Community Impact and Leadership: A Conversation with John Tolson

Host Alex Ramirez and co-host Frank Tomlinson discuss with John and highlight his background in business, involvement in the Chamber of Commerce, and being the Chair for the Planning Commission of Simi Valley. 

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Transcript

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Welcome everybody to the valor Vault podcasts. This is our episode two with our first guest that we have a special guest today, John Tolson. And we had to do a little 2.125. Yeah, we had to do a little bit of, a little bit of read redo here, but thank you. Thank you John. So a little audio issue, but yeah, thank you so much for joining us today, John. Everybody. So anyone that's listening, anyone that's watching, please subscribe. Like, and please comment. If you ever have any questions, we can answer some of'em in the future, but I really appreciate everybody watching and listening. But we, we have a great guest today. He's, he's somebody that's really made a big impact in the community and Simi Valley and we're very honored to have'em here and the Valor Vault podcast. We always, we wanna have people here that, you know, show honor, bravery, and courage in the community, and. And are always supporting everybody. He's been a great support for us and couldn't think of anyone better to have on our podcast as our first guest than John Tolson. Really? I'm honored and thank you. And he's a good leader? Absolutely. Oh, oh wow. Absolutely. Great leader. And so, yeah, we're gonna be going over some things. His, his background, he works for the Chamber of Commerce and he has a business background. He is also the chairman of the Planning Commission for the City of Simi Valley. So anyone that's. Listen, you're watching, if you're in real estate lending or real estate development, you're gonna wanna listen in. We're gonna be asking'em some questions about that towards the end. So it's gonna be impact your business and your career, potentially what happens in this community.'cause there's gonna be some big things going on in this, in, in this city. And so you're gonna want to wait till the end. We're gonna be talking about that. But we're gonna get to know John and ask him about what he did before, what he does currently, and what he's, you know, what's gonna be happening in the future for him and. Share, like, share, like, and subscribe. Yeah, absolutely. And also, yeah, make sure you, you share too and subscribe. And I have my co-host here, Mr. Frank Tomlinson. Everybody knows Frank. Good to see you all again. Hey everybody, thanks for having me. Thank you, John. And I want to intro introduce our guest, John Tolson. So yeah, just wanna get everything started. John, John, he's, he's been great to us, so yeah, thank you for being on the podcast. Appreciate you. I know we're gonna, we're kind of going through some questions over again, but. Tell us a little bit about yourself, your background. I know we were talking about before we started this, we were talking, we asking you some questions about your background, what you did in business, and you kinda get into that and just, and then we'll go from there. No problem. Let's get, let's go for it. Born in Fresno moved to Tucson, Arizona. My dad got transferred there and then when I was 16 he got transferred to Woodland Hills and so came to Simi Valley and, you know, my three sisters and I said dad, I would care about his need a two-story house in Arizona. We have a flat roof with rocks on the roof. Oh yeah. And so we wanted a two-story house. He came through and bought a house in Simi Valley graduated from Royal and my, I have three kids. They, they all graduated from Royal. Yeah. When my oldest was there, a couple of the teachers were still the ones that I had and I thought, oh my gosh, it's time for them to move on. Anyway, my claim to fame a lot of people don't know, but they know about, as I owned a retail store in, in Chatsworth for 18 years, and it is a kind of a unique kind of store. Not the typical retail store. It was a costumes, balloons, and magic store. It was called Magic World. Right on Topanga. Between Devonshire and Lassen. Anybody who grew up in the Valley for the most part, you used to know about our store. Mm-Hmm. And because of the nature of the industry, the things we sold we would do a lot of costumes. Halloween was a huge time for us. Mm-Hmm. And we would do costumes for TV shows and full-length movies and commercials and that kind of thing. We would do costumes for The Tonight Show. Johnny Carson would come up, he lived in Malibu, drive up to Topanga. He'd stop by our store, pick up some magic.'cause he is a budding magician. Loved to do magic. Yeah. Then he'd go across to Burbank. But any of the opening scenes with Jay Leno, we would do yeah, the Judge Edo costumes during the O.J Simpson case. The opening sets, they would always do different costumes and they'd get costumes from us. And you know, Michael Jackson came in and Muhammad Ali. So it was a, it was a fun place, it was a spot to go for. Everyone knew that this was a spot to go. This is like way before like all the Amazons and all that. Wait, here's the deal. There's, there's business owners in town who came and would buy stink bombs from me. Oh. Oh, wow. But we won't name those names of those who they are. Wow. Fire. I remember buying those. Was that, tell us those later. Exactly. I remember buying those when I was in junior high, and I remember kids buying'em, and I'm not gonna say I did, but I did see people throw stink bombs in the, in the hallways in junior high. And Oh man, it was, it was bad. Yeah, it was bad. Excuse me. It was fun. Yeah. But it was fun. You write about a claim to fame because I remember it. I remember that you used to have, I think that there was a gorilla and a pantsless loans rain. Right. We, you know. Because of the nature of, of how busy the street was, we would try and get them to notice us. And so we would put balloons up on the above the store. We'd have guys in costumes in the gorilla suit, so going down to Panga, we'd have'em across the street. Mm-Hmm. And then at nighttime, when they were coming home. We would have him on our side of the streets.'cause it was on the east side of the street. Okay. Yeah. And you were saying there was a story Oh yeah. That early back. Here we go. Yeah. So at one point we, you know, we'd have a gorilla on the costume. One time we had the Lone Ranger, you know, full on gray outfit tassels, the hat, guns. And he would spin the guns and point, you know, and then put'em back in his holster. I get a call from LAPD Devonshire division saying, Hey John. We got to call someone that there's a man on the street pointing guns at the cars. He said, come on, it's the Lone Ranger. So I had to tell him and tell him, it's not just any man. It's a Lone Ranger. Exactly. Come on. Well, yeah. So it was a good, yeah. That's funny. All good story. So when you, you're saying that you, that your, you moved around a little bit, so your dad got transferred from Tucson to Willan Hills. My dad was in the insurance industry. Yeah. He was a claims manager. And so his company would transfer. Mm-Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. And then I know I know Frank was mentioning it before about your, well, your dad was in the Air Force. He, he served in the, in, in the US Air Force, and I know Frank was mentioning about before, how it was that word. The, the Rotary was, was the Rotary, or the Chamber is to Rotary Rotary Rotary Club of Senior Sunrise. Yeah. Yeah. We did a little Veterans Day honoring all of the veterans. Yeah. Some of the, some of our club members who were veterans, family members are veterans. And then we had some members from the community come out. Yeah. And you know, growing up, my dad would tell me about being in the Air Force, but we didn't make a big deal about it. So to be able to honor him that day was a, is a, a great thing. He, he was my two older sisters were born in Riverside when he was stationed at, I think it was March Air Force Base. Mm-Hmm. And he had spent two years in England and one of the two years he was the Airman of the year. So I have mad respect for my father. He just I, you know, he's passed, but great guy. I. The fact that he served our country. I, you know, very impressed. Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. Yeah. I appreciate that. And you can see, I mean, I saw the connection even that day in the admiration that you had for your dad, and so I'm moved by that, but that's something that I see from you even when we talk about all veterans and all service people. You, you hold them in high regard. And so we appreciate that, but we know that the service people appreciate that too. We, we have, what we have is very special. We're very unique, especially living in Simi Valley is just amazing. But we have our freedoms because of the people who've in the past fought for our freedoms and currently who do. Just, yeah, I got mad respect for them. Yeah. Well, let me, let me ask you, so did your dad did he serve any other type of committees outside of work or, you know, military?'cause it's something that people that I don't know you if if, if you just look up John, you know, John serves different. He's with the Chamber, with the Rotary. I know, I, I dunno if I've already said this, but John, he was probably one of the best known people in Simi Valley. I mean, I, I knew who John Tolson was. Years ago before I even met him. Wow. And then when I met him, I was like, oh, John, I mean, I seen you, but a lot of people know you. It's like you're very, very involved in the community and it's, it's not, I never heard anyone say anything bad about you. It's always something good. And I always see you serving. I'm like, this guy's a machine. He's always at all the events, all he's always serving. So did your dad serve, did he do any, like, any I guess. Groups like that then that maybe that did that, something like that maybe inspire you. You know, he, he did, he did. He did a lot of service and community service. Mm-Hmm. And, and kinda got involved. He was like the leader of the insurance industry, whatever, you know, like their board, like one of their organizations of board. Yeah. You know, so I guess I saw that that way. Yeah. And instilled in me. I grew up a boy Scout, which is, you know, obviously you do a lot of service. Yeah. And, you know, kind of a military kind of vibe with the, with the boy Scouts. And so, you know, it just, it's in my blood I guess. And I guess again, I just, I love where I live. I think it's a very unique city and I wanna make it better so. What I, whatever I can do to do, I try to do. Yeah, that's great. Well, I think all of us have been here. I've, I've been here since I was a kid, John Frank's been here for a long time too, so Yeah, we agree. It's Watch it with Wisecracks Alex. Yeah, he's, he's been here for a few years, but it's we have long running jokes, but with Frank, but it's just teasing him. But yeah, we you know, I, I know I have wife kids here. We, you know, I, I've lived here since I was six years old. I'm forty-two, and. I thought about moving out and outta the city, but then my wife's, you know, she's not from here. She's like, I love the city. This, it is a great city for our kids, for us. Yeah. And, and yeah, it's great that you say you want, you want the, you want the city to get better. I, I would say some people, I mean, you could see like on social media, in certain forums, they kind of say some negative things and it doesn't make any, to me, it doesn't make any sense when they say negative things about the, the community that they live in, it's like, well, you should. I know it's, I get it. People, they, they, in their mind, they're thinking, saying something negative is gonna motivate people to improve something. But I think that's the opposite. It's, you know, say something positive. So this way it'll, you know, positivity will go out and then it'll improve you know, I guess certain businesses or the community. But this is a great community. The other part of it too is get involved and make it better. Yeah. And get involved. Yeah. You know, it's one thing to say, you know, I'm going to you, we should do this, or you should do this. How about just do it? Yeah, do it just like we, yeah.'cause I like I was saying, you're, you're, you're serving these organizations and it's just yeah. You're everywhere. So when we talk about the planning commission, was that something that you decided to start serving in or did you get pulled into it by somebody else? A little bit of both. So I used, I use my knowledge of my business to help in my job now. Mm-Hmm. So. When I had 18 years of, of running a retail store and trying to make payroll and trying to promote myself and mode, you know, those kind of things. Yeah. I use that on a daily basis when I'm helping somebody who's either trying to relocate or start a business here and see me. And so that's what I do with my Chamber of Commerce. And then in my involvement with the community itself there was an, at one point, about six years ago one of the. City council members was the position was opened up for an appointment. Mm-Hmm. And so Elaine Litster was appointed and I went up to her that very same day and said, Hey, you know you know, each city council member appoints a planning commissioner. And I said to her, if you wanted to consider me as a potential planning commissioner, I'd love to do it. So I've been doing that for about five years or so, and five years. Wow. Last two years have been the chair of the planning commission. Okay. Yeah. That's awesome. So his, his kind of the marriage of Chamber and planning Commissioner, do those things cross over as much as you thought they would? You know, there's a lot of, there's a, there's yeah. It's, it's all involvement with the city, right? Mm-Hmm. But, they're definitely different. They're separate and distinct and, mm-Hmm. If there's any kind of potential conflict, I gotta step away from voting on something that might, you know, be conflicting. But at this point there's not been. So, it's good. Okay. And I know you were talking about the planning commission, so you've been, you've been, it's been five years, is it? How, how many years are you a planning Commissioner or is, what is it? I'm, I'm a planning Commissioner as long as Elaine. Lister is a city council member. Okay, got it. Okay. I don't know much about that, but, okay. So as long as, so, so she okay. Either retires or gets voted out, then somebody else will get a, okay. So with the planning commission, this is, so what, what's your, what are your duties as a plan or the Chairman of planning commission? So any, any, any projects that come to town, whether it's residential, commercial. Those kind of things. Mm-Hmm. Zoning, those kind of things all come to before the planning commission if it's warranted. Okay. And so, housing building, you know, all those kind of things come before us. We approve'em, you know, look at over the plans and the landscaping and all those things and Okay. Every aspect of it we, we go over, there's city staff that does some of the, you know, most of the heavy lifting and then we just kind of, look it over, make sure that it's exactly what we wanna do and the direction we wanna go, and then Approve or disapprove. Okay. What are, are there any big projects or any projects that you're allowed to talk about that are happening? Commercial, residential In, in the city of Simi Valley. So, you know, there's the, the there's attractive homes and I won't call, attract. Housing development up Las Canyons, Los Canyons. Yeah. One of the golf courses is gonna be turned over into some housing. Okay. And it's gonna be a little bit nicer. Homes that's why I don't say it's attract homes, but they're nicer, bigger lots. No two houses will like face each other. They'll be at angles and things, that kind of thing. Okay. So that's, that's in the works has been approved by us. And then, you know, in the next year or so, hopefully they'll start breaking ground. There's some talk about a, a housing complex right behind the, the mall. So if you go up to Enringer behind the fire station, okay. There's some home, there's some ground there that's been talked about potentially as a tract of homes there. Okay. That'd be more tract versus Yeah, just like most of the houses. Yeah. Yeah. So on the development up in Los Canyon, do you know how many homes are expected to build? I think there's, it's in three phases and I think the first phase might be around a hundred and so, okay. Right. Oh, so, so it's three phase, so it's gonna be, could be a couple hundred or could be potentially more. Wow. So that's, that's a massive development. That's like a, I don't know how big, big sky is, but how many homes are in Big Sky, but it's almost more, it's gonna be doubling what Big Sky is pretty much, you know, the lands there and, Mm-Hmm. You know, that's. Yeah, it's good. It's good for us. How, how do you think that'll, that'll impact the, the city, the, the city and the community? So, so, you know, the other, the other, one of the other projects that's over on Easy Street is some industrial projects. Okay. Some buildings that are being built there just west or east of Madera. Okay. So on Easy Street, just west, east of Madera, all these industrial complexes are the buildings. We're about 1% vacancy rate. And so to, to build these up is gonna bring more commerce to Simi Valley, actually make it so that there's more individuals who can stay here and work here. Got it. And as opposed to like the retail these are more gonna be higher paying jobs. And so, we get calls on a weekly basis from the Valley. People who have businesses in the valley, business in the local area who want to relocate here because of how safe it is. How nice it is. Oh, okay. Well, if one thing to have the, the business here, well the owners or CEOs that higher, you know, level owners need to have places to live too. Right. And so those are the. Potentially the interesting, okay. Areas that they'll move to would be the Big Sky area. So yeah, so they're building that on Easy Street to bring businesses in, bring more jobs, small businesses, and then you have that higher end homes. I did hear this, I did hear this a while ago. It was a long time ago. I heard this was like the. They're trying to do, but I didn't, I didn't realize they had the development. The two, the two had together, they go together. Right. You know, when I first was here, this was called a, a bedroom community. Yeah. Which means everyone lived here and everyone left the city to go work. They spend their money somewhere else. And now it's, yeah. So now it's, the idea is that let's, let's stay here, work here, and live here. Yeah. And that's kind of the vision of the planning commission is to, to make it more that you bet. So do you think I, I think that that's great because that's gonna, that's gonna bring more jobs. It's gonna bring, keep more of the tax dollars here in the city, which we need it. It's a great city, but it's gonna, it's gonna help everything. What kind of, have you heard any type of negative remarks of people saying if it's gonna be too much?'cause you know, you've, you've, you've heard, you've heard this. I, I know everyone's heard this as they say. And no offense against anyone that lives in the San Fernando Valley. I used to live there. That's fine. The city's fine. They say, oh, we don't want this to be another San Fernando Valley. Which if you don't know the San Fernando Valley, it's just, it's open. There's almost a million people in San Fernando Valley. It's big Simi Valley is you, there's, there's no other cities really surrounding it. You have to get into Moorpark. It's, it's not as easy, like if like you're in the valley, you're driving'cause the hills up because the hills, it becomes like a fence, right? Yeah. The hills like, yeah. It kind of blocks us from everything. So it's much different. But have you heard any type of negative, like remarks like that or anything similar to that? You bet you, we had a, we had a project at the corner of TAPO and Alamo where? Oh, I know that one. Yeah. Some apartment complexes there where, you know, they're being built right now and a lot of people think they were too tall. Mm-Hmm. Two condensed, too close to the street. And as a matter of fact we denied the project as on the planning commission. Okay. The state, because of the state rules. Came back and said, if you don't approve this project, we are gonna take over your planning department and make decisions on all properties. Oh, wow. And so we had two or three sessions where the residents in the area came and said, we don't want this. We said to the developers, say, Hey, you know, let's continue this and maybe make some tweaks to the plans, to the ideas. And he said just go ahead and deny it. So he knew that the, the state would come in and say this, and so we had another meeting and we had to approve it. And so it kinda, kinda got strong arm then little bit. Wow. You're hanged up for it. See, that's, see I didn't know that. I've heard, I heard the, my parents don't live too far from there, which, that, that development doesn't bother me. But a lot of people have had, you know, they didn't like it. All the negative remarks about it, and I get it, but I didn't know, I'm pretty sure a lot of people don't know that full story where the state came in and said, no, if you don't do it. We'll over, if don't, we'll take everything over. Everything. Everything. Yeah. So, yeah. Okay. So the people in the planning commission, so anyone listening, watching if you know that development, the people in the planning commission, they denied it, correct? Yes. The state came in. It's the state that, that we were forced to, yeah, they were forced to. So yeah. Something else that I, that I saw just doing work in the new neighborhood over around the corner of Galena and Cochrane also. Some of those units are three-story and they do have kind of multi-use type of, type of feel to'em. Oh yeah. One of the residents, and this was pretty cool interaction. I'm wondering from you if the planning commission thinks these things out and even afterwards is able to hear from residents and what they think about the places that are built out and how they serve them. But one of the residents came out and when she was talking, she had moved here from la. Probably like a lot of folks had moved out of urban areas in the Covid times. She had moved out here, wasn't interested in having a big yard, which was kind of a staple to, you know, the, you know, seventies and eighties, I mean, huge yards. My parents, they had a huge yard but they come here from urban area, so they're not interested in caring for a huge yard. And she said, you know, when I lived out in la. I would never go out for a walk in the evening. And then she stopped herself and she said, actually, I would never go out for a walk. But here, I actually feel perfectly safe going out, not only in the day, but in the evening. I'll walk my dog, I'll enjoy my time. I'm close to Trader, Joe's, I'll walk there and just get my groceries even in the evening time. Is that something that you guys planned for and have you heard back from residents that you feel like mission accomplished? You know, that was prior, prior to being built, it was the farmer's building, right? Yeah. Mm-Hmm. And so it, it had a, I think it was a three or four story building then, and it was a office space and it sat empty for 10, 12 years plus. And so, you know, we, we already had the idea that there, you know, there's a three or four story building there. What can we use that property? What would be best use for that property to be? Best use for that property would be all retail of some kind. Well, at the time that the project came to us, all those areas across the street and adjacent were like half rented. Yeah. So to put more retail there just didn't, didn't make sense. The Sycamore Plaza. Correct. Yeah. And so. They came, they came before the planning commission with some ideas. They went to the city neighborhood councils. The neighborhood councils said, we did, this is what we like, we don't like. And so they made some adjustments, but at the same time, right on the Cochrane Street, there's retail, so that helps the retail business behind it is the, is the housing. Yeah. And like you said, there, somebody who's a developer is trying to get as many houses on the piece of property as possible, and that's why you go higher. But it wasn't, it's not higher than the farmer's building. Right? True. And then the building's right across, right, right on the street is, is what's called work-Live units. And there's about eight or 12 of those where the bottom floor is a, is a retail or an office. Mm-Hmm. And then you live above it. And so the concept would be like an insurance agent. Could have his office on the bottom floor and live above it. And so that's what's there now. And a couple of retails retail places adjacent to that. McDonald's. Okay. Yeah. Hey, I can speak to, there were glowing reviews and I, the house I walked through, it was nice. It was really nice. Yeah. And we made sure that there was a access in the, in the side on the, the West End side that you could walk through a fence or a gate over to trade. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. I've seen that. Definitely, I mean, it's good that they put something there. I, I did notice a lot of developers are, are building the building up. It makes sense. I I, there's a lot of people I talk to,'cause you know, we do home loans and we, we talk a lot of people trying to buy a house and it's people don't really care so much about yards anymore. I noticed that. And so a lot of houses, even in the Valencia area, San Clarita, they're building houses they're building up. And the other part too is two stories. Also now we have all those residents there. Mm-Hmm. Who are gonna be shopping across the street. Across the street. Yeah. Next door. So where before there was some, you know, less than opportunity if you were a business owner there, now all of a sudden you have more residents who can absolutely support, support those businesses. Yeah. I think that's because that place, yeah. You said like 10 plus years. That was empty. So that really impacted, there was, I don't know how thousand plus employees at that place that would shop.'cause I worked, I used to work at the Wells Fargo. As a bank teller way back at, right across the street. And it was always busy, you know, with employees from farmers. The other part too is there's three, three segments of of buildings, residential, commercial, and then there's retail. Mm-Hmm. So that commercial is of the three is the least, most vacancy. Yeah. So the hardest to fill. And so residential is pretty straightforward. Retail, eh, you know, that's, you know, I think we have quite a bit of retail, so that office space to, to try young and say, well, let's do 10 years of an empty office building, let's replace it with more office buildings. Yeah. Probably not a good idea. Yeah. Yeah. That's good. That's good. They, that they're part of the planning commission. Yeah. Good planning. Yeah. You know what, no, really?'cause it's, it's, I think. That's a big thing people are worried about in the community is like, what is the city gonna turn into? I've never really had that concern. Because growth is good. Growth is good. This is, we can't just be stagnant. It's, it's good that the city's growing. They're developing more than, in fact, those houses and that industrial development to, to help balance it out, to bring other businesses here. So it brings more opportunity and especially with, with those types of homes, if they're going to, if they're gonna be more like executive level type homes. So. If you're looking at, they're gonna be a million plus dollar homes, which, yes, that is a lot, but that's, those are the homes. Those are incomes are going up. And also with those businesses coming in, that's, you know, that's gonna be, that's gonna help, I guess the way the community grows, it's gonna grow in the direction that, I guess a lot of people have been, that have been here for a long time, is gonna go the direction that they probably prefer. So again, there's, there's some nicer homes in the very. West San Fernando, valley, bell, Canyon, Calabasas area. Absolutely. Yeah. So, you know, if I have a, if I own a business here in Simi Valley, do I wanna make that commute even, even though that's not very far. Yeah. What if I lived even closer? And that would be the, the homes that are coming up there. Mm-Hmm. Yeah. I appreciate that. Yeah. That's great. Yeah, I think you know, I, we asked you a lot of questions. Is there, is there anything that maybe we missed that, is there something that maybe people don't know about you, John, that. You wanna talk about? I know it was your store.'cause I didn't even know that. I mean, that's, that, that's great. But is there anything else that maybe we missed that, that you feel like other people should know about you? No, I, I, you know, I, I'm involved with the different organizations Yeah. Whether it's the Rotary Club, Simi Sunrise or Interfaith community. So just, you know, just get involved. Yeah. There's, there's lots of opportunities to serve. And pick, pick something that you like and, and help, help make our city better. So yes, you do that well, you do that very well and we, we definitely appreciate that. But I'm gonna reserve the right. Mm-Hmm. To have John back at a future time, if anything changes, anything new comes to mind. Yeah. That you have that might be coming up, that maybe you would come back and, and fill us in on. I, I'm honored to be the first one. I'll, I'll come back anytime. Appreciate you, John. Thank you so much. And yeah, thank you for everyone listening and watching. Please like, comment, subscribe, and check out. John. If you're in the community, check out John Tolson. If you're not part, if you own a business, you're not part of the Chamber of Commerce. Go be, become a member of the Chamber of Commerce and well worth it. Yeah. The Rotary and any organizations John's a part of, and you'll see why he was our first guest and very honored to have you. Thank you so much, John. Thank you John. Appreciate you. Alright. Thank you. Alright guys. See ya.