established themselves as philanthropists who have donated $165 million to the Nature Conservancy, enabling the purchase and preservation of a 24,000-acre parcel (37.5-square mile) of land on the California coast north of Santa Barbara; $3 million to the Museum of Redlands, substantial donations to the Marbe Fund for Geographic Science, aimed at advancing geographic information systems, $6 million to the University of California Santa Barbara;
A 1963 graduate of Redlands High School, Jack Dangermond, as does his wife, has a personal stake in the community of Redlands. Accordingly, it is believed that they do not have as aggressive of a profit motive in seeing the former Redlands Mall property developed as did the Village Partners and Brixton Capital.
Indications are that the Dangermonds, who already have a campus for ESRI in Redlands, have no intention of converting the mall into another headquarters for or center for ESRI operations. Word was that the Dangermonds are not wedded to the same combined residential/commercial use as was Village Partners, although the entitlement the former owner obtained is yet applicable to the property.
Unknown, then, is whether the Dangermonds will take advantage of the clearance to erect mixed-use buildings to entail as many as 700 residential units to four stories tall, atop one or two of which could be restaurants. A definite signal given was that the existing structure, build in 1976 and 1977, will come down. The Dangermonds are amenable, the Sentinel is informed, to allowing, for the time being, having the parking lot for the CVS drug store and Redlands Bowl remain in place. It is too early, city officials said, to anticipate the submission of any new plans for the property, which they said they will work with the Dangermonds and their representatives to refine and complete.
It was noted that Jack Dangermond is sensitive to both aesthetic and practical issues pertaining to real estate development. He majored in landscape architecture at Cal Poly Pomona in obtaining his bachelor of science degree, then earned a master’s degree in urban planning from the University of Minnesota and a master’s degree in landscape architecture from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design just before he founded ESRI.