Mt Whitney Zone Forums General Discussion Bill To Acquire 18 Acres For Yosemite Visitor Center

Info here in the Merced Sun-Star.

Of special interest for us West-Siders, is this:

"Denham's legislation was introduced in tandem with Congressman Sam Farr's (D-CA), which will upgrade the Pinnacles National Monument in San Benito County to 'National Park' status."

"There are probably 100 NPS employees driving the river canyon over an hour each way to work only to sit at a computer for 8 hours. These jobs could be much more efficiently completed in office space outside the park"

And maybe they could even telecommute from home.

Two things come to mind: This will tend to push more traffic from SR120 onto SR140. That's going to get interesting for merchants on SR120. Secondly, 18 acres seems like a lot of land for a Visitor Center & Admin services. That's over 0.2 acres per employee - a decent residential lot size for each employee. Of course there's parking, but a couple acres is a lot of parking.

My first thought is that someone influential has a vacant parcel in Mariposa to unload. No cost to taxpayers? Do I hear "fee increase?"

This idea will need to fit into the Merced River Plan (version 3 currently under review after 2 failed attempts) which is dominating the future direction of Yosemite.

TODAY (DEC 14, 2012) IS THE DEADLINE TO COMMENT ON THE PLAN

http://www.whitneyzone.com/wz/ubbthreads.php/topics/19921/Yosemite_After_The_Flood_Of_19#Post19921