Out & About – 01/29/2011
Lunar Festival
Visitors stroll Mission Inn Avenue in downtown Riverside during Saturday’s celebration marking the Chinese New Year.
Note: The following write-up by us on UCR’s Botanic Gardens first appeared on Things To Do InlandEmpire.com. Nestled within 40 hilly acres on the eastern edge of the University of California at Riverside campus, the UCR Botanic Gardens is one of the Inland region’s best-kept secrets. With four miles of self-guided walking paths and over…

This weekend marks the return of the USAF Thunderbirds to March Air Reserve Base near Riverside. The precision flying team has been making regular stops at the base’s air shows for many years, the last being 2004. Long-considered one of the West Coast’s biggest air shows, this year’s aviation pageant is expected to draw about…
This past weekend, we stumbled upon a bit of retail archeology when we noticed the false-front of a now-shuttered Mervyn’s had been removed to reveal the zig-zag roofline of the building’s original occupant — The Treasury. (The removal is part of refurbishing the former Mervyn’s space for an incoming Kohl’s, expected to open in September…

A roundup of local items making the news… With the announcement of a location at the Galleria at Tyler in Riverside, The Cheesecake Factory joins a growing list of upscale chains coming to Inland Southern California: “We probably received about 2,000 offers, and we will open 20 stores this year,” said Cheesecake Factory spokesman Howard…
Following 2 1/2 hours of public debate last Tuesday, the Riverside City Council approved initial plans for an aggressive, $780 million capital improvement plan. The citywide plan, designed to complete 20 – 30 years worth of municipal facilities and infrastructure projects in as little as 5 years, includes $384 million in mostly “underground” projects —…

A City Council-appointed task force assigned with revising Riverside’s library-museum expansion plans issued its draft recommendation this week calling for separate expansions for both institutions. The recommendation, which would reverse the city’s earlier combined expansion proposal, comes after several recent public meetings on the issue. Most critics of the original $25 million proposal — part…