“The state of our city is strong and vibrant.”<\/p>\n

So spoke Mayor Steve Jones during his State of the City address last week before a crowd of about 500 at the Great Wolf Lodge in Garden Grove.<\/p>\n

Mostly, though, Jones looked to the future of Garden Grove.<\/p>\n

And the Garden Grove native and graduate of Rancho Alamitos High School is optimistic.<\/p>\n

Dozens of business and civic projects are in the works; some are expected to be completed as early as this year or 2018.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

“The state of our city is strong and vibrant.”<\/p>\n

So spoke Mayor Steve Jones during his State of the City address last week before a crowd of about 500 at the Great Wolf Lodge in Garden Grove.<\/p>\n

Mostly, though, Jones looked to the future of Garden Grove.<\/p>\n

And the Garden Grove native and graduate of Rancho Alamitos High School is optimistic.<\/p>\n

Dozens of business and civic projects are in the works; some are expected to be completed as early as this year or 2018.<\/p>\n

The biggest one of all is a $450 million project on Harbor Boulevard, south of Target, consisting of three hotels with 769 rooms. Jones called it, "The single largest, and hands-down most exciting development project Garden Grove has ever seen.”<\/p>\n

Jones, 48, noted the difference between old ways of thinking about the local economy, and new ways.<\/p>\n

Old ways, he said, involve traffic, traffic mitigation and the idea that people follow jobs.<\/p>\n

That's changing, he said. Nowadays, people — especially up-and-coming millenials — look for location first, then a job and career.<\/p>\n

That's where the idea of "Placemaking" comes into play. The plan is to make Garden Grove a desirable place to live, work, raise a family, shop and participate in recreational activities.<\/p>\n

"We need to stop being slaves to our automobiles,” Jones said.<\/p>\n

Toward that end, city staff are working to make Garden Grove friendly to walkers, bikers and those who favor public transportation.<\/p>\n

Jones also addressed the new, seven-member council that serves individual districts; there used to be five council members serving at large. A district-driven council will be more concentrated on the distinct needs of neighborhoods, and more accountable to districts, Jones said.<\/p>\n

And he sprinkled in some good news from 2016: for the first time in the city's history, the city's Transient Occupancy Tax exceeded its sales tax (The Great Wolf Lodge, erected fewer than two years ago at a $275 million price tag, is a big reason for this).<\/p>\n

Jones ended his speech by emphasizing that there is no secret ingredient to making Garden Grove a successful city.<\/p>\n

"We don't need a secret ingredient," he said.<\/p>\n

Instead, he hammered home a simple point: it's every single person who lives and\/or works in the city who makes it special.<\/p>\n

So everyone… get to work. And have fun.<\/p>\n

"I don't care how… sexy you are…" he said, smiling. “Let’s roll up our sleeves and get busy turning this city around.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“The state of our city is strong and vibrant.” So spoke Mayor Steve Jones during his State of the City address last week before a crowd of about 500 at the Great Wolf Lodge in Garden Grove. Mostly, though, Jones looked to the future of Garden Grove. And the Garden Grove native and graduate of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":54,"featured_media":1689,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5307],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ocn.archives.ocnnewspapers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1688"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ocn.archives.ocnnewspapers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ocn.archives.ocnnewspapers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocn.archives.ocnnewspapers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/54"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocn.archives.ocnnewspapers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1688"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ocn.archives.ocnnewspapers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1688\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4589,"href":"https:\/\/ocn.archives.ocnnewspapers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1688\/revisions\/4589"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocn.archives.ocnnewspapers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ocn.archives.ocnnewspapers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocn.archives.ocnnewspapers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocn.archives.ocnnewspapers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}