Local News in Brief : Huntington Beach : Town Hall Meetings on Redevelopment Planned

Town hall meetings on redevelopment plans for the city’s aging downtown will be held on the third Thursday of each month beginning June 16. The purpose of the meetings is to discuss redevelopment ideas and plans with residents and merchants, city officials said.

The meetings will be from 5 to 7 p.m. at various businesses and shops. Locations will be announced in flyers circulated in the downtown area before each meeting.

The idea, City Administrator Paul Cook said, is to “lay out the plans and say, ‘What do you think?’ ”

A citizens advisory committee formed about a year ago will be disbanded in favor of the town hall meetings, which are viewed as a better alternative for communicating with merchants and residents and getting opinions, Cook said.

Residents in particular have been fretting over recent decisions by the City Council to begin eminent domain proceedings against several downtown property owners, Cook said. He said a town hall setting--informal and focused on a specific neighborhood--can best address residents’ fears about a variety of issues.

“We’re not going to talk about the colors and the sizes and shapes” of buildings, Cook said. “We’ll be saying, ‘We’re putting in an entertainment center and it’s going to have this and that and the other thing, and this is when it will break ground.’

“Hopefully,” he added, the meetings “will spur ideas like, ‘Well, we need a drugstore down here.’ And then we can say, ‘Well, what kind of a drugstore?’ We can get ideas of needs and interests.”