Good morning! It’s Friday, May 8. This is Rob.
Hot and sunny: Highs in the 90s today and throughout the weekend, with triple-digits expected early next week. NOAA
New shoes: More than 635 students at Ayer Elementary School will receive brand new athletic shoes at noon today through a partnership between Shoes That Fit and longtime community supporters Lou and Dena McMurray. ABC30
Fruit Trail: Fresno County kicks off the 23rd season of the Fresno County Fruit Trail with a ceremony at 10 a.m. today Friday, May 8, at the Grace Barn, 4219 S. Highland Ave., Del Ray. Facebook
1. A $40 million question
The City of Fresno could waive up to $40 million in developer fees for Costco to move out of its aging Shaw Avenue building and into a nice, big new space farther north, Fresnoland’s Gregory Weaver reports.
Critics of the plan say it’s a big giveaway to a large corporation by exempting it from the city’s vehicle-miles-traveled mitigation fee program, a system to offset the climate impacts of new development by funding traffic-reduction projects elsewhere.
Daniel Brannick: “The amount of money that is potentially being foregone here is almost twice the city budget deficit. Even paying half would close the city’s budget gap.”
2. Waiting for the bond market?
Citing unspecified “global military conflicts” they said temporarily stalled bond-market financing on a long-delayed downtown housing project, the City Council on Thursday once again extended yet another “drop deadline” to the struggling project.
“Coming in at a sticker price of about $80 million,” Fresnoland’s Pablo Orihuela writes, “The Park At South Stadium housing project is a proposed eight-story, 174-unit apartment development on the northwest corner of Fulton and Inyo streets, neighboring Chukchansi Park and the Brewery District in downtown Fresno. Seventy of those units are expected to be set aside for affordable housing.”
The Park Partners LLC, a Fresno-based developer group co-managed by
The developers, Mehmet Noyan and Jeff Isenstadt, are expected to get the rest of the financing for the downtown housing proposal, about $70 million, through the bond market. City leaders said they expect only a two-week delay.
3. Honoring the thin blue line
The Fresno County Sheriff’s Office gathered at Courthouse Park for the annual Peace Officers Memorial ceremony this week, honoring officers who lost their lives in the line of duty, KMPH reports.
It was the 28th anniversary of the memorial’s development honoring law enforcement officers who made the ultimate sacrifice.
Today’s newsletter was edited Fresnoland’s Omar S. Rashad.
