Back in the 1920’s agriculture played a dominant role in the San Fernando Valley region.  At one point 75,000 acres of Valley land between towns and subdivisions was used for farming, which included 750,000 citrus trees.

By the 1990’s the Valley’s working citrus industry dwindled to just one, the Bothwell Ranch.  It is located in Tarzana at the corner of Oakdale Ave and Collier St, just a half mile south of Ventura Blvd.

Now it is up for sale.  The asking price is $13.9 million.  Collier International and Coldwell Banker is billing the property as “an incredibly rare infill development opportunity”.  Marketing materials include a site plan that would split the 14 acres into 26 half acre lots for development into 2-4 million dollar single family homes.  How sad.  Click below to read the article about it.

The good news is that not too far away is the last historic orange grove of San Fernando Valley owned and protected by CSUN.  The area includes 400 orange trees, a pond, bistro, and observatory.  The orange grove has thousands of fresh, free oranges waiting to be picked by you!  Anyone from anywhere can pick oranges at any time from the orange grove.  Have fun, and make sure to feed the red-eared slider turtles in the pond too!

2019 marks 50 years of commercial GIS!  Check out this article that will provide some understanding of how GIS developed during its first 25 years, and for some of you, some great memories of the early days!

And this article about the last 25 years of GIS.

Dear GIS Colleagues,

We are contacting you to request that you participate in a survey on GIS management practices.  This survey is sponsored by URISA’s GIS Management Institute (GMI).  The purpose of the survey is to analyze current GIS program and project management practices, in order to gain insights and assess current trends.

All respondents will be provided with a report summarizing the survey findings.  In the future, URISA and GMI will make more detailed data available for purchase.  In addition, Peter Croswell of Croswell-Shulte will access the data.  He will use some of the data to revise his GIS Management Handbook, available for purchase later this year, and 30 respondents will be selected at random to receive a free copy of the book.  No personally identifying information will be released, except as authorized by question 26 in the survey.

The appropriate respondents to this survey are GIS program and project managers in all types of organizations. Please feel free to encourage your GIS manager colleagues in other organizations to take the survey.  We appreciate your time for response to this survey.  The survey has 26 questions and should take approximately 25-35 minutes to complete.

Survey Link:     https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/GMI-Survey

We request responses by May 31, 2019.

If you have any questions, please contact GMI at GMIsurvey@urisa.org

Thank you for your participation.

GIS Management Institute