Since Fuller Seminary isn’t moving to Pomona after all, what happens to the properties it bought downtown? They’ve been listed for sale as “a compelling multifamily mixed-use redevelopment opportunity in the urban core of Pomona, the seventh largest city in Los Angeles County.” That’s the topic of my Wednesday column.

A little background on how this column came to be. I’d been wanting to follow up on Fuller’s late-October announcement that it had scrapped its plans to move here, especially since I’d written in mid-2018 about the properties it had bought. I wondered what would happen to that land and if Pomona was thinking bigger about the possibilities after Fuller fell through.

With some sheepishness, a couple of weeks ago I rang up the deputy city manager to go over what seemed like old news to see if there was a way to “spin it forward,” as we say in the biz, by looking to the future. Midway through our chat, he said the properties were about to be listed for sale as a package and had strong possibilities for residential development. Suddenly my stale news had become fresh!

Even at that, it took me another couple of weeks to find a slot for the column, as among other things a new city manager was hired in Fontana and a column subject in Claremont was killed in an accident. Finally, though, here it is, and only because I skipped Monday night’s Pomona council meeting. Even though my topics are my own choice, accomplishing them can be either routine or like running an obstacle course.