Council to discuss bids for city yard

Torus Tammer

FOUNTAIN VALLEY -- On March 12, the city reached its deadline for

accepting bids on the vacant former city yard on Ward Street.

“We received five bids in total and the council has asked us to come

back with two of them,” said Andy Perea, Fountain Valley planning

director. “The council will discuss their options and the bids in a study

session, which will take place on May 1.”

Perea said the council will discuss the bids of two companies: PRES

development and Mike Thompson’s RV dealership.

The former Fountain Valley city yard has been vacant since March 5,

said Don Heinbuch, Fountain Valley administrative services manager.

Heinbuch said the city still has some employees at the old Ward Street

yard, but have pretty much moved the operation to the new location on

Mount Herrmann Street, which officially opened March 12.

Since knowing a couple of years ago that the Ward Street location was

eventually going to become vacant, the city has tired to a company that

is a low-traffic generator while also contributing to the sales tax base,

said Councilman John Collins.

“Either of the two bids would be a big-ticket item that would generate

sales tax,” he said.

But Jaye Schierer, who lives across the road from the Ward Street

property, has been a vocal opponent to having an RV lot take over the

premises. Schierer said that she and other residents of the Tiburon

condos, as well as those in the Greenbrook east single-family homes (on

Ward Street), said that they didn’t find out about who the bidders were

until recently.

“We found out it was happening through a back door,” Schierer said.

“We didn’t know that a vehicle-type business would be in there, which is

not what we want. We want low traffic.”

But an RV dealership is not a go yet, said Collins, who added that the

council has remained definitive about having a low-traffic, high-tax

generator take over the Ward Street location and that people should not

forget that it is a commercial area.

“I can’t put the final say on the RV dealership,” Collins said. “From

what I’ve seen from when the yard was occupied in the past, and from the

preliminary data, it indicates that an RV yard would have less traffic

then what the city did.”

But Schierer questions the logic of a decision to put an RV dealership

across the road from where she lives.

“The city wants a tax revenue and I don’t fault them for that,”

Schierer said. “It’s a good idea from their standpoint, but problem for

us is that it’s next door to where we live and they’re nice homes that

we’d like to keep nice. They (council) say that they want to generate

revenue, but I’m not convinced that what we need is more revenue.

Everyone in the city is doing such a good job, so my attitude is: ‘if

it’s not broke, don’t fix it.”’