Business View Magazine | February 2020

174 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE FEBRUARY 2020 our future bikeway trail. We’re in negotiations, now, with Union Pacific Railroad, to acquire a portion of their easement to do a bike trail. The segment that goes through La Habra will be one of the last major segments that need to be filled for the Orange County loop, a 60-plus- mile bike trail that goes across all of Orange County. It will also connect the OC Loop to trails in Los Angeles County. La Habra is one of the last steps in completing that entire loop, so we’re hoping to get that competed soon.” Caring about what its citizens want and need is part of La Habra’s ethos, and what helps make this southern California city a wonderful place to live, work, and play. “The city’s motto is “A Caring Community,” says Ferrier. “That speaks to the sense of volunteerism that is alive and well in La Habra. It seems like every weekend, there’s some kind of an event going on; sometimes even during the week. And people come out to participate. We have an event every Christmas PREFERRED VENDOR n City Ventures www.CityVentures.com City Ventures entered into a multi-year partnership with the City of La Habra to accomplish the following goals – redesign and modernize the City’s Civic Center, revitalize La Habra Boulevard, and bring new for-sale housing to the Downtown La Habra. Ultimately City Ventures helped the City acquire and finance the construction of a new City Hall building across the street from their old City Hall building which then made way for 71 new for-sale solar-powered homes on the old City Hall site. Construction on the new City Hall was completed in early 2017 and construction of the new residential community commenced in summer 2017 and was completed by late 2019. However, the process started in 2013 when City Ventures was invited by the City to evaluate the Civic Center and make recommendations on how to enhance the underutilized area. That process led to numerous conceptual site plans and associated detailed financial analysis. After months of study and planning the City Council approved a Disposition and Development Agreement (DDA) in 2015 to greenlight the transformative multi-parcel project that allowed the city to move into a modern building and expand their operations from 21,000 to 47,000 square feet, bring 62 attached townhomes and 9 detached single family homes to the downtown, and enhance numerous other public facilities in the Civic Center such as the Police Department, Community Center, Lions Park, and Veteran’s Hall. This public/private partnership occurred after the dissolution of the Redevelopment Agency and took creativity, entrepreneurial thinking, and patience from all parties to bring the project to a successful fruition. called Operation Santa where people donate either money or gifts to families in need during the holiday season. There’s another event called Love La Habra, which happens once or twice a year, where people can volunteer to help their community by participating in all kinds of community projects from helping landscape homes and schools, to painting buildings, to cleaning up properties of people who can’t do it themselves. Caring about your neighbor is something we take very seriously.”