A 5-star town only needing better city management
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12/5/2021
Claremont is a college town on the very eastern edge of LA County with a lot going for it including excellent educational opportunities, a thriving night life with excellent restaurants and a lively if disbursed bar scene, decent parking, and lots of civic engagement. The problem is mostly in city management with a dysfunctional council who won’t proactively control its city employees nor push them into better performance. The previous council yoked its residents into a fruitless pursuit of trying to take over the local water company only to saddle the city with millions of dollars of debt and the whole process reeked of insider dealings and poor management. There’s way too much inertia to get critical projects done like redeveloping the south side of town…everything housing-wise takes forever to accomplish in Claremont. That said, it’s still a lovely town with Mountain Views, lots of trees, Ph.D.s, lots of nice housing and mostly non-chain shopping, particularly in its popular downtown “Village” area. Plenty of churches for every denomination. Many parks / hiking /biking trails and a beautiful botanic garden. The Claremont Club just reopened with upscale gym and social interaction opportunities. Claremont includes good transportation connectivity being located between two major highways, having a metro link train station downtown, and being only 20 minutes from Ontario (ONT) airport, a very nice regional airport that continues to get better air service. Weather: It gets hot in Claremont during the summers but it’s tolerable (never humid) and not in a significant fire zone and the rest of the year is lovely. Within the city there’s only lite traffic and that makes life in the city much nicer for bicyclists and car drivers as well.
David | Claremont, CA