Diamond Bar Ca Development And Redevelopment

City officials must follow a California court order to disband its redevelopment district because the affluent suburb has failed to prove it has any blight, the state's Supreme Court has decided. The high court refused to review the lower court order forcing the end of Diamond Bar's redevelopment zone, and the city was informed of the decision earlier in the week, City Manager James DeStefano said Tuesday.

A Diamond Bar group submitted a referendum petition Thursday to put a newly adopted redevelopment plan before the voters. The plan, approved by the City Council last month, would ensure that property taxes from a large commercial district be reinvested in that area rather than be distributed to schools, the county and the city. Terry L. Birrell, president of Diamond Bar Residents and Business Assn., said the plan diverts $300 million of property taxes into private pockets.

A Los Angeles Superior Court judge has rejected a lawsuit by a group of activists opposed to the creation of the Diamond Bar redevelopment project area. The activists had argued that the project area covering the city's commercial strips was unnecessary because they were not blighted, as required by state law. But Judge Ernest Hiroshige, in a ruling issued Monday, wrote that the city presented substantial evidence that the redevelopment project area is blighted.

Construction is underway in Diamond Bar on two regional headquarters that when completed are expected to bring in as many as 1,100 jobs and generate more than $8 million a year in sales for local stores and services. Work on a 170,000-square-foot complex for Travelers Property Casualty Corp. and on 125,000 square feet of space for Allstate Corp.'s Allstate Insurance subsidiary is expected to be finished by early next year.

Environmental activist Max Maxwell, who has led two successful referendum drives to scrap Diamond Bar's General Plan, is threatening to force the issue onto the ballot again. After a 3-1 vote by the City Council to approve a new General Plan--a blueprint for development of the city's canyons and hillsides--the slow-growth leader vowed to take it to the voters. Mayor Phyllis Papen said that the city trimmed the number of units substantially from earlier plans.

Launching a new chapter in Diamond Bar's struggle over development, preservationists who have led two successful efforts to scrap the city's General Plan submitted a petition this week to put their own land use plan on the ballot.

Jan Dabney's dream for Sandstone Canyon is Don Schad's nightmare. Wedged between the droning traffic of the Orange Freeway and tracts of neat suburban houses, Sandstone Canyon may seem a relatively unremarkable chunk of ravine and ridges. But to Schad, it is Diamond Bar's Grand Canyon. "There is no other place in the world just like this canyon," said Schad, a 70-year-old self-taught naturalist whose house overlooks one of Sandstone's steep, wooded cliffs.

The Diamond Bar City Council has voted to annul its General Plan and begin holding a series of public hearings in order to revise it. The vote Tuesday night was prompted by a judge's ruling in January ordering the city to either rescind and revise the plan or put it to a vote. The council voted unanimously Tuesday to schedule hearings to collect public input before the city drafts a new General Plan.

The Diamond Bar Planning Commission on Monday night voted to delay a public hearing on the proposed master planned development in Sandstone Canyon until its April 12 regular meeting. About 30 residents attended the meeting to voice their concerns over the project. And two private landowners who hold most of the 170 acres in and around the canyon were there to make presentations on their proposed developments.

To the dismay of city officials who were given no formal notice of his arrival, the state's environmental chief hiked into one local canyon last week and then flew over it and another canyon--both of them embroiled in controversy over proposed developments. Local environmentalists were buoyed by the visit of California Secretary for Resources Douglas P.