La Habra, California

of apartment projects around the country, approached us to do a project, once we had finished the General Plan, on a vacant parcel near the Imperial Highway. There was a run- down, burned-out, old hotel that had become defacto housing for transients and homeless folks. The developer acquired the property and built 300-plus market-rate apartment homes on the site, right across the street from one of our busiest shopping centers. So, that’s one big project that happened here in La Habra. “Then, there are a couple of other projects occurring along La Habra Blvd., which is north of there and in the city’s downtown core: a couple of underused retail/commercial strip centers that were no longer viable were acquired by housing developers, one being the Olson Company, the other was Shea Homes. Both of them built townhome projects on them; one has 32 units, the other has 50 units, and both of them are close to being finished. So that’s another project happening in town. “Probably the star project in La Habra, the one we’re most proud of, is a renovation of the Civic Center, which includes the City Hall, our police department, and our community center. We were approached by another housing developer, called City Ventures, who owned an option to acquire a vacant, run-down, commercial office building right across the street from our old city hall, to build 40-50 units on the site. The city owned a parking lot just south of that commercial office building and they wanted to see if they could incorporate that property into their larger project. “As it happened, the city was in the process of looking at renovating a 60-plus-year-old city hall that had seen better days. Whenever it rained here, staff would have to put out