Our meeting was called to order by President Jim Ripley who started with Thoughts of the Day, “Did you know that the average human walks 900 miles per year and drinks about 22 gallons of beer. Which means the average human gets 41 miles per gallon. Not to bad!” Some food for thought. “I was at the store the other day and the cashier told me to strip down facing me. Well, it was too late before I realized she was talking about the debit card.” Sounds like President Ripley is speaking from experience. He graced us with one more joke before he began today’s program, “You can’t blame anyone else if you fall on your own driveway, it is your own ass-fault.”

For today’s Commencement Ceremonies our Patriotic Moment, Leslie McCarthy led us in our Pledge of Allegiance. For our Invocation, Jeff Hutchison led us in a prayer.

Today’s guests include: Sunayan Thomas, our keynote speaker and guest of Andrew Gregson. Ricky Fair guest of Mr. John Phelps. Lana Erlanson brought 4 guests from Radiant Futures.

The Rotary Club of Fullerton’s president asked Leslie McCarthy to please join him on stage to help him induct new members that she sponsored to our club. Lana Erlanson and Mark Lee from Radiant Futures were awarded with their official certificate from Rotary International and the four way test. Congratulations to Lana and Mark! And a huge shoutout to Leslie McCarthy for sponsoring some great folks.

There is no songmaster today.

Today’s Recognition/Finemaster was U.S. Coast Guard Veteran Matt Howells from Tara’s Chance. Mr. Howells asked for Brett “the younger” Ackerman to please stand and be recognized for his wedding anniversary. He was celebrated and fined $5. Patrick Hartnett was asked to stand and be recognized for the many things he has going in his life. Mr. Howells called him out on him bragging humbly, and something tells us that Mr. Howells knew this would be the case because he asked him beforehand if he brought $20 dollar bills with him today. Matt Howells fined him $20 for it and Pat threw in another $20 for the club. Joe Lins was asked to stand and tell his humble brag about meeting his son’s mother-in-law, which cost him a fine of $10. Matt asked Rick Crane to stand and announce the Jim Thompson track and field championship as a fine free reward. Matt Howells replied with, “it’s a wonderful event, please come if you are not doing anything Saturday morning, Rick does a fantastic job. It is so well organized.” He asked members in attendance to raise their hands if they will be volunteering for this event. Those that did not raise their hands where fined one buck each. Matt asked if anyone wanted to brag, Dr. Bob Simon bragged about his daughter’s gift. President Ripley self-bragged about not bringing back Bill Mathy’s wireless microphone and fined himself $5. Great job as Finemaster, Matt Howells!

Today’s announcements: Jim Williams approached the podium and gave his best Leslie Nielsen impression, “I was complaining a little bit about how difficult it is to get your attention,” said Williams to Pat Hartnett. “And he said, ‘surely, you’re not serious about getting attention?’” Jim replied while asking himself what he is doing wrong. “He said, ‘you got to dress for success,’ and we know Pat’s always dressed for success. So Pat, I took your advice and I want to thank you for that, but I do have to warn you, do not call me Shirley again.” Jim announced that there are sign-up sheets to many events that are upcoming, and if you don’t sign up, President Ripley will call you relentlessly until you do and every week, the Fine Master will fine you to your account. “So sorry about all the sign-up stuff, but you have to do it, and yes, I am serious about it.” Brett Ackerman announced a sign-up sheet for a grant that he received for the Boys and Girls Club of Fullerton. Part of the grant is volunteer factor, Brett needs volunteers for an upcoming event for Thursday, Feb 29, from 4 to 5 pm. He is looking for about 6 to 9 volunteers for that day. For more details, please contact Brett Ackerman. Andrew Gregson announced Fullerton Uncorked and gave praises to President Ripley’s leadership and his excellent work done, “So, I am going to give a quick plug because he said everybody is involved, so make sure that everybody from Rotary is involved. There’s no excuses!” Fullerton Uncorked is May 4th at the YMCA of Fullerton. Also on April 4th, the North Orange County Chamber and the city of Fullerton is hosting the State of the City at Student Union Hall in Cal State Fullerton. Sponsorship opportunities are available, please see Andrew Gregson for more information. Leslie McCarthy took the podium and announced more information for Fullerton Uncorked, “Now that Jim stole my thunder and then the lighting went to Andrew,” she jokingly said. She emphasized the importance of sponsoring for the event so that they can continue their charitable donations for next year. She mentioned perks that come from sponsoring and those that are interested please contact her directly through emails or she can take calls as well. Secondly, she is asking for all club Rotarians to look for sponsors for this event, anyone that wants to do business with our club’s event please do not hesitate to ask. Contact Leslie for more information. Cathy Gach announced that all Fullerton Uncorked meetings have been moved to Thursday’s at 12:30 am, “again, special thanks to everyone who is working so hard behind the scenes to make Uncorked happen.” President Jim Ripley gave a shoutout to Gerardo, who writes the Rotagram and takes pictures to maintain the club’s social media presence known using journalism integrity and photojournalism skills, considering he attends Cal State Fullerton as a Journalism major and picked up photography as a hobby that turned into a profession. (Humble Brag LOL)

Proposed new members: Don McFarland, Retired Aerospace, Proposed by Bob Sattler Bill Christensen, AIG Retirement, Proposed by John Christensen, Ricky Fair, Real Estate Investing, Proposed by John Phelps,

Today’s Program at Hand was presented by a Rotarian of Action, Andrew Gregson. “It is my great pleasure to introduce to you Sunayana Thomas. She’s the director of Community and Economic Development for the city of Fullerton. She is extremely experienced having worked at the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority, and most recently the city of Pasadena, California. I can honestly say she is by far the best economic development director I ever had the opportunity to work alongside. Please give her a warm welcome.”

Thomas took the stage and thanked everyone for welcoming her. Thomas’ presentation shed light to new projects that are happening in the city, but also some of the visions in terms of what investment opportunities will look like. “This is a presentation that we’ve been providing to various different organizations and others who are really trying to push economic development on a real estate aspect.”

She mentions that there are different components of economic developments for the city of Fullerton, the real estate aspect, small business and workforce aspects. General bulletin demographics are as followed, average household median income is $126,000 making Fullerton closer to the higher average. This is due to the fact that there is an educated workforce in Fullerton, “We have an educated community here,” she rhetorically asks why it matter. “This matters to attract development when we are trying to attract businesses. We are trying to leverage sort of that innovation and entrepreneurship components of our city, right?” The education system in Fullerton is amazing, from kindergarten onwards to the largest university here in Orange County, Cal State Fullerton.”

Creating a talent pipeline means creating incentives for new development, whether residential, commercial, or industrial, to use the Fullerton workforce. Cutting edge technology comes out of Fullerton as well, NTS Fullerton Labs, is a pioneer of environmental testing lab, who does work for NASA and other large institutions. “Samsung just locked in their location in the last year, which is a big new logistic site,” she proudly mentions. “Of course, they are a global tech company. They are doing a lot more distribution, but they’ll be bringing in a lot of other of their business from other cities into Fullerton.”

As far as other great companies setting up shop here in our city, Sigma Graft Biomaterials who specializes in advanced medical solutions and Korea-Seongnam City Business Center, which will open a bridge with Korea or overseas countries to bring into Fullerton. Within the local region of Fullerton, old Mo’s Fullerton Music building has a 20-year old employee-owned Web Hosting company moving in, which Thomas considers very exciting. “I believe their CEO or upper management is actually from Fullerton.”

Thomas says that bringing this business to our downtown district will create a balance between the night life and restaurants, which are everywhere in that district. Downtown is the heartbeat of Fullerton with a vacancy rate of about 2 percent which is healthy because generally speaking, anything under 3% is what we want in our city.

The hardships of COVID did take a toll on the businesses there but the city assisted anyone with hardships through state region resources or direct help from the city government. A hybrid model was implemented to adapt with the hardships of COVID, Thomas says that the city lost a lot of customers because they are not working at their location but rather working from home. So, the hybrid model kind of helped the city businesses re-invent themselves in many ways so that they can still stay afloat. “We have some of the most notable coffee shops, some of the most notable restaurants in the city with many years of residence, close to 20 years.” Although that is a great thing, the city does not want to make that the main attraction, she says that fast food establishments are great, but the city is more interested in mom-and-pop shops that actually bring in some uniqueness and diversity to our city.

On to another topic, Thomas says the biggest initiative the city is doing is updating their housing element, which is a state requirement to create a general plan. According to Thomas, last cycles numbers have changed to 13,209, making it a big task for the city to take on because the last cycle’s numbers from 2021-2022 got sent back with some amendments, conditions, and additions. The state is trying to come up with a plan to deal with the housing prices and how they are able to distribute the construction of housing.

Determining factors include demographics and projections of the next 30 years, and what type of housing is needed; from very low-, moderate-, or high-income rental units and for sale units. This matters because of something called the HI-OZ, the Housing Incentive Overlay Zone, essentially this incentive will look at a lot of commercial properties and add a layer that provides an option to develop residential housing on those sites, but most of them will require to have some sort of mixed use or commercial component preserving the ground floor, a grocery store is an example of how a new housing site will look like, possibly a salon/barbershop, or a retail shop to make it clearer. This is something her staff is working on very jurisdiciously in terms of trying to get them approved and adopted.

Fox Block Development project, a permanent project on the corner of Harbor and Chapman, is an empty lot that the city owns. For some years now, the city has been trying to really vision out what that site should be, “is it residential, is it commercial?” To answer those question, the city teamed up with a developmental group who will be in charge of this commercial project. This is going to activate the northern side of downtown, “this is truly a public/private partnership in terms of deliverables from even the redevelopment agency time, there will be a parking structure.” This section will see some parking that will greatly improve that area and some micro units in the form of restaurants. She compared the development of that space to the public market in Stanton, California. Breaking ground on phase 1 will begin by this year, she says.

The Santa Fe Avenue Project, which just went through the disposition process, is to build a transit-oriented hotel and residential space. Thomas says it will be about 140 units, 124 will hotel rooms, and other amenities for retail and other. She calls this an important project because the only specific plan the city has is called the Fullerton Transportation Specific Plan, which she said visions out like a 10 year plan of what the city wants as a community on which type of amenities and development they want around the transit system, which is the most highly used in terms of passengers coming in and out of Fullerton in the state of California. “It’s really valuable to us and what happens in that area,” said Thomas. “There’s been a lot of conversations with Metrolink Orange County Transit Authority and others who kind of want to vision and be a part of this conversation. Thomas showed a map of how the project will look, the hotel side entrance will be closer to the tracks, while the residential will be along Santa Fe. It also worth mentioning that since it is a city owned cite, it will be 100% affordable housing, with the use of home funds and Housing Authority funds.

Fullerton has a lot of industrial activity, making the city really unique in the sense that it can tap in different industries, not only the industrial, commercial, as well as residential. She talked about Rexford Industrial, which is a new 130,000 square foot of housing space. Rexford is going through the process of finalizing their maps, but they have had some slow runs in terms of plan checking, the permit process, “that means we need to be a lot more clearer and transparent with our development community because we want to see this in our city.” The talk of the town has been the Union Pacific Trail, which caused some stir amongst concerned residents during city council meetings. Council has recently approved the funding and has accepted the funding from the state to build the trail. “That’s a really big win for the city!” The specific plan for this trail is 35 acres south of the tracks, which a general draft has been laid out and now is the time to restart the conversations that have arose in the past couple of years. This has been well documented by the Fullerton Observer for those who want to get more specifics of all the troubles this trail has caused for the city.

The last topic on her agenda was city owned properties like the property on Rolling Hills residential development, which is part of the Circle Act process, which is still going through proposals. She anticipates that this area could be townhomes or single-family homes, but it is still out in disposition. Some other city owned properties like the ones located in downtown Fullerton are a little bit more complicated and they also need the right partners to help facilitate the really unique sites. Past city owned sites have been developed with growth in mind. The South of Commonwealth Districts are other city owned sites that get talked about as potential opportunities, “so even if it’s privately owned, we are going out there and thinking of potential projects for these sites.” She mentions that because the city doesn’t own the site they can still have conversations with the property owners to see if they are interested in selling or looking for a partner instead. Thomas ended her presentation with a Q&A. President Ripley presented her with a Rotary pin, the four-way test, and a certificate in her name to Working Dogs 4 Warriors which rescues dogs and trains them and teams them up with veterans and first responders.

Last thing on the agenda was the 50/50 drawing, with the help from Thomas, lucky ticket holder ending in 4916 wins the money. “Join us next week for a presentation with new Police Chief of Fullerton, Jon Radus. Please, tell a friend, and don’t forget to hit that like and subscribe button. Meeting is adjourned.”