Per Redlands Daily Facts:

Village Partners’ proposal for State Street Village includes mixed-use, three-, four- and five-story buildings with up to 722 housing units, but the builder is open to revisiting the five-story features, according to company principal Don Henry…The proposal also includes a six-level parking structure with 780 spaces…

To help visualize just how tall these structures would be, the Citi Bank on State Street is six-stories tall. Thus it’s easy to see what an imposing eyesore a six-story parking structure would be.  In a zoom meeting with the City of Redlands Planning Dept. two weeks ago, Village Partners said that five-story buildings would surround the parking structure to help block the view of it.  But, if five-story buildings are necessary to help block the view of the parking structure, then it’s highly unlikely that Village Partners will revisit the issue as they claim.  Apparently, they need buildings that tall to offset the giant parking structure.

Friends of Redlands continues to collect signatures for a Growth Management initiative that would place a cap on building heights of 3 stories in our historic downtown and at the Transit Vllage areas.  When one considers the  proportions of our downtown and the height of the Citi Bank building, and then visualizes the Mall site having a structure that tall with structures surrounding it that are nearly that tall, it’s easy to see what a disproportionate eyesore the proposed new builds would be.  They would easily swallow up our charming historic downtown. 

Let’s develop downtown, but let’s do it in a smart and thoughtful way and one that enhances our unique historical charms because that is why people and tourists are drawn to downtown Redlands in the first place.  Making us look like any other pedestrian urban center with a bigger-is-better mentality does not enhance the visual “jewel of the Inland Empire”.  Rather it destroys it.