By: Libi Uremovic | Original Article at patch.com
DeForge, seated at a conference table inside the Civic Center, reflected on decades of progress.
“Everyone takes their turn at building the `house’ we call Beaumont,’” he said. “You dig the footings and someone else comes along and pours the slab. Someone else frames the walls, puts on the roof and does the plastering. And now, it’s this City Council’s turn.”
During the next few decades, Beaumont will be poised to grow and prosper as the retail and industrial center for the San Gorgonio Pass.
An open-air mall with views of the sky and surrounding mountains will take shape on a big, rolling swath of land at I-10 and SR-60. And a revitalized downtown will see three-and-four-story townhouses overlooking shoppers, sidewalk cafes and a steady parade of cars along Sixth Street and Beaumont Avenue. Many high-paying, local jobs will be created and more and more people will live and work in town.
“People in Beaumont have always been visionaries,” said Councilmember Roger Berg, whose family moved to town in 1953. “Right now, we have a downturn in the economy. Are we going to stop doing what we need to? No. We’re actually going out and building more facilities and investing in the community.”
Getting it right
Over the years, Inland Empire economist John Husing has watched and studied Beaumont.
A few years ago, Beaumont was the second fastest growing city in California on a percentage basis. Husing lauds the city for its forward-looking approach to growth and for building roads and other infrastructure ahead of development. The economist praises Beaumont’s business-like atmosphere, where city staff works cooperatively with developers.
“Beaumont gets it,” Husing says. “The city is one of the few towns where new home sales are continuing. When I talk to the development community, this is a place where they can still do some business.”
Today, about 800 new homes are projected annually over the next few years in Beaumont. Overall, Husing sees a slow recovery for the Inland area’s building industry over the next three or four years.
“Not until 2012 will we see some ‘real’ light at the end of the tunnel,” he says. “And because of the way Beaumont is set up, the city will be a little bit ahead of the growth curve.”
Business-like
For about 15 years, builders and business owners in Beaumont have sat down with planning and economic development staff Dave Dillon and Ernie Egger. Over the years, they have carried out a continuing City Council vision that calls for a business-like approach to development and thoughtful, long-range planning for growth.
As planning experts, Dillon and Egger bring private sector and public service experience to the table. They keep track of housing trends and the financial markets and also community sentiment about growth.
“What are the developer’s goals?” Dillon says. “What are the city’s needs? How can we merge them? Things in Beaumont are result-oriented.”
Egger adds: “The city is run like a business. Things aren’t so bureaucratic. It’s a different mind-set. Developers get a reasonable idea of what to expect throughout the process.”
Dillon and Egger work for Urban Logic Consultants, which provides planning services under a contract with Beaumont — a common practice in city government today.
Growth talk
During the 1950s and 1960s, Beaumont buzzed with talk about growth, even if it didn’t happen right away. “People kept saying, `It’s going to happen,’” Berg said. “We’re right dead center in the path of growth.”
But despite predictions about booming, it would be almost a half-century before significant growth finally hit. During the intervening decades, only a handful of new homes went up each year in Beaumont.
In 1999, things changed dramatically.
Motorists zipping along westbound I-10 suddenly caught a glimpse of the first wave of a housing boom as new, two-story homes began sprouting up at the Three Rings Ranch project.
Growth had finally arrived.
At the boom’s height during 2005 in Beaumont, nearly 2,400 homes went up in a single year. More neighbors were moving in and they too enjoyed the charm of small town living.
Mayor Jeff Fox,was born and raised at a time when Beaumont had one flashing yellow light in town.
“Our small town values will be a part of Beaumont no matter how big the city gets,” Fox said. “I really, truly believe that.”
Fox captured the hometown pride many felt when they saw Three Rings Ranch and other master planned developments taking shape.
Beaumont, he said, is an “overnight” success nearly 90 years in the making.
Up and downs
But the city faced familiar challenges before its successes, as a recession swept the country in the early 1990s.
The downturn crippled the construction industry and ate away at city budgets, including those in small towns like Beaumont.
But a city that used civic wits to survive the Great Depression quickly geared up to battle the hard times. Beaumont restructured its operations by cutting expenses, imposing a hiring freeze on many positions and revamping its management by bringing in experts from the private sector. At the same time, the city began laying the groundwork for the long predicted growth.
“During the bad times, we got ready for the good times,” said City Manager Alan Kapanicas.
Jan Leja spent nine years (1991-2000) as the city’s appointed Mayor during a pivotal time in Beaumont’s history. “We had an optimistic view and a united City Council,” she said. “We had the attitude that no challenge was too big for us. Failure was not an option. We were going to succeed.”
Beaumont wanted to be positioned for growth when the next cycle came around. The city also wanted to be strong financially and able to provide high levels of services like police protection and a range of recreational amenities like parks, Leja said.
Multi-tasking
In the early 1990s, Beaumont found itself working on several fronts as a way of achieving future prosperity.
The 1929 sewer plant had served the community well. But with development just over the horizon, a modern wastewater treatment plant had to be built at a cost $6.2 million. The capacity of the new facility allowed new subdivisions and commercial and industrial development that created jobs.
To raise money, Beaumont came up with an innovative method of turning developers into “partners” for growth.
About a dozen developers put up the money for a new wastewater treatment plant that would allow building to go forward and upgrade water quality for existing residents. Builders believed in the city’s future potential, so they put a special tax on their raw land.
Builders like John Stewart recalled sitting in day-long meetings for weeks with city officials. His company put up $750,000 to help pay for the new treatment plant. The plant opened in 1994 — five years ahead of the housing boom.
Later, his approximately 500-home project, Three Rings Ranch, helped ignite Beaumont’s building boom. Stewart recounted those days and the entrepreneurial risks involved.
“There were no guarantees,” Stewart said. “The market had not even shown itself. It was all kind of speculative. But it seemed like a good gamble.”
Beaumont also pursued a strategy of designing, paying for and building public improvements like roads and water lines before development started. The city created Community Facilities Districts (CFD) using special property taxes levied on raw land owned by developers. Improvements were financed by selling bonds.
Other steps that prepared Beaumont for today’s growth included adopting a General Plan, or guide to future development, and establishing a Redevelopment Agency that built public improvements like sewer lines and sidewalks in historic areas of town.
Glimpsing the future
Experts say that Beaumont could boom twice more in the coming decades before the city reaches its build-out capacity in about 30 years or more. With a population today of about 32,000, Beaumont will grow steadily before reaching about 80,000 to 90,000 people.
The city will also be about one-third bigger by then, covering about 40 square miles compared to 30 square miles now.
But there will still be lots of elbow room.
Even with more master-planned communities, a regional mall and other shopping centers, about one-third of Beaumont will remain open space. The land will be set aside for parks, bike trails and nature preserves.
Today, Beaumont is financially strong with about $15 million in its reserves.
And the $20 million being spent now on transportation improvements will keep traffic flowing, open up new areas for development and improve streets in older areas of Beaumont.
Future road work includes the first phase of a freeway bypass to keep traffic flowing along Beaumont Avenue at I-10. The Potrero Bridge overpass will eventually connect Oak Valley Parkway and SR-60. Already completed projects include the construction of a new bridge over Noble Creek and also widening Oak Valley Parkway from Beaumont Avenue for six miles to the city limits at San Timoteo Canyon.
Civic leaders realize that a small town’s coming of age is a complex process that occasionally leaves people wondering.
“When you grow, people get scared,” Berg says. “It’s change. But we’re trying to alleviate that fear by assuring a quality of life that plans for the future, but also honors the past.”
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