Downtown 2000, the $4 million revitalization project, will primarily affect Huntington Drive and First Ave. Huntington Drive will have more landscaping and lighting, while First Ave. will have angled parking and landscaping to be more pedestrian oriented.
Construction crews began digging up streets and sidewalks along Huntington Drive in June for the City's Downtown 2000 Renovation Project. Traffic jams, frustrated customers and declining sales have been the result.
City Council members voted 4-0 to change lighting plans and add a new storm drain system to the Huntington Drive streetscape project, changing the cost from $4.1 to $5.6 million.
The urban design team of Freedman, Tung, and Bottomley made its first recommendations to develop the city's Downtown Revitalization Plan. Ideas included removing parallel street parking along Huntington Drive and adding eight pedestrian crosswalks, as well as creating themes based on Santa Anita Park.
The addition of a new hotel on the corner of Second Avenue and Santa Clara Street in Arcadia would bring an additional 159 rooms to an area which already boasts eight hotels along a one mile stretch of the Huntington Drive corridor.
The City will pay $1.25 million to the Sully Miller Contracting Co. to settle a breach-of-contract lawsuit the company filed after it was fired from the Downtown 2000 project.
After two weeks of delays, construction work has resumed along the downtown stretch of Huntington Drive and First Ave. City officials have hired a new contractor.
The Arcadia City Council plans to seek more than $1 million in damages against its original contractor for cost overruns in the City's Downtown 2000 revitalization project.
One year has passed since the Sully-Miller Contracting Co. filed a $2 million breach-of-contract suit against Arcadia, claiming the City illegally terminated it from the Downtown 2000 project.
May Co. has bowed out of the proposed expansion of the Santa Anita Fashion Park. As a result, the project's price tag should drop from $75 million to approximately $32 million.
City Council approved lending the city redevelopment agency $1.2 million Tuesday to cover additional cost overruns with Downtown 2000 and other projects.
The city is fighting against paying an additional $400,000 in legal costs to Sully-Miller's attorney for the Downtown 2000 project in which the city cancelled the contract with Sully-Miller and settled for $1.25 million.
Oak Tree Racing Association's 1996 season started with a bang on October 2. Patrons discovered a new look with the $3.5 million improvement programs completed over the summer at Santa Anita Park race track.
The developers of a proposed $9.8 million inline skating facility have abandoned plans for building in downtown Arcadia, saying they would rather take their project to Monrovia.
City officials determined that Sulley-Miller is in gross violation of the Downtown 2000 project. In a unanimous vote, city officials terminated this company as contractor for the project.
The revamped downtown debuts today with new streets, sidewalks, benches, palm trees and an all-day street fair. This marks the completion of the Downtown 2000 construction project.