Author: Vanyan Gary

Downtown center proposed
Major developer wants to build south of stadium.
By Jim Davis
The Fresno Bee
Updated Friday, March 26, 2004, 7:21 AM
A major developer wants to create a $350 million to $400 million development
with retail, entertainment and housing in downtown Fresno south of Grizzlies
Stadium, city officials announced Thursday.
The project could include a lake, river walk or series of fountains.
Forest City Enterprises will ask the Fresno City Council on Tuesday for an
exclusive agreement to develop 85 acres south of the stadium.
City Council Member Tom Boyajian called it a “defining moment” in moving
downtown Fresno forward.
“When we voted for this baseball stadium, we really hoped something like
this would happen,” Boyajian said. The project would be in an area generally
bounded by Union Pacific Railroad, Van Ness Avenue, Tulare Street and
Freeway 41.
Forest City Enterprises, a real estate company based in Ohio, is a property
owner and partner in the River Park shopping center in north Fresno. The
company has also developed urban centers throughout the country, said Dan
Fitzpatrick, executive director of the city’s Redevelopment Agency.
“What’s very important about this project is drawing a major developer —
they’re listed on the New York Stock Exchange — to make a commitment of
hundreds of millions [of dollars] in downtown,” Fitzpatrick said.
Council Member Cynthia Sterling said the proposal dovetails with other
projects in downtown and the Regional Jobs Initiative to create jobs for the
community.
“With this push, this will open up an opportunity to put people back to
work,” said Sterling, who represents downtown.
Known as the South Stadium project, it will be sandwiched between two other
major downtown developments.
To the west, a development group has proposed building hundreds of homes and
adding retail and commercial shopping to the historic Chinatown district.
To the east, Gunner-Andros Investments is planning to build Old Armenian
Town, a series of high-rise office buildings anchored by a state appellate
courthouse.
Marlene Murphy, the city’s redevelopment administrator, said the City
Council will be asked Tuesday whether to allow the agency to negotiate an
exclusive agreement with Forest City.
The project would be built in four or five phases over 10 years.
“This is not a small project,” Murphy said. “It’s the size of … Universal
Studios.”
Forest City, its partners and the city of Fresno have been studying the area
south of the stadium for the past 18 months.
Forest City’s partners are The Legaspi Co., Streetscape Equities and Johnson
Fain Architects.
Forest City has assets of about $5 billion. Fitzpatrick praised it as one of
the top four or five companies in the country that redevelop urban areas.
“They don’t have to worry about getting financing,” Fitzpatrick said.
“They’re self-financing.”
Fitzpatrick said council members and Mayor Alan Autry have played key roles
in persuading the company to consider investing in downtown Fresno.
Boyajian said he’s been questioned constantly about voting for the $46
million baseball stadium. He said the stadium was an investment and that the
payoff is finally occurring with this proposed development.
“The investors really see an opportunity here,” Boyajian said.
Forest City is looking at a mixed-use development including restaurants, a
multiplex theater and other commercial uses combined with downtown housing.
It could include big-box and department stores.
The company expects that the project will draw people within 30 miles of
downtown as well as people driving on the freeways to Yosemite and Kings
Canyon national parks.
The company also expects to draw traffic from the baseball stadium, the
Convention Center, the IRS building and downtown government agencies.
While the project is expected to bring in national retailers and chains,
Boyajian and Fitzpatrick said, Forest City also will seek local businesses
and small entrepreneurs.
Fitzpatrick said landmarks such as Coney Island restaurant — which has been
downtown for 80 years — “will obviously stay.”
The company in its exclusive agreement will seek the city’s help in aiding
the development including, if necessary, eminent domain to consolidate land.
Pat Cody has owned Wilson’s Motorcycles at 443 Broadway for 15 years, and
the business has been in the same location for 85 years. He had not heard
about the proposal and will withhold judgment until he sees details.
But he believes the city should have talked with businesses “who are
employing people, generating tax dollars and have been here.”
“They keep talking about bringing business in downtown Fresno, but nobody
talks to us, who have been doing business in downtown,” he said.
The reporter can be reached
at [email protected]
or 441-6171.

European Union launches high-tech project in Armenia
Arminfo
19 Mar 04
YEREVAN
The implementation of a European Union project to develop information
technology has begun in Armenia, this was said at the presentation
ceremony today.
The project, which will end in 2005, will cost 1.2m euros in
total. The project consists of two parts – the provision of training
and the creation of relevant legal acts.
Passage omitted: minor details

Armenian leader says devolution of power needed
Mediamax news agency
19 Mar 04
YEREVAN
The country leadership will continue the policy of devolution of
power, Armenian President Robert Kocharyan said in Yerevan today.
At a working session today with the leadership of Yerevan’s Kentron
(Centre) community, the Armenian president said: “It is obvious that
the government should not deal with day-to-day problems of the
people. But, the government should ensure the implementation of credit
programmes in the sphere of water supply, heating and so on. However,
self-government bodies should be responsible for their
implementation,” the head of state said.
Passage omitted: similar ideas are reiterated

Tennis: Henman crushes Corretja while Hewitt tumbles out
The Independent – United Kingdom
Mar 16, 2004
Matthew Cronin in Indian Wells
TIM HENMAN looked full of confidence as he won his Pacific Life Open
third-round match with Alex Corretja 6-4, 6-4 here yesterday.
Corretja lost his serve in the second game, at the end of which his
trainer was called on to treat what looked like a graze on the
knee. The Spaniard played on, and broke back in the seventh game with
a backhand passing shot down the line. Henman, however, broke back in
the 10th game to claim the first set as Corretja was wayward with
three forehands.
At deuce in Corretja’s first service game in the second set, the
Spaniard struck a shot down the line which caught the highest part of
the net and carried over the baseline to put Henman 2-0 up. The
Briton’s hopes of another three-game lead evaporated as he sent an
overhead smash into the net to give his opponent an instant break
back. After another deuce game on the Corretja serve, the Spaniard won
out to level at 2-2.
The fifth game was nervy for Henman on his serve but it went in his
favour at deuce and he edged 3-2 ahead. The match went with serve to
5-4 and Henman closed out the second set.
The Australian two-time defending champion Lleyton Hewitt lost to Juan
Ignacio Chela, 6-3, 4-6, 6-1 as the Argentinian put up a determined
performance to end Hewitt’s 13-match unbeaten run. “Even when I felt
like I had him on a stretch a couple of times, he came up with good
defensive shots,” Hewitt said. “I didn’t feel like I played too badly,
but I felt like he didn’t miss a lot of shots.”
Roger Federer, of Switzerland, made light work of Chile’s Fernando
Gonzalez in the third round, his 6-3, 6-2 victory taking 62
minutes. Federer, the top seed here, had breezed through the previous
round with a 6-1, 6-1 rout of Romania’s Andrei Pavel.
Also in the third round, Tommy Haas, of Germany, beat Spain’s Albert
Costa 7-6, 3-6, 6-3.
Andy Roddick beat his former doubles partner Jan-Michael Gambill 7-6,
6-2 late on Sunday to set up a meeting with the recent Australian Open
finalist Marat Safin, of Russia.
Roddick, who faced Gambill for the first time last week in Scottsdale,
hit 21 aces in the thin desert air and was never broken. The US Open
champion last met Safin in the Australian Open quarter-finals, where
the Russian won a titanic five-setter.
The fourth seed, Guillermo Coria, made a good first appearance on
American hard courts this season, beating the Armenian Sargis Sargsian
6-3, 6-4.
The seventh-seeded Carlos Moya, of Spain, hit a double-fault on match
point and fell to the Russian Irakli Labadze 2-6, 6-1, 6-3. The 11th
seed, Nicolas Massu, of Chile, retired with a sinus infection while
trailing 6-3, 1-0 to Spain’s Rafael Nadal.
l Greg Rusedski is expected to confirm today whether he intends to
pursue a compensation claim against the Association of Tennis
Professionals following his acquittal on doping charges last week. The
British No 2 and his legal team are believed to have examined the
possibility of pursuing a claim against the ATP.

Sydney Morning Herald, Australia
March 16 2004
The lottery that defies logic and confuses experts
By Kelly Burke, Education Reporter
Geelong Grammar can count Kerry Packer, Rupert Murdoch, Alexander
Downer and Prince Charles among its famous old boys. By comparison,
its Sydney cousin, Trinity Grammar, has just a smattering of
corporate chief executives and barristers wearing the old school tie.
Yet these schools steeped in the Anglican tradition share many other
common factors, including a high level of boarders, day fees of about
$16,000 a year, and a similar ranking under the system that
determines the level of Commonwealth funding each school gets.
In contrast, the non-government Hamazkaine, Arshak & Sophie Galstaun
school, in the northern Sydney suburb of Ingleside, has been the
beneficiary of little largesse during its 18-year history. The
school’s 322 students all come from non-English speaking backgrounds,
and their parents, primarily Armenian immigrants, pay between $2000
and $3500 in school fees each year.
Yet according to the Federal Government system which measures
parents’ capacity to pay, this school is as affluent as Trinity, with
both schools sharing the same socio-economic status (SES) ranking of
112. Geelong Grammar comes in a point lower, at 111, on a scale which
in NSW ranges from 87 for the poorest schools and 133 for the
wealthiest.
Kaylar Michaelian, the principal of Hamazkaine, Arshak & Sophie
Galstaun School, has appealed against the Federal Government’s ruling
that the parents of his pupils are on a par financially par with
those at Trinity – and marginally better off than those who send
their offspring to Geelong Grammar. The case has yet to be resolved.
“We are a community school – we don’t even see ourselves as a private
school,” Mr Michaelian said. “We’ve asked the department to review
[our SES] because it in no way reflects the make up of our parents
and their capacity to pay any more than what we’re already asking.
It’s unfair.”
The NSW Government sees things differently from the Commonwealth.
Factoring in the school’s assets and income, the state’s education
resource index (ERI) model has deemed it a relatively needy school.
Out of a possible score of 12, it gets a nine, while Trinity is
ranked as one of the wealthiest, as a category 1 school.
The Commonwealth’s SES model is based on measuring the education,
income and employment status of about 250 households in the
census-determined area where each parent of a private school student
lives.
Mark Drummond, a PhD candidate in public sector management at the
University of Canberra and a former teacher of mathematics at the
Australian Defence Force Academy, said this system has turned the
school funding system into little more than a lottery.
“The scores are a basket case,” he said, after having spent nearly 12
months analysing national non-government school funding data.
“In effect, there are many private schools where the rich kids are
getting the benefit from the poorer kids who happen to live in the
same area, and go to the local public school. There is no coherence
to the system. You only have to look at Geelong Grammar’s SES to know
it even fails the commonsense test.”
But Terry Chapman, executive director of the NSW Association of
Independent Schools, says the Commonwealth’s SES model is the best of
an admittedly imperfect lot.
“The SES is better because judgements are made using data gathered
from the census,” he says. “It’s absolutely transparent, does not
require massive details from each school, and it does not create any
serious disincentive to private effort.”
But under the NSW Government’s ERI system, Mr Chapman says, a private
school theoretically loses government money with every private
donation it receives.
A spokesman for the federal Education Minister, Brendan Nelson, said
the figures merely proved what every parent of every student in a
Catholic or independent school had known for a long time.
“That is that there are parents in this country who make enormous
sacrifices with four jobs between two parents, who live in modest
accommodation, never have a holiday and choose to make great
sacrifices to send their children to non-government schools”.

Mediamax news agency, Yerevan, in Russian
11 Mar 04
Armenian organizations condemn anti-Azeri rhetoric by senior
officials

YEREVAN
The leaders of four Armenian public organizations have issued a
statement effectively accusing the ruling coalition of spreading
“racist and chauvinist ideas which are alien to our society”.
The statement forwarded to Mediamax said that when commenting on the
killing of an Armenian officer by an Azerbaijani colleague in
Budapest, the chairman of the standing parliamentary commission for
foreign relations, Armen Rustamyan, and the head of the parliamentary
faction of the Armenian Republican Party, Galust Saakyan, “used
unacceptable generalisations with regard to the Azerbaijani people as
a whole”.
“The statements by such high-ranking politicians who represent the
ruling political coalition are particularly unacceptable because they
can be construed as the official position of our state, bring about
additional obstacles to resolving the Nagornyy Karabakh conflict and
to improving relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan,” the statement
said.
“The whipping up of anti-Armenian tension in Azerbaijan and its
consequences certainly deserve a strong condemnation, but this cannot
serve as justification for the spread of racist and chauvinist ideas
which are alien to our society. Difficult as the Budapest tragedy
situation might be, we are calling for political restraint. We hope
that our country will continue to be guided by common sense and
democratic values,” the statement said.
The statement was signed by the president of the Civil Society
Institute, Artak Kirakosyan, the president of the Yerevan Press Club,
Boris Navasardyan, the president of the Armenian Helsinki Committee,
Avetik Ishkhanyan, and the president of the Caucasus centre of peace
initiatives, Georgiy Vanyan.