Growing up a tadpole in the 1950s, I watched without much interest and zero comprehension as construction boomed and entire neighborhoods and shopping centers popped up around me.
In 1955, the Village of Seven Hills was small and sparsely populated, but in a few years it was neither. How could it not grow? Tucked among lots of trees in a hilly oasis just 12 miles south of Cleveland, Seven Hills could not help but expand.
It was an explosion of construction and population; I attended Parma Senior High among more than 4,000 students between grades 10 and 12. The class of ’65 consisted of me and 1,039 others.
About six weeks ago they bulldozed Parma Senior High, built in 1954, into piles of red brick and dirt. Things go up and things come down. Today Cleveland’s population is one-third what it was.
Come the 1970s I landed in Sonoma County, 20 miles from Santa Rosa, a city of 50,000. Today the population tops 175,000. Do you think Santa Rosa is three times nicer/better/more livable today compared to the 1970s?
Trophy and I moved near Charlotte, North Carolina four years ago to a grungy little town with few amenities, meaning miles to a Starbucks, restaurant or bar.
But Charlotte is growing. It has to. It’s big, and about 18 months from huge. Fields and forests all around Charlotte, and thus our town, are being scraped bare for more condos. Go anywhere. By the time you drive back there’s a new development across the street from two other new developments.
No one thinks this construction boom will improve our little town, or Charlotte. But more people and more money is an equation leaders and politicians understand, and lust after. Quality of life is not on their list.
Now, Ukiah. City officials have plans to triple the size of the city limits. Ukiah grew to its present size in about 160 years, and it required lots of hard work from lots of people to do it. In 2024 it takes a few hours around a conference table with some sharp bureaucrats and administrators to make it three times bigger.
Raise your hand if you think the most important consideration is to make Ukiah even better than now. Now close your eyes and happily imagine Ukiah II: Growing three times larger means a big amusement park in the hills west of town, a petting zoo, a funicular carrying laughing families to the “U” where they’ll hop on a mile-long water slide, zoom to the bottom and into the splashy fountain in front of City Hall! Whee!
North of town will expand, and who wouldn’t welcome a minor league baseball stadium, Ferris Wheel, pickleball courts (you’re welcome, Sandy Mac Nab) miniature golf, koi ponds, and a restaurant run by Martha Stewart? (It will still be Ukiah, so we’ll also need an alley of vape shops, tattoo joints, Asian massage parlors, nail salons and a rebuilt Water Trough bar.)
Now open your eyes. Stop dreaming.
Ukiah’s overlords are going to do what they always do: Snatch the filthy lucre no matter what it costs in terms of quality of life.
Doubt it? Drive out to the Land of the Walmartians and gape at the architectural wreckage wrought by the Holiday Inn Maximum Security facility, the nonstop clutter of fast-food restaurants, tire shop, car lot, and one nice restaurant that’s been closed since it opened.
Those in charge of Ukiah are Empire Builders. Growing a city, no matter the cost to that city’s residents, helps a city administrator get another job with higher pay at a bigger city, and after that another, until s/he can retire with millions of dollars yearly from all those government pensions.
The Big Question: Did you move to Ukiah hoping to live in a big apartment building with 120 other units filled with people who also don’t want to live there? Want your kids to attend a high school with 4,000 students and graduating classes of more than a thousand?
Why wait? Fresno is just down the road.
Amen