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River Lodge receives prestigious redeveloper's award
By Suzanne Zalev
The Times-Standard
Fortuna's new River Lodge Conference Center has won the California Redevelopment Association's Public Spaces and Linkages award.
The River Lodge opened in April 1998 , and Fortuna Mayor Phil Nyberg said Thursday that "virtually every weekend has been filled and requested several times over."
The lodge has been the site of training seminars, conferences and workshops from out of the area, Fortuna officials said, and has also provided a place for local events. The site, which has an excellent view of the river, used to contain two lumber mills. After both closed in the 1970s, the city tried to interest new businesses in the location for more than 20 years.
The Fortuna Redevelopment Agency was formed in 1988 to help revitalize the area, and funded a 1991 study that suggested there was an opportunity for tourism-related businesses.
The agency worked with developers on plans for an RV park, three motels, two restaurants, a microbrewery and a service station, and in 1994 it proposed the conference center.
The center, Nyberg said, is the only facility of its kind and size on the North Coast that is within walking distance of numerous motels. It was something City Manager Dale Neiman had envisioned a long time ago, Nyberg added.
Winning the award, he said, was "kind of a surprise, because usually much larger entities are the recipients."
Other redevelopment agencies that won awards this year included San Jose, Concord, Glendale, Pasadena, Fullerton and Santa Cruz, city officials said.
"It's certainly a prestigious award," Nyberg said. "There's no question about that."
The tourist service complex and River Lodge have created 180 new jobs and generated $300,000 in new revenue for the city, officials said.
The award will be presented at a conference in March in San Diego.
©1999 Times-Standard
Saturday, Dec. 25, 1999 |
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