Riverside Chinatown Trial Thursday July 9

Save Our Chinatown Committee and supporters hope to win final protection for the site

The long –awaited Chinatown trial will be held on Thursday, July 9 at 9:30 am before Judge Waters in Department 10, on the second floor of the old Courthouse at Main and Tenth Streets in Riverside.

The SOCC lawsuit seeks to overturn the city’s approval of the medical office building project and the sale of the property, near the corner of Tequesquite and Brockton Avenues, to developer Doug Jacobs by the Riverside County Board of Education.

The Save Our Chinatown Committee (SOCC) will be represented by Ray Johnson of the Temecula law firm of Johnson and Sedlack.

The defendants in the case include the developer, Doug Jacobs, the Riverside County Board of Education, and the City of Riverside.

The trial is the culmination of several legal activities, including a temporary restraining order that the Save Our Chinatown Committee was granted after Jacobs began grading activities on Valentine’s Day.

Dubbed the “Valentine’s Day Massacre” by some SOCC supporters, three days of heavy grading and earthmoving activity, including the use of over a dozen pieces of heavy equipment on the site, took place over the holiday weekend beginning on February 14th.

“This is a complex trial because there are so many defendants and actions to be considered. But our hope is that the final decision will stop the destructive building plans and ultimately provide protection for the archaeological site that is on the National and State Registers of Historic Places,” said SOCC member Dr. Margie Akin. “Then we can begin discussing what should happen with the site.”

SOCC members have found a high level of support to revive the plans for turning the area into a Memorial and/or Cultural Park. Such a park was approved in 1990, but fell through when the Board of Education refused to sell the land for the agreed-upon price at the last minute.

New ideas, including a park with links to the California Citrus State Historic Park and the Jenson-Alvarado Ranch Park, that can illustrate the long-term relationship between the Chinese and the development of Riverside and the citrus industry are also being discussed.

The Save Our Chinatown Committee members will join the legal team in the main hall of the courthouse immediately after the hearing to make a statement and discuss the Judge’s findings.

BACKGROUND:

The Riverside Chinatown trial has generated so much interest because the archaeological site is so important, but it is a complicated legal case. The Riverside Chinatown archaeological site has been recognized as an historic place of interest on federal, state and local levels.

The 1984 excavation of a portion of the site, which included the excavation of 3 tons of artifacts has been used, in the most popular US archaeology textbook today, as an example of how much information can be gleaned from a fairly recent historic archaeology site.

In the spring of 2008 various community members were becoming aware of plans to build a medical office building at the location of the archaeological site.

The developer, the property owners (Riverside County Board of Education), and city officials all claimed that they made every effort to notify citizens about plans to build a medical office building at the site.

However, concerned citizens who were promised that the site was receiving protection, became increasingly alarmed as details of the project became public and it became obvious that the plans were already so advanced that working with city planners and the developer would be difficult.

In spite of late notification, community members made every effort to work with the city officials, but community members found themselves stonewalled and ignored at every turn.

Over a thousand petition signatures asking to protect the site were collected, and dozens of people, including many prominent people from outside Riverside, provided written testimony objecting to the plans submitted by developer Doug Jacobs.

Testimony by three PhD-level archaeologists at a cultural heritage board that the treatment plan was merely a cover for destruction of the archaeology were dismissed.

Requests to meet with Board of Education to try to work out a plan or compromise were ignored, even though the meetings were required by the Riverside City Planning Department.

A group of especially concerned people formed the Save Our Chinatown Committee (SOCC) in October 2008, and decided that it would be necessary to hire lawyers in order to protect the site. After a short search, the noted environmental law firm of Johnson & Sedlack was engaged, and fund-raising efforts began.

It was shortly after the legal team was hired that the Riverside City Council gave final approval for the project although Jacobs was not yet owner of the property, a final treatment plan was still pending, and other aspects of the project were still not finalized.

The SOCC organized a “watch” over the site, having become concerned over new activity on the site, such as cutting down historic trees without permits and making repairs on equipment parked on the site.

The following holiday week-end, February 14th – 16th, massive earthmoving and grading equipment was fired-up, and massive grading and trenching took place for the entire week-end.

Protestors picketed the site, the police came and issued noise-control violations, and the site was even visited by a city councilman. But the work did not stop until a court hearing on February 17th and a Temporary Restraining Order was issued on February 24th.

The TRO was followed by an injunction against any more work until the trial. The city and county board of education challenged the injunction, but lost their challenge and site was secured until the trial on July 9th.

Additional articles by archaeologists Dr. Scott Fedick and Dr. Margie Akin and Assistant Editor of Pacific Citizen, Lynda Lin, as well as other material that is being added on a daily basis, can be found at the web site: http://saveourchinatown.org.


Current information about the Riverside Chinatown archaeological site and the legal actions can be found at: Web Site: www.SaveOurChinatown.org