The College of the Redwoods Todd’s Point campus is a consumer/taxpayer fraud bordering on the criminal, in my opinion. Of course we need better college facilities on the coast. But do we need them at this location?
A worse site for the college campus could hardly have been chosen. The South Fort Bragg Tod’s Point area is already one of the most critically traffic congested areas on the northern California coastline. The problem is getting worse, and it’s insolvable. The two narrow bridges, a major coastal access highway. (Highway 20), feeding in right between them, and the increasing traffic mess created by the boat yard shopping center will inevitably stifle college growth. When we factor into this mess the estimated 1800 additional automobile trips per day projected for even a limited size college campus, we have all the ingredients for a coastal traffic and congestion nightmare of unparalleled proportions. All of this is to take place in a six-mile stretch of Highway 1 between the bridges containing other extensive commercial, residential and park development with no long-term relief of any kind insight. We will never have the major college campus on Todd’s point that is supposedly being planned there and which we have dearly paid for in premium coastal real estate prices for the benefit of land speculation.
The College of the Redwoods Todd’s Point campus was a cynical real estate speculation from the beginning and still is. Its real purpose is to accomplish just what is being accomplished as this is being written — sewer and water lines, extending onto Todd’s Point, taxpayer provided traffic signals and highway improvements, and all of this primarily for the benefit of local real estate dealers and condominium developers. Community colleges have a history of being frequently misused this way in a number of other places.
The ideal site for the Fort Bragg College of the Redwoods campus, a site which was mysteriously rejected early on in the site selection process, is the south Pudding Creek site — easy access, already available, sewer and water lines, plenty of room, willing seller, but no benefits for the local real estate speculator/developer establishment, assisting the south Fort Bragg expansionist crowd. The Todd’s Point campus site represents the sleaziest kind of profiteering against all reason and community need.
This column has been accused of recently of being “no growth.” Let me set the record straight. It is not “no growth.” In some cases it is “negative growth.” There’s been too much growth in this coastal area in the last few years already. The small-town quality of life here is being ruined by developers. The situation should be remedied by first turning down the infamous Boatyard Shopping Center, replacing the thousands of tons of rich topsoil that were stripped from the earth to make way for this monument to consumerism, greed, and southern Fort Bragg expansion, and growing vegetables on the site. In this way, a modest College of the Redwoods Todd’s Point campus might have a chance. I am reminded of the words of author Edward Abbey: “Unlimited growth is simply the metabolism of the cancer cell.”
(The late, great Ron Guenther died in Fort Bragg in 2010 at the age of 72.)
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