You have to hand it to the residents who are fighting the proposed 7-Eleven convenience store at Foothill Blvd. and Mills Ave. Now that the applicant is appealing the Claremont Planning Commission's denial of the 7-Eleven's conditional use permit, the residents are gearing up to pressure the City Council into upholding the CUP denial.
Besides the expected opposition from the Preserve Our Neighborhoods (PON) group, whose attorney submitted a letter on behalf of PON to the Planning Commission, Claremont Courier reporter Tony Krickl writes on his COURIER City Blog that the 7-Eleven opponents have a Facebook page and even have a YouTube presentation:
It's a video posted on Youtube by David Sawhill, a resident who lives near the proposed 7-Eleven site. See below. Sawhill can't attend next Tuesday night's city council meeting due to an open house at Claremont High School where he works, so he's asked city staff to show the video during public comment in his absence.
Sawhill, by the way, is a graduate of the Claremont Colleges (Pitzer '01) and teaches math at Claremont High School. He is also a CHS yearbook adviser. In his video, Sawhill also tells us that he got his teaching credential at Claremont Graduate School. Sawhill may have a problem getting an airing of his video before the City Council: There's a four-minute limit on public comment and Sawhill's video runs over seven minutes. Then again, new mayor Linda Elderkin, who is against the 7-Eleven, may show her foolish consistency and allow the video to run.
As an aside, it strikes us as so typically Claremont how, whenever a group of neighbors opposes a project that most of the Claremont 400 would rather not have, the group is considered community activists. On the other hand, when a group opposes something the 400 is for, they are NIMBYs. These quintessential Claremont inconsistencies drive us nuts, and we have some more to illustrate on this and other subjects in the next week or two.
In any case, here's Sawhill's video:
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