SAN JOSE -- They were the Nia, the Pinta and the Santa Maria of Space Age movie theaters, a domed armada set sail across a landscape in which anything suddenly seemed possible.

At the time of its opening 50 years ago in a fallowed farm field, "looking like a flying saucer about to take off," Century 21 became the first theater in Northern California that challenged the imagination of moviegoers as much as the pictures that played there.

Now it's among the last of its kind standing. After a recent, dramatic showdown at City Hall, the cinematic spaceship that architect Vincent Raney designed for a "city obsessed with the future" looks likely to be saved because of its past. But a broader debate continues over just which parts of the Bay Area's history are truly historic: Raney's domes in Fremont and Oakland are already gone, and his Pleasant Hill theater gave way to the wrecking ball last year after a City Council vote, despite a last-minute campaign by preservationists to save it.

Raney built a dozen domes in the Bay Area, all for movie impresario Ray Syufy. The theater impresario agreed to locate San Jose's Century 21, 22 and 23 -- the original theater's round-roofed companions -- on 11.6 acres owned by the architect's family, which also controlled the adjacent Winchester Mystery House, the peaks and cupolas of its rooftop in stark counterpoint to the nearby dome star fleet.

"As this area grew and changed from agriculture to technology, these domes became an important emblem of that change," said Matthew Sutton, standing forlornly outside the now-closed Century 21, which opened in 1964 and closed on March 31. "They wanted to evoke the future and embrace the optimism of the Space Age, that postwar Camelot era." Sutton organized a Save the Domes Facebook page, which, along with a petition drive that drew more than 8,600 signatures on Change.org, was thought to have influenced the City Council's 7-4 vote on June 10 to grant landmark protection to Century 21.

Last year, a campaign to save the CinArts, Raney's dome in Pleasant Hill, fell one vote short when it went before City Council. During that debate, one woman warned council members that "once it's destroyed, like the Twin Towers, you don't see it anymore." In San Jose, an impassioned dome defender cautioned the council against committing "dome-icide."

Floating objects

For now, Century 21 has been spared that fate, but Century 22 and 23 appear unlikely to survive long enough to justify their names. Century 22 opened in 1966 as a single dome, followed a year later by Century 23. But as multiplexes began to replace single-screen theaters in the 1970s, Century 22 expanded to a Picasso-esque embarrassment of riches with three domes, each one with its own screen.

Unlike buildings that create a wall along the street, these were "object buildings," said architect Sally Zarnowitz, a former member of San Jose's planning department, "that lend themselves to floating in the landscape."

Century 21 was clearly the mother ship, with its unmistakable resemblance to the flying saucer that brought Klaatu and Gort to this planet in the 1951 sci-fi classic "The Day the Earth Stood Still." Raney gave it a gaudy zigzag parapet that also evoked a merry-go-round, Zarnowitz said. "All of that played into the idea of leisure architecture in the '60s."

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Bay Area domes face extinction

A controversial winery project in Yountville won narrow approval from county planners on Wednesday after a contentious public hearing and some public wavering by a key planning commission member.

The hearing on the 100,000-gallon winery project proposed to be built on Yountville Hill unfolded much like a heavyweight boxing match proponents trading arguments with the developers, but neither side scoring a decisive knockout.

That initially left the commissioners split at the end of a marathon five-hour meeting before an overflow crowd, with Commissioners Matt Pope and Terry Scott saying they opposed the project because its production was too great and its marketing plan too aggressive for a 10.9-acre parcel off of Highway 29 and south of Yount Mill Road.

Commissioners Bob Fiddaman and Mike Basayne said they were in favor, and Commissioner Heather Phillips recused herself due to a conflict of interest, leaving a two-two deadlock and spelling defeat for the winery. Before the commission could vote formally, however, Eric Sklar, developer of the proposed Yountville Hill Winery, asked for a two-week delay to possibly revise the project and win over votes.

After a brief recess to discuss the delay, the commissioners returned and Pope said he would change his vote. By a 3-1 margin, with Scott opposed, the commission voted to approve the projects use permit to the stunned silence of the roughly 50 people left in attendance, almost all of them opposing the winery.

Pope prefaced his initial comments opposing Yountville Hill by saying he was deeply torn about the project, believing some of the vintners who wrote letters opposing it were saying I got mine, now too bad for you. He also believed that by making it difficult and prohibitively expensive for winery developers, the county was narrowing the pool of new winery owners to large corporations with the deep pockets to navigate the process.

Still, he said he was swayed by the arguments that Yountville Hill could be a precedent-setting decision for Napa Valley, in essence giving a green light for developers to pursue large-production projects that need ample tasting room traffic, nestled into narrow parcels in the hillsides.

Pope said comments from commission Chairman Bob Fiddaman ultimately changed his mind, as Fiddaman argued that the commissioners were bound by the countys existing interpretations of the laws and therefore had to approve the winery.

This was the most ambivalent Ive ever been, Pope said shortly before changing his vote. I am in support of this project and that is my decision.

Lester Hardy, an attorney working with Sklar on the project, said after the hearing that Pope changing his vote reflected him keeping an open mind about Yountville Hill, and shows that the hearing process with each side exchanging arguments and evidence ultimately works.

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Yountville Hill winery wins narrow approval from planners

By Erin Jordan, The Gazette

Predicting floods is a complicated business involving not just rainfall, but also geometry of river channels, character of hill slopes and mathematical formulas.

Boiled down, the data can help Iowans know when to start sandbagging or evacuate before high water.

For the general public, what really matters is just how high the river can get, said Witold Krajewski, director of the Iowa Flood Center at the University of Iowa.

The Army Corps of Engineers predicted Wednesday morning the Coralville Lake would top the spillway next week, but later in the day scaled back the numbers slightly. Small revisions like this are constant because rain upstream can affect the whole system.

The predictions start with knowing the landscape in and around waterways.

Digital topographic maps from the U.S. Geological Survey show elevation points for every 100 yards across the country, Krajewski said. Scientists in Iowa also have access to LiDAR, or Light Detection and Ranging technology, that involves laser readings from planes that fly over the landscape.

Elevation maps allow scientists to figure out the locations of river channels and basin boundaries.

Also important to flood predictions is the character of the hill slopes that run into waterways, Krajewski said. A grassy field will absorb more water than a paved parking lot.

These base numbers go into computer models that help scientists understand how different rainfall amounts will affect the region.

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Predicting river crests about more than rainfall

Turlough Hill power plant will celebrate it's 40th birthday this year and is inviting guests to come and take a look. Video: Darragh Bambrick

The ESB has opened its Turlough Hill generating station to mark the 40th anniversary of its opening

The ESB has opened its Turlough Hill generating station to the public and is offering free tours throughout the summer to mark the 40th anniversary of the States first and only hydro- electric storage station.

Set high in the Wicklow mountains and almost invisible to prying eyes the station which can generate up to 292 MW of electricity in 70 seconds is located 500 metres inside the hill itself.

Some 300 metres above the turbines is the upper reservoir on the top of Turlough Hill, its flat top the only sign from the nearest public road of man made intrusion in the landscape. It is approached by a small winding road over rocky outcrops known as the Wicklow Gap, seeming populated only by sheep.

However, 300 metres off the road, like a scene from a James Bond film, the tunnel appears with workers going in and out of the mountain in small golf buggy-like vehicles.

The station operates all year round but comes into its own typically at about 5pm on a wet February evening when household cookers across the country are switched on, lights come on and home heating fires up. Turlough Hill can deliver its 292 MW of electricity to the national grid, ramping up to full power in just 70 seconds ensuring the States lights dont even flicker.

Turlough Hill can stay at full power for about five hours. It does this by opening sluice gates allowing up to 2.3 billion litres of water drop through the pipework inside the mountain hitting the turbines at a depth of 300 metres. The water then exits into a lower lake, originally a corrie, a geographical feature which ensures the facility remains almost invisible in the landscape.

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ESB offers free tours of Turlough Hill hydro station

Pendle Hill to benefit from 3m lottery funding

3:00pm Tuesday 1st July 2014 in News By Tyrone Marshall, Reporter

PENDLE Hill will benefit from 3million in lottery funding to attract more tourists if a bid for cash is successful.

The area was chosen by the committee for the Forest of Bowland AONB (Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty) to be the subject of the bid for the lotterys Landscape Partnership Scheme.

Pendle Hill was chosen because it requires special attention to ensure conservation of the landscape character.

Mike Williams, tourism manager at Pendle Council, said: The Landscape Partnership outcomes seek to benefit people, heritage and communities.

One of the key drivers is to attract and involve new audiences to connect with special landscape, for example people from local towns and neighbouring urban areas who dont normally access the countryside.

Two key potential benefits of the bid are that local people in Pendles towns that do not currently benefit from their local countryside will be more attracted to do so, and the project would raise the profile of the area as a visitor destination. helping to support local businesses.

The committee will find out if stage one of the funding bid has been successful in October. If it is, they will have to submit a second bid in spring next year.

If the bid is successful, projects could include recruiting more volunteer rangers to patrol the area, improving access to the hill and surrounding areas, refurbishing Barley and Spring Wood cabins and educating visitors to respect the landscape.

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Pendle Hill to benefit from 3m lottery funding

What do the corporate giants of Shell, BP and Guinness Brewing Worldwide have in common with the Caravan Club? Simon Hill has worked in the IT department of all four.

The Caravan Club's IT chief has also worked in IT for large UK public sector organisations such as Surrey Council and the Metropolitan Police, where he directed its Solution Centre for seven years, providing all back-office systems to 30,000 employees.

Hill joined Guinness on a graduate programme after gaining a degree in procurement and logistics. It was here he got his first hands-on experience of implementing the SAP enterprise resource suite, something that has recurred throughout his career. He spent six years at Accenture working on SAP projects and was subsequently SAP programme manager at Surrey Council.

Today the London School of Economics graduate heads up IT at the Caravan Club as it embarks on ambitious plans to expand into new areas of the travel and leisure industry. The club, which has 360,000 members and, with their families, reaches about one million people runs leisure sites across the UK and offers insurance and other travel services. Its IT operation currently works out of a single room in the club's office and a small space in a warehouse. But it is moving to dedicated servers in third-party datacentres.

Hill has responsibility for all technology at the club, including head office and over 160 sites across the UK. When he joined a couple of years ago he inherited 14 direct reports and a department focused on supply.

Recognising the need for change, I secured board-level support for my vision for the department and set up demand management, service delivery and project management teams, he says.

This has meant that we are now more closely involved in value creation for the business, and I have been given the opportunity to help shape the Caravan Clubs exciting growth strategy.

He says the IT department is now more consultative. Rather than just building what the business asks for, it gets managers to explain the business goals and then recommends the IT systems that can support that outcome.

We help senior management clarify how they intend to achieve delivery of the clubs strategy through iterative conversations about what it will take, both technically and in terms of business change, to help to achieve their goals.

The IT operation is split in three. One team manages the pipeline of demand for change, developing all pre-project documentation such as business cases. Another team is responsible for developing and delivering all non-property related change, from small change requests through to multimillion-pound projects. And the third team ensures the ongoing provision of IT service while looking to reduce cost and improve quality.

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CIO Interview: Simon Hill, Caravan Club

Published on June 26, 2014

It wont be long before the trees are taller than she is, but Molly Head, daughter of Gord and Allison Head, is eager to get started on tree planting. Check out the June 30 edition of The Aurora for more photos.

Photos by Ty Dunham/The Aurora

Published on June 26, 2014

They may be small now, but Thomas Dawe, Darren Dawe and Sherry Dawe knows each tree makes a difference to the scorched land.

Photo by Ty Dunham/The Aurora

Off the Trans-Labrador Highway, about 15 minutes outside of Labrador West, is a long stretch of dirt road entering Blueberry Hill, which begins with bright green trees and gradually turns into black ground with the charred remains of last years devastating forest fire.

A car that looks like it aged 1,000 years sits on a lot, the interior burnt and tires disintegrated. Rubble is all that is left of some cabin sites, while newly constructed dwellings stand out against the dark landscape.

Standing in the forest, its easy to see far down where greenery used to block vision in just a few feet. Walking over soot and scraping across the branches leaves black marks against clothing.

But the Labrador West Boy Scouts, Beavers, Girl Guides and Blueberry Hill cabin owners didnt seem to mind. Spreading out through the trees, their coloured jackets and shirts brightly contrasted against the landscape as they dug holes and filled them with infant black spruce trees.

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Reviving a blackened landscape

MILLEDGEVILLE The City of Milledgeville earned a $39,000 GATEway grant toward landscape improvements along Franklin Street between Wilkinson and Clarke streets.

Memory Hill Cemetery frontage improvements are the main focus of the monies. The grant doesn't require local match.

Public Works Director Frank Baugh said the Friends of the Baldwin County Cemeteries approached the department last fall hoping to improve the cemetery entrance.

At about the same time, we saw this GATEway grant opportunity. It occurred to us that we could work all this together, Baugh said.

The Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) recently awarded more than $1.3 million for the 2014 GATEway grants to 43 local government entities around the state.

The GATEway grant program uses revenue collected from permit fees for vegetation removal in front of outdoor advertising signs.

Funds from the grants are used to reimburse local government when purchasing and installing plant material for landscape projects on state routes.

Any organization, local government or state agency can apply for a grant up to $50,000 contingent upon authorization by a local government and an agreement to perpetually maintain the project.

A primary goal of the program is to fund enduring enhancements to roadsides utilized by the traveling public. Project proposals ranged from interstate interchange panoramas to landscape embellishment of city entrance signs.

The funds may be used only for landscape plant material and its installation for the furtherance of roadside enhancement and beautification projects.

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City awarded grant to spruce up southern historic district

Waters carve local landscape

By Mary Hill mhill@titusvilleherald.com Thursday, June 26, 2014 4:06 AM EDT

Titusville residents coped with flooded property and washed out roads and bridges Tuesday night into Wednesday after a series of thunderstorms rumbled through the Oil Region, dumping between 2 1/2 to 5 inches of rain in some areas.

And, Titusville made national TV news Wednesday morning when the region's storm damage was featured on ABC's "Good Morning, America."

Many city roads were closed late Tuesday and early Wednesday, but became passable later in the day Wednesday.

Titusville Police Chief Gary Thomas said about 2 1/2 inches of rain fell Tuesday night.

"We kept updating our Facebook page with [street] closings," he said.

Due to the amount of rain that fell in a short period of time, some Titusville residents and business experienced flooding in their basements.

Kirby Macquarrie, a bartender and maintenance employee at Boonie's Sports Bar, on Diamond Street, said the establishment's basement was flooded.

Macquarrie said that, at one point, there were 8 to 10 inches of water in the basement.

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Waters carve local landscape

It was an earlier eras version of going viral.

Soon after John Frederick Kensett created a dramatic painting of the White Mountains, the image swept the country, not only putting New Hampshire on the map but also preserving a poignant rural view of life in a swiftly industrializing nation.

Mount Washington from the Valley of Conway is considered the most famous New England landscape of the 19th century, and its associated school of art and expression have become an enduring advertisement for the Granite State, whose tourism industry today still celebrates the balance of natural and cultural resources.

Canvassing the White Mountains: Icons of Place, on view from Saturday through Sept. 12 at the Historical Society of Cheshire County in Keene, traces that pivotal journey with more than 40 historic paintings by landscape artists including Benjamin Champney, Alfred Bricher, Asher Durand, John Enneking, Alvan Fisher, John Ross Key, Willard Metcalf and William Paskell.

The exhibit will share how the painting styles of these artists illustrate not only the evolution of American art, but also how they helped to shape the American view of and reaction to wilderness and nature, said Alan Rumrill, the historical societys executive director, of pieces from the 1800s through the early 1900s. (The exhibition conveys) how the work of the artists impacted the growth and development of the White Mountain region.

Evolution of Art

In the summer of 1850 three young American artists discovered North Conway Village in New Hampshires White Mountains. Kensett, Champney and John Casilear were drawn there by the work of earlier landscape artists who strove to capture the grandeur of the mountains and countryside.

Champney, a native of New Ipswich who had previously painted a View of Keene, N.H. in his home region, described the village and surrounding landscape as the most beautiful place on Earth, said Rick Swanson, development director at the historical society.

Drawing a Response

These White Mountain Art painters, many in residence at hotels such as the Profile House in Franconia Notch, Crawford House in Crawford Notch and Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods, were among the first marketers of New Hampshire in an age of railroads and resort hotels.

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White Mountain art exhibit turns gaze to art that shaped NH tourism