Save Our Community was founded in the movement to resist Wal-Mart's development in Rosemead, California. Now, it has become a general site for news, information, gossip, talk, and blogging about Rosemead. We also have stories about South San Gabriel, San Gabriel, Montebello, and occasionally about Pico Rivera, El Monte, South El Monte, Alhambra, Temple City, and other nearby communities. Your host is Todd. If you want a blog just sign up, get approved, and start writing. Good posts will be moved onto the home page.
Link to Google Maps of that corner
Here's a link to an aerial view.
Map
I think the City has a hard time because it is a victim of circumstance. The 10 freeway cuts through residential areas, making it difficult to develop along it. It's a logistical goldmine, but because it rips apart residential neighborhoods, it destroys without bringing benefits. Big projects are sited along too-small roads, like Wal Mart and the Auto Auction. So you can't add more retail without impacting traffic and residences.
A more fortunate city has an industrial area that's able to be converted into a commercial area, to adapt to an economy that has less manufacturing and more service jobs.
What's a city to do?
Thirty years is long enough to change the circumstances!
Finding willing buyers and willing sellers to assemble parcels for comprehensive development and/or for building proper freeway interchanges takes time. But the incumbents have had over 30 years! Instead of making progress, we're falling behind. Case in point is the signal at Hellman and Walnut Grove. Are things better now than they were before the signal "improvement" for the offramp? I don't think so. Was adding that signal the best thing they could do in the last 30 years to fix that interchange? Again, I don't think so. I think we're in our current circumstance because of a failure of leadership.