The first two actuations of the Redlands Unified School District’s policy allowing the removal of books from school libraries and classroom shelves is to take place next week.
On Tuesday, December 9, the same school board which on August 19 by a bare 3-to-2 majority voted to allow virtually anyone to challenge a book on the basis of its “explicit” content and have it temporarily removed while an evaluation of whether it should be permanently banned will consider the first two such challenges lodged.
The 3-to-2 school board majority in August approved both the library book policy and a similar one potentially banning explicit material from the district schools’ curriculum.
Under the library book policy, anyone who has knowledge about the presence of a particular book in any district school library can object to or challenge its “explicit” content, have the book in question within three days consequently temporarily taken out of circulation and then have it provided to a “district review committee” comprised of the superintendent, assistant superintendent of educational services and either the director of elementary or the director of secondary education. The district review committee then has two months to read and review the book using a numerical system ranking the book in question as to its sexual content, violence, social and educational context, suitability for the varying ages of students who have access to the library where it is available and the book’s potential for negative impacts on those reading it.
The district uses a somewhat idiosyncratic or subjective grading system in which the committee members rank 1 to 5 the intensity or unacceptability of the sexual content, violence; 1 to 5 the inverse value of the social and educational value of the content; 1 through 5 the age suitability of the content and 1 through 5 the potential for negative psychological harm, trauma or disruption to someone reading the book. Those books garnering a score of 1 to 10 are returned to the libraries shelves. Those which compile a score of 11 to 19 are moved to a library that furnishes books to students of a higher grade level or into a category of restrict access if they were already in a high school library. Those books achieving a score of 20 to 25, inclusive, are removed.
Two books in the school district’s libraries that came to the attention of members of the public who found them objectionable were The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison and Push by Sapphire.
Those books were removed from high school library shelves and have now been read by Superintendent Juan Cabral, Assistant Superintendent of Educational Services Patti Buchmuller and Director of Secondary Education Jean Joye.
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, published in 1970, has as its protagonist Pecola Breedlove, a young African-American girl living in Loraine, Ohio in the 1940s Ohio who has developed an inferiority complex as a result of both the trauma of being raped by her father who was himself the victim of sexual abuse in his youth and the beauty standards celebrated by the members of the predominantly white race that inhabit Loraine. She has grown mentally ill to the point that she has convinced herself that having blue eyes will make her beautiful and loved. The novel deals with the topics of racism, poverty, identity, and self-hatred, through the prism of Pecola’s delusional quest for blue eyes, and her hidden psychological desire to escape being black. Her experience pushes her into believing the world considers her ugly, and her means of escaping that overwhelming perception is to achieve a self-induced illusionary state in which she believes her brown eyes are blue.
Push is by Sapphire, published in 1996, recounting the experience of Claireece Precious Jones starting in 1987, when she is 16 years old and living in Harlem. Obese and illiterate, Claireece has already had one child, born with Down syndrome, fathered by her her father, Carl. That child has been placed into the care of her grandmother, though her parents are receiving welfare benefits for the child. The book has graphic passages which depict rape and incest as well as oral and vaginal sex with children. One passage in the book explicitly details Carl raping his daughter while his wife sleeps in the same bed. Claireece is again impregnated by her father, and when officials at the school she attends discover the pregnancy, she is sent to an alternative school. This is against her parents wishes, who prefer that she apply for welfare to take care of the baby instead of returning to school. At the alternative school, Claireece and some of the other students there develop a passion for literature, in particular that of African American writers such as Alice Walker, Langston Hughes and Audre Lord. At the hospital where she is giving birth to her second child, she tells a social worker that she had another child who is living with her grandmother. When this results in the welfare her mother and father are receiving being discontinued, she is kicked out of their house. She is accepted into a halfway house where she is free to return to school, and she does. She starts writing poetry and gets an award from the mayor for her literary accomplishments. Just as her life is going well, she learns her father has died from AIDs. She gets a test and learns she too is HIV positive but that her children are not. She joins a support group for those who are HIV-positive. In those meetings, she learns that many people, not just those who are black have had bad experiences like hers. The book ends with no indication of how Claireece is to do in life going forward.
The district released the reviews that Cabral, Buchmuller and Joye made of The Bluest Eye and filed on October 23. Without identifying them beyond their scorer identification code numbers of 1, 28 and 29, which is intended, apparently, to maintain some degree of confidentiality, those scores were 14 according to Scorer #1, 9 according to Scorer #28 and 14 according to Scorer #29. According to the summary given, the average score fell between 11 and 19 and any copies of The Bluest Eye previously at grade school or junior high libraries will be moved to high school libraries or be placed into the category of restricted access, presumably requiring parent permission to access it, at high school libraries.
Two of the reviewers of Push were given the same scorer identification code numbers of 28 and 29, while the other was given the code number of 2. Scorer #2, who completed the ranking of Push on October 16, rated it at 16. Scorer #29, who file the completed rating on October 17, put it at 14 on the scale and Scorer #29, on a scorecard dated October 17, ranked it at 19. Thus, copies of Push previously available from grade school or junior high libraries will be moved to high school libraries or be placed into the category of restricted access at high school libraries.
It appears that the school board next Tuesday will take action in accordance with the rankings Cabral, Buchmuller and Joye made, such that both The Bluest Eye and Push will be placed into the restricted materials collections at Redlands High, East Valley High and Citrus Valley High libraries and the library at the district’s continuation high school campus, Orangewood High.
Of some relevance and both real and academic interest will be whether, on this coming Tuesday, the two members of the school board who opposed the policy when it was first considered in June and then voted upon in July and August, Melissa Ayala-Quintero and Patty Holohan, vote to accept the recommendations from Cabral, Buchmuller and Joye that The Bluest Eye and Push be removed from general circulation at the district’s school libraries.
Earlier this year there was sharp disagreement between Ayala-Quintero and Holohan and their supporters on one side and the board coalition of Jeannette Wilson, Candy Olson and current Board President Michelle Rendler and the element of the community that sides with them on the other with regard to the library book policy.
Ayala-Quintero and Holohan, identify as Democrats and are considered progressives or liberals. Wilson and Olson, Republicans, meet the classic definition of conservatives. Rendler, who to casual observers seemed to be apolitical and pretty much middle-of-the-road in terms of her general approach prior to the 2024 election, was thrust into what became a swing vote position when Olson and Wilson were elected to the school board that November. Rendler did not prove as resistant to the direction that Olson and Wilson were seeking to move the district as those in the progressive camp would have liked and link up with Ayala-Quintero and Holohan to form a voting block to oppose actions Olson and Wilson championed such as banning the display of gay pride flags on campus and informing parents if their children assumed a different gender identity at school than that assigned them at birth. This resulted in Ayala-Quintero’s and Holohan’s supporters engaging in personal attacks on her, which did not have the desired effect of bringing her into union with the progressives but rather shoved her further into the conservative camp and thus created an alliance that included her, Olson and Wilson.
Olson, Wilson and their supporters that imposing limits on explicitly sexual references in the district’s schools curriculum was one that would prevent possible exploitation and grooming and that restrictions on the books available in the school’s libraries would protect students from sexually explicit books. Olson, in particular, said her survey of books in Redlands school libraries were disturbing and should not be available to impressionable kids, in particular without their parents’ consent. Olson’s and Wislon’s supporters have asserted that it is appropriate to have concerns about the potential impact sexually explicit and graphically violent reading material can have on young minds. They say that exposing some students to such material prematurely can be harmful, leading to desensitization, negative behavioral influence and violence. Some have argued that there are those who are actively militating to push what in years past were referred to as alternative forms of sexuality on unsuspecting students and that having certain materials in support of their objectives available in school libraries represents an unwanted intrusion into those students lives and ultimately a danger to their mental health. In addition, those to the right politically maintain, parents should have ample opportunity to be aware of and have control over what their children are being exposed to.
Those celebrating themselves as progressives argued that removing books from public school libraries goes against the grain of American values and comes close to violating or actually violates students’ First Amendment rights to access information and ideas. They say that restricting access to books will stifle intellectual growth and critical thinking and simultaneously prevent students from being exposed to to diverse perspectives. They have argued that there is already a sensible, sensitive and intellectually enriching monitoring of the materials that are available in school libraries carried out by highly-educated and trained librarians and educators who curate collections based on educational suitability and the school’s mission, who have the the professional expertise to know what kind of material will be of benefit to students. The progressives argue that the tendency of conservatives to ban books about marginalized populations such as lesbians, gays, bisexuals, queers and transsexuals can further stigmatize those groups, leading to negative mental health effects for those who just two generations ago were cataloged as mentally ill for merely being homosexuals or of any non-mainstream sexuality.
Liberals have turned the conservative argument about parental rights around, arguing that while some parents assert the right to decide what their own children read, no single parent or set of parents should have the right to restrict what books are available to the other students who attend school with their children.
In Redlands since before the policy was changed in August and even more so since it has been put in place, there are those who take issue with the mechanics, fairness and fuller implication of the system of book review that is now in place. The review process involves an unacceptable degree of subjectivity, they say. This is illustrated, they say, with the rating cards for The Bluest Eyes and Push, which call for rating “the severity and/or frequency of pornography, erotica, or detailed sexual acts” and “the severity and or frequency of sexual assault, coercion, or graphic violence tied to sexuality” and asks the scorer “Is the content gratuitous, or is it presented in a literary, historical, scientific or educational context?” Many American works of literature which have long been part of educational curricula in American schools, such as The Red Badge of Courage, A Farewell to Arms and The Great Gatsby depict what could be described as gratuitous violence and, at least in the case of The Great Gatsby, “graphic violence tied to sexuality.”
Moreover, if every parent of students attending schools in the Redlands Unified School District or one of every ten parents of students attending schools in the Redlands Unified School District or if one of every hundred parents of students attending schools in the Redlands Unified School District lodged a single complain about a book in the district’s libraries, the district superintendent, the district’s assistant superintendent of educational services, the director of elementary education and the director of secondary education would have time do nothing more but read books all day, most likely ones they would never otherwise so much as consider picking up, let alone reading.
-Mark Gutglueck

Faced With The $200,000 Cost Of Resident-Forced Referendum To Cancel Their Favor To Developers

After having repeatedly misread the attitude of their constituents with regard to the proliferation of warehousing in their community, the Yucaipa City Council will have a last opportunity next week to reverse course and avert a referendum which will cost the city at least $200,000 and almost assuredly undo its earlier action which has triggered a resident revolt. Doing so, however, will require four of the council members to eat a heaping dish of humble pie they would rather not have to choke down.
More than 17 years ago, in November 2008, the Yucaipa City Council adopted its currently applicable development standards and blueprint for land use and its intensity in the 1,242 acres along the freeway and surrounding areas in Yucaipa under what is known as the Freeway Corridor Specific Plan. The planning document allowed for the construction of up to 2,447 residential units on 424.7 acres and up to 4,585,779 square feet of nonresidential uses on 242.7 acres within the designated area.
In recent years, a handful of projects that were proposed and approved, taken together with development proposals within the 1,241-acre expanse prompted calls for the specific plan’s adjustment. Thirteen months ago, the Palmer, Robinson, and Issa families sought permission to construct warehouses along Live Oak Canyon.
While then-Councilman Bobby Duncan and then-Councilman Jon Thorp were willing to let the projects proceed, then-Mayor Justin Beaver, Councilman Chris Venable and then-Councilman Matt Garner balked at the proposal.
There were at that time two mindsets with regard to the warehouse issue. Continue reading →

The third managerial transition in Rancho Cucamonga’s 48-year history this week was marred by deep controversy over a secretive move by City Hall to reverse course on a key element of its land use policy, raising the specter of graft and influence peddling impacting governmental operations within San Bernardino County’s fourth most populous city.
The abrupt shift city officials are seeking to implement with regard to the intensity of development that is to be permitted to take place within the expanse of land most recently annexed the city while those officials were withholding from the public information relating to that alteration in policy is taking place just as Elisa Cox is officially succeeding John Gillison, who as of Monday officially departed as city manager after a tenure in that capacity which began in 2011.
Among Gillison’s most significant accomplishments was the city’s 2020 annexation of 6.38-square mile Etiwanda Heights, which was then situated above the northeastern quadrant of the city. That acquisition boosted the 40.12 square miles that were then within Rancho Cucamonga city limits to 46.5 square miles. That expansion was not effectuated casually, but had come after more than two decades of contemplation and informal discussion, followed by focused and intense preparation and action toward the annexation of the 4,085 acres in question in the 2017-to-2020 timeframe. This entailed, throughout all of 2018 and most of 2019, multiple public hearings, community workshops, scoping sessions, virtual workshops, surveys, and pop-up meetings in which the community, most particularly those then-current residents living in close proximity to the 4,085 acres under consideration for annexation, were encouraged to and did weigh in with regard to their perception of the advisability of expanding the city’s jurisdiction to include the land and the standards under which the property was to be developed once it became part of the city. The predominate, indeed nearly universal sentiment, expressed throughout this process was that the rustic and virtually undeveloped land should not be aggressively or intensely developed. Those present at the meetings, workshops and scoping sessions voiced, and the city staff summaries of that input documents consistently strong opposition to “apartments,” “condos,” “high-density,” and “multi-family housing.” Staff reports show residents explicitly added “No Apartments” and “No Condos” to priority boards during workshops. That input was utilized to inform what ultimately became the Etiwanda Heights Neighborhood and Conservation Plan, a binding planning document which was was ultimately given approval by the city council in November 2019.
As drawn up and ratified, the Etiwanda Heights Neighborhood and Conservation Plan permits a relatively narrow swath of property that was previously within the city limits, featuring chaparral, grasslands and oak woodlands alongside a natural alluvial creekbed, to be developed with something on the order of 90 to 100 homes. Further, under the plan, another 790 acres in the annexed property is to be designated as eligible for a variety of residential uses, including senior living cottages, some relatively small single family units as well as a number of half-acre sized lots to be zoned to allow equestrian use. Overall, the lion’s share of the land to be annexed, 88.2 percent or 3,603 of its 4,085 acres, is zoned for “rural/conservation” land use where no development is to occur.
The adopted plan reflected a prohibition on multifamily units by providing only single-family housing types in the designated “neighborhood area” within Etiwanda Heights. Overall, documents show, the Etiwanda Heights Neighborhood and Conservation Plan was to allow “2,700–3,000 single-family homes” to be built while ensuring that there were to be “no multi-family units across the 790 acres” zoned to be developed residentially. The adopted plan reflected this by providing only single-family housing types in the so-called neighborhood area.
Thereafter, the Etiwanda Heights Neighborhood and Conservation Plan was presented as the land use document cited in support of the city’s application with the San Bernardino County Local Agency Formation Commission to annex the 4,085 acres. That effort concluded successfully on November 9, 2020, when the Local Agency Formation commission, known by its acronym LAFCO, gave approval to the annexation. Throughout LAFCO’s processing and ultimate granting of that request, Rancho Cucamonga officials gave repeated assurances that the city was committed to abiding by the development standards and limitations contained in the Etiwanda Heights Neighborhood and Conservation Plan, including assurances that upon the 6.38 square miles transitioning from unincorporated San Bernardino County land to property lying within Rancho Cucamonga municipal boundaries, that portion of it deemed suitable for residential development would consist of unattached single-family homes, each with its surrounding and separate yard. There were multiple attestations of this commitment, made by city officials in both verbal and written form, including the 2020 LAFCO annexation approval summary, dated November 9, 2020; city website announcements and at public presentations surrounding the annexation.
Ultimately, in making its annexation application and throughout LAFCO’s processing and ultimate granting of that request, the Etiwanda Heights Neighborhood and Conservation Plan formed the basis of how the city was proceeding toward the eventuality of expanding its boundaries. In this way, the city and its officials were doubly committed, and the city’s residents doubly assured, that there were to be no multifamily residences constructed in Etiwanda Heights and there was to be no high-density development of the property, and what development was to occur there would be within a subdivision or subdivisions of a density between 3.3 units to the acre and 3.67 units to the acre, an intensity below that which had occurred in the city’s residential tracts in the 1980s and 1990s. City officials’ repeated commitments to adhere to these standards were manifest in the 2020 LAFCO annexation approval summary, dated November 9, 2020; announcements on the city’s website; and city officials’ verbal statements during public presentations surrounding the annexation.
Throughout the remainder of Gilllison’s official tenure as city manager – a period of slightly more than five years running through November 30, 2025 – the Etiwanda Heights Neighborhood and Conservation Plan had remained operative.
Contained within Etiwanda Heights was 1,252.21 acres of land owned by the San Bernardino County Flood Control District. Following the Army Corps of Engineers construction of a regional flood control system that included concrete channelization some two decades ago, the use of the acreage for damming, diversion purposes and containment basins ceased, although those basins remained operative, following normal precipitation or deluges, for percolation purposes. The county declared the property as surplus during the fist decade of the 21st Century and for a time entertained purchase and development proposals from various entities entities, including a competition in 2009 that was never resolved. Unbeknownst to the public, last year the county entered into confidential and exclusive negotiations with developer James “Jimmy” Previti and representatives of his company, Frontier Enterprises. On the day prior to Thanksgiving 2024, November 27, 2024, in a closed-door session from which the public was excluded, the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors worked out the final details and then ratified the sale of the 1,252.21 acres – slightly less than 1.96 square miles – for the agreed-upon price of $93 million, or $74,275.21 per acre. Though ownership of the property changed hands, it remained within the Etiwanda Heights Neighborhood and Conservation Plan Area, and subject to the land use standards and restrictions contained in the document in its finalized form when ratified by the city council in 2019 and memorialized for a second time during LAFCO’s 2020 processing and ratification of the annexation of the 4,085 acres within which the 1,252.21-acres flood zone purchased by Previti lies.
In August 2025, it was announced that Gillison was to depart as manager as of December 1, at which time he was to be succeeded by Elisa Cox, who had been serving as the city’s second-in-command as assistant city manager since May 2002, had deputy city manager between August 2016 and April 2022 and prior to that had been assistant city manager in Sierra Madre for 22 months after having served in the capacity of that city’s human resources director and, previously, its head of community and personnel services.
The slightly-more-than-three-month duration of Cox’s transition into the position of city manager ensued. On November 18, 2025, as the countdown toward Cox’s inheritance of full oversight of City Hall was proceeding apace, public notice was given on that on December 10, 2025, the planning commission is to discuss and consider an alteration of the city’s planning standards as pertains to Etiwanda Heights in the form of a specific plan amendment – meaning most apparently the Etiwanda Heights Neighborhood and Conservation Plan – which would add nine new building types, including duplexes, quadplexes, 12-plexes, walkups, so-called cottage courts, several higher-density small-lot product types, new block configurations, a density transfer mechanism and objective standard changes along expanded regulating zones permitting those products. The proposed amendment clearly presages the introduction of multi-family housing types that were excluded in the adopted 2019 Etiwanda Heights Neighborhood and Conservation Plan and referenced in the city’s 2020 public commitment.
On the same day that the notice went out a handful of people, followed a few days later by even more local residents, grew alarmed at what they perceived to be in the offing. A number of these initiated inquiries with City Hall to ascertain, precisely, what was happening, why it was happening, who was driving the proposed land use and policy change, whether this had been triggered by a proposal at odds with the previous development standards that originated with a landowner/developer or whether the change was being pushed by either elected city officials or city staff. According to several of those city residents who made those inquiries, city officials – from those at the level of the planning division up to that of city administration and the city council – stonewalled them.
While it is abundantly clear that there has been a reversal of attitude on the part of the city’s public officials with regard to Etiwanda Heights, most notably with regard to the prohibition on residential development of an intensity/density greater than single family units or cottages intended for senior citizens, who or what is driving the shift is not clear. Sources deep within City Hall have told the Sentinel that the change was played very close to the vest, and that information relating to the liberalization of land use standards on the property was not shared generally within the city’s planning division but rather on a strict need-to-know basis, meaning only among the city manager, i.e., Cox; the deputy city manager/director of community development, the city planner and no more than two of the city’s associate planners.
When residents asked specifically how the duplexes, quadplexes, 12-plexes, walkups, cottage courts, and the high-density small-lot units squared with the city’s commitment to construct single-family homes on the residentially-zoned property in Etiwanda Heights, they were met with silence. Similarly, inquiries with regard to who was making the request and whether it originated externally with Previti or other landowners within the district or if the proposal was generated internally by the mayor or members of the council, the planning commission or city staff went unanswered. In at least one case, a resident who pushed to obtain a greater explication of what the amendment was to entail and how many single-family units were to be converted to duplexes, quadplexes and 12-plexes as well as whether the term walk-up was a euphemism for an apartment building, he encountered hostility from city staff.
Redfin defines walk-up as “a type of apartment that doesn’t have elevators [in which] stairs are the primary way to navigate throughout the building.”
After being told that the action to be taken at the December 10 planning commission meeting had been personally planned by Cox as the “signature” kick-off to her era as city manager, the Sentinel initiated, or attempted to initiate, its own inquiries with Cox. Those included seven attempts to reach her by phone and a 2,748-word email delving into the particulars of the evolution of the terms memorialized in the Etiwanda Heights Neighborhood and Conservation Plan, the city’s representations with regard to it during its 2019 adoption, the city’s commitment to its terms in the successful 2020 annexation drive and what had transpired since that necessitated the rescission of those terms.
Prior to the Sentinel’s attempted communication via email, Cox’s diverted the inquiry to the city’s planning division, where an associate planner said a senior department member knowledgeable about the proposal would reach back with an explanation of what the proposed changes entail, why they are being proposed and what the city’s motivation in pursuing the is, who requested and who formulated them and their timing. No one from the city’s planning division has followed through with that promised contact as of press time.
In the meantime…

The completed article appears in the December 5 edition of the San Bernardino County Sentinel.

The Yuhaaviatam of San Manuel Nation’s billboard off the 10 Freeway near the San Bernardino County/Riverside County divide between Yucaipa and Calimesa was vandalized in the hours after sunset on Thanksgiving Eve.
The precise intention of those who defaced the billboard was unclear. The billboard owned by the Yuchaaviatam, originally displayed an advertisement which promoted the Yuhaaviatam with the depiction of three female tribe members, the tribe’s logo, the name of the website ANameHasPower.com and the word Yuhaaviatam in all capital letters across the approximately 26 feet of the 30 foot width of the 10-foot-by-30-foot billboard. Following the vandalism, the ad was partially obscured by a ten-foot by 5.26-foot wide American flag which was fastened near the top of the sign and which draped down to parapet at the bottom of the billboard. To the left of the flag what, appeared to be precisely drawn or stenciled yellow capital letters nearly two-feet tall stated, “America is not on stolen land Your Ancestors were conquered.” Beneath that in smaller yellow capital letters – roughly ten inches to one foot in height – which appeared to be drafted with less precision and without the aid of a stencil was the phrase “Happy Thanksgiving.”
The portion of the original advertisement left visible consisted of the tribe member furthest to the right, most of the final syllable, tam, in Yuhaaviatam, and the tribe’s logo. Continue reading →

The Rialto Unified School District Board of Trustees has conferred a $356,000 annual contract on Bassett Unified School District Superintendent Alejandro Alvarez in a successful effort to lure him 40 miles eastward and hopefully end a seemingly endless progression of scandals plaguing the Rialto public school system.
The move means Alvarez will net a $114,225.03 raise, making him the 35th highest paid of California’s 1,139 school district superintendents.
Alvarez has been in the role of Bassett Unified’s superintendent since 2020. Prior to that, he was the deputy superintendent with the Compton Unified School District. He previously was an associate superintendent in the Fontana Unified School District, where he began his career in education as a teacher.
He is to officially succeed Judy White, who was brought in as Rialto Unified’s interim superintendent earlier this year after the previous interim, Edward DeSouza was himself implicated by extension and passive neglect in the miasma of corruption and either/or political entanglement or political disfavor that had engulfed previous superintendents in Rialto going back a decade.
White had stabilized, at least partially, a situation in which the district’s administrators found themselves involved in or resisting literal extracurricular activities by which they enriched themselves using money, funding or programs intended to benefit the children, as often as not academically underachieving ones, of the district’s substantial numbers of impoverished families. Those superintendents, variously, were either connected with those doing the exploiting, on the wrong side of a school board member or members with family members involved in the wrongdoing or seeking to extend their tenure by letting those school boar members slide after the situations in some fashion showed themselves for what they were. Continue reading →

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. Continue reading →