FAIRFIELD — Once home to a bumper sticker campaign that asked where the city was located, that question’s been answered – and now the city may face a new query.
What Fairfield is seems to be at the center of many city discussions at it considers downtown revitalization and other issues.
Halfway between Sacramento and San Francisco along an interstate, the city’s location seems less a mystery than its identity.
Is Fairfield set to emerge with a new, booming central business district after decades of a dormant downtown? Many California cities have so transformed themselves.
Home to Travis Air Force Base, a Budweiser brewery and Jelly Belly Candy Company, the trio of military and commercial landmarks could overwhelm any other identity for Fairfield.
But as the city’s boosters will note, Fairfield is also West Texas Street, North Texas Street, downtown, the civic center and Solano County Superior Court.
Some speak nostalgically about a community they recall as safer and better, but civic officials see the city’s best days as now and the near future.
The Intermodal Station Project for train and bus riders, planned about a mile from Travis Air Force Base, is seen as a boon for residents and the economy.
Besides such developments, Fairfield leaders point to the range of viewpoints expressed in the city about politics and the community.
“You have a real marketplace of ideas,” Councilwoman Catherine Moy said.
The Central Solano Citizen-Taxpayer Group is a mainstay at City Council and school board meetings. Union voices were heard as well when a project labor agreement for the train station development went before Fairfield council members.
Along with feisty politics, the city likes a good laugh. A recruitment for a new assistant city manager included a sense of humor as among the qualities the municipality sought in an administrator.
The city’s status as the county seat reaches back to 1858 and has helped boost growth, beginning with a doubling of the population between the late 1850s and 1880. A century later, more than 44,000 people lived in the city – a number that more than doubled by 2000 and now stands at 112,970.
Fairfield at neatly 40 square miles is almost the physical size of San Francisco, if not a match in population or cable cars that climb halfway to the stars.
As part of plans to boost downtown, the city is paying $6,300 for conceptual architectural plans of the Pepperbelly’s comedy club site to use as documents in business recruitment. But that’s small stuff next to the $807,500 consultant’s contract for a south downtown Fairfield and West Texas Street plan.
The One Bay Area program uses federal highway funds to pay for planning. The Solano Transportation Authority distributes a portion of the money.
An effort by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission and Association of Bay Area Governments to guide regional development evolved into the One Bay Area grant program.
The Davis office of Berkeley-based MIG Architects will prepare the planning document while working with three other firms on the plan for south downtown Fairfield, including land between Highway 12 and Kentucky Street as well as the County Justice Center and Pennsylvania Avenue.
The Solano Town Center mall has its own, more recent history – including a $20 million renovation in 2006 and the later addition of a food court.
Fairfield at a glance
- City Hall: 1000 Webster St., 428-7400
- Website: www.fairfield.ca.gov
- City manager: David White. Reach at 428-7400
- Mayor: Harry Price. Elected in 1997. Term expires in 2018. Reach at 428-7395 or 422-4455 or [email protected]
- Vice Mayor: Chuck Timm. Elected in 2007. Served one term. Elected again in 2014. Term expires in 2018. Reach at 429-6298 or 428.7402 or [email protected]
- Councilwoman: Pam Bertani. Elected in 2011. Term expires in 2016. Reach at 628-6974 or [email protected]
- Councilwoman: Catherine Moy. Appointed in 2008. Elected 2009. Term expires in 2018. Reach at 480-8837 or [email protected]
- Councilman: Rick Vaccaro. Appointed in 2008. Elected 2011. Term expires in 2016. Reach at 249-3533 or [email protected]
