Join Community or Steal Softly Into the Night

Written by: Tim Viall
Record (Stockton, California)
August 6, 2001

I recently had the chance to deliver the All America City, Stockton program to a club. I went back to the All America City application, first made in 1998 and successfully reworked in 1999. It reminded me of why our city was one of only 10 awardees in 1999.

I realized the award went to cities for trying hard, year after year, to fix those parts of its civic fabric that need mending.

The All America City application featured three key projects:

• Conversion of the former state hospital into the growing California State University, Stanislaus/Stockton campus.
• Let Education Attack Pollution program, in which Edison High School students worked with DeltaKeeper and other groups to abate water pollution.
• Apollo Nights awards program, a talent search that motivates young adults to excel as performers as well as students.

The application reflects scores of other victories, small and large, leading to Stockton's great strides in recent years. It reflects the work of our citizens and scores of organizations working to make our city better.

We can trumpet all of these attributes of a fine city:

• Our wonderful parks and recreational system as well as being the summer home of the San Francisco 49ers.
• A rich and vibrant cultural and arts community. The recent "West Side Story" production that has played all over our city is a great example of young talent.
• A rebounding business community and growing positive climate for attracting new industry (recently rated 43rd in the country by Forbes Magazine).
• CSU Stanislaus/ Stockton, San Joaquin Delta College, University of the Pacific, a quickly improving Stockton Unified School District, and other school districts.
• Stockton is a markedly safer, friendlier and more hospitable town than 10 years ago. Declining crime statistics now make us one of the safer cities in the Central Valley.

I'm pleased to note downtown Stockton played a key part of the All America City process.

The new Cineplex/Hotel Stockton project, Weber Point Event Center, Gateway Block, DeCarli Waterfront Plaza, new Eberhardt/ Stewart Building and 800-car parking deck, Weber Avenue Streetscape project, SMART Transit Center and a host of other major projects are moving forward. The Altamont Commuter Express commuter rail and coming new Amtrak station anchor larger plans for economic development of downtown's northeast edge.

Along the waterfront, in addition to the Weber Point Event Center and a rejuvenated marina, Monte Vista Development is at work on a 230-room hotel, adjoining meeting center, office towers and condos and retail on the water.

In the concept stages are a north-shore sports arena.

Developers and new business owners are beginning to materialize, and it's expected that a vastly different, robust waterfront will present itself by 2005, tying new activity to downtown's newly emerged status as the family-entertainment capital of the San Joaquin Valley.

Any attempt to list the many organizations involved in the process is doomed to failure, but here is a start: the city of Stockton, San Joaquin County; Stockton Unified School District, Mercado Coalition, Chinese Benevolent Association, Filipino Center, Gleason Park businesses/homeowners, Midtown/Magnolia District committee, the Alliance's Eastside Improvement Committee, all of our chambers of commerce, Stockton Convention Bureau, the 320 business owners represented by the Downtown Stockton Alliance and many more.

Why is this finally happening downtown, you may ask? Much of this activity reflects the new, optimism that our city shares about the future prospects for our downtown, our waterfront and our city overall.

A dedicated mayor, City Council and city staff, the business, nonprofit and organizational community all have come to agreement on the basic rebuilding of downtown and, how to get there.

Those remaining naysayers, so endemic to our city for years, are starting to feel like a minority as more and more citizens are energized by the town's new vitality and become part of the solution - not just negative whiners.

I suggest, the next time you run into a doomsayer, you suggest they become part of an improving community or that they steal softly into the night.

I am proud to live in Stockton and be a small part of a good city becoming a great one.

---

Tim Viall is chief executive officer of the Downtown Stockton Alliance and may be reached at 464-5246.