Another sweetheart deal for pals of pols, another public subsidy, another lawsuit…
It’s an axiom of journalism that man bites dog is news because it’s out of the ordinary while dog bites man is not because it happens all the time. That’s what makes it so hard to make news out of City Hall’s sweetheart deals for insiders — they happen every day.
Still, Howard Fine and Daniel Miller in the L.A. Business Journal found a way to tell the dog-bites-man story of a CRA subsidized development in a poor part of town on the site of a former Goodyear Tire factory by showing how it “has become a classic example of how
difficult it can be to redevelop in South L.A.“
Efforts to put a shopping center on the property have languished for 18 years and there’s still a few rounds to go as site’s tenacious owner Stanley Kramer tries to fend off the CRA’s eminent domain proceedings.
The CRA has promised a $14 million public subsidy to a non-profit called Concerned Citizens of South Central Los Angeles which played a key role in helping Jan Perry to get elected to the City Council and naturally she wants her friends to succeed in life so Kramer is being pushed out of the way.
Kramer, who owns scrap metal recycling businesses, has his own non-subsidized plan for a shopping center at the site at Slauson and Central avenues along with his receycling facility. He’s spent millions fighting against the confiscation of his property and the turning it over to other private interests. The case has caught the eye of groups fighting against eminent domain abuses but Kramer is running out of options.
Battle lines are drawn over NBC-Universal’a $800 million expansion plan
The
for NBC studios which would move from Burbank and create 1.5 million square feet of new
commercial, office and residential space on Lankershim Boulevard, adding at least 14,000 car trips per day to the already
clogged southeast
The Daily News’ Connie Llanos reported on the release Monday of a
County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky flatly says the project is just too big and needs to be scaled back while City Councilman Tom LaBonge sounds like he’s flatly opposed but in fact has left himself wiggle room, saying: “It’s a dream to think that you can fit so much onto one little
banana-sized lot.”
The city will do anything to be able to boast it’s actually home to NBC-Universal — or any other major corporation for that matter — and drools at the tax revenue the project will generate so the only question would seem to be how much the project will be downsized and how much will be invested in freeway and street improvements.
And that will depend on how well organized the community is.
Come on Rocky, call off the dogs and listen to the community’s voices
Operating under the auspices of City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo’s office, 
the Dispute Resolution Program has done its best to make a bad situation worse by siding with Home Depot and making a mockery of mediation efforts.
The point person is mediator Barbara Goldfarb whose lack of communication is matched only by her insensitivity. She set up the meeting last night to set up a meeting on the Jewish High Holidays to figure out how to run roughshod over well-organized community opposition.
No Home Depot protesters outnumbered the hand-picked participants in the meeting and made it clear that they’re not going to be ignored no matter how hard the city tries.
Here’s some of the voices the city doesn’t want involved in the process thanks to Fox Channel 11 which covered the event:
Ron, You are absolutely correct. The media should do a better job of reporting how LA taxpayers are being fleeced. The city awards a politically connected non-profit land seized by eminent domain and a multi-million public subsidy. The catch is that the rightful property owners were going to build the same type of retail center with NO public assistance! Ironically, the city’s planning department approved the retail plan submitted by the rightful owners only for another public agency, the redevelopment agency, to recommend that it be seized by eminent domain. Having observed the city council vote on this matter, I found it amusing that on the very day council members complained that there were not sufficient funds for homeless programs and gang prevention programs, they awarded this property and its lucrative financing package to a non-profit that tried to swindle taxpayers of millions of dollars for a soccer field never built. Actions like this should discourage any builder from investing in parts of LA that are in greatest need of new jobs. Where is the outrage?
To learn more, visit http://www.calpropertyrights.com.
Ron -
Obviously issues of traffic, etc. as well as the concerns of the community should be taken into consideration on the NBC/Universal project.
However given how much business LA has lost to cities like Burbank our local economy could use a major employer like this. It’s ridiculous for LeBong and Zev to play politics rather than finding a win-win solution for the community/city as a whole.
Universal wants to do things like have housing for their employees on site, etc. which will make a huge impact on traffic.
I think that bringing more JOBS to where the housing is and vice versa will do a lot more for traffic than spending billions on more trains that will never, ever be able to move enough people to put a dent in traffic.
Regarding the Universal City expansion – these comments are not intended to condemn or support the Universal project. Rather, they are to shed light on a process which has good intentions, but seems to fail for reasons which have nothing to do with protecting an environment (and not just the air and land, but an impacted community). That’s been my experience with EIRS, which average about 500 pages.
EIRs are created with the objective to address and mitigate all of the environmental impacts large scale projects create. (There is a smaller version used for other projects – a Mitigated Negative Declaration. Don’t you just love that title?). Further, EIRs provide mitigation methods to deal with everything from traffic, noise, construction impacts, to general environmental concerns and more. (Yes, that means most traffic in our city generated by large developments has been approved because it has been “mitigated” through methods approved by the city that are addressed in the respective EIRS).
Regrettably, the problem with EIRS that they are worked out by the city with the developer before it is released the public. Because they are paid for by the developers, written by the developer’s consultants, attorneys, and other experts, while being reviewed by the various city departments, the cards are stacked against a community well before the report is issued. Once a report is issued, it is a catch-up game for the community with a clock quickly ticking away.
However, without EIRs an impacted community would really suffer. That’s how a community ends up learning the true impacts of a project and then must apply its political muscle on its council members with the hope, he/she will require more from a developer.
EIRs can be challenged also, at court. Filing appeals with the city is a waste of time (but required) because the city rarely rules against itself. The “system” at City Hall is favored to benefit the developer. As I mentioned before, as far as the city is concerned, an EIR gives the developer sufficient tools to mitigate the project’s impacts. Much to many an impacted community’s outrage and frustration upon learning that their concerns aren’t satisfactorily addressed.
The EIR process should be changed – reports should be completed by independent experts, paid by developers, thus reducing the potential for problems in the years to come.
No Home Depot in Sunland-Tujunga! The DRP is a giant D-R-I-P. Since when it is appropriate to exclude a community from land use meetings held in a publicly owned facility (within the same community)? That is exactly what DRP did on Aug 25. I do not blame the volunteer Barbara Goldfarb; I place the entire mess at the feet of Avis Ridley-Thomas, who runs the department. Goldfarb is just following R-T’s instructions. Home Depot was permitted to attend the “confidential” meeting but since the majority of the community is opposed to the underhandedness and misrepresentations of Home Depot and their treatment of the community — and HD’s expectations (and possible awards) of political favors — while community members were locked out and LAPD was called to “control and protect” those invited attendees. I did not notice that any of us from the community, and opposed to HD’s tactics, threaten the attendees. Did DRP purposefully hold the meeting in our North Valley City Hall to rub it into our faces? We have been expressing our concerns for nearly 4 years. If DRiP is holding out for a 50/50 split in community opinion, they can hold their collective breath. Home Depot does not comply with our specific plan, has fought an EIR and complete traffic study, and continues to prevaricate hoping to bore the City into submission. No Home Depot in Sunland-Tujunga!
The stipulation order between the City of Los Angeles and the Home Depot Corporation calls for mediation between community ‘leaders’ and the giant home improvement company. How can a Dispute Resolution mediator be allowed to rig a closed door meeting, stacking the pro-Home Depot component while locking out community leaders that happen to be against the proposed project?
In Goldfarb’s pursuit to find someone to represent a pro-HD position, she ignored the vast majority of Sunland-Tujunga’s community leaders because they happen to know what their community stands to lose if a hardware warehouse operation were to open on the old KMart site. Even local organizations that support the idea of Home Depot want to see an Environmental Impact Report first. For some clarification on the environmental concerns check out the community’s response to Home Depot’s ‘environmental study’. http://www.no2homedepot.com/files/STAAnalysisHDEnvAug08.pdf
The Dispute Resolution mediator assigned to this case does a disservice to the program. If other mediations/facilitations are conducted in this manner, they ought to scrape the program.
And people wonder why citizens of Sunland-Tujunga have become cynical. Some call us rabble rousers. If we do not call attention to this charade, who will? If the Dispute Resolution Program can shut our community leaders out of the process what makes other communities think the city will treat them any differently?
I agree, Ellen, EIRs should be the lynchpin protecting communities from run away development, as well as poorly conceived mega-projects. We know that developers, such as Home Depot, fight to avoid them at any cost, as evidenced in one of today’s other Naked City reports. Even when an EIR is required because the negative environmental impacts cannot be swept under the rug, draft EIRs too often are watered down versions of what they should be. Independent experts, paid by the developers, is needed. So how do we get the resusitation of the EIR process jumpstarted in Los Angeles?
The Preparation of an EIR Does Not Guarantee the Protection of Most Environmental Concerns
Given that a decision-maker can determine that there are Overriding Considerations to ignore the significant impacts of a project identified by an EIR, the entire EIR process has become a farce. It is a red hearing to make the public feel that their concerns are being heard. Their concerns may be cited in the EIR, however, decision makers are statutorily given the right to ignore them by stating that there is a reason that the project should go forward, despite its impacts on the environment.
By the way, many local jurisdictions require that an independent consultant, contracted to the jurisdiction and not the developer, prepare the EIR for a project. This arrangement may assure the independence of some aspects of an EIR; however, their working on a project looses its independence when the lead agency (the jurisdiction) and the reviewing agencies review and comment, and cause changes to the EIR.
Even when an EIR is prepared by the developers’ consultant, the lead agency takes on the responsibility as to the accuracy of the document as well as its compliance with CEQA. Again, we have a red hearing, wherein the public believes that independent preparation of the EIR will assure its accuracy. The lead agency and reviewing agencies have the same responsibility to review, comment, and change the EIR, regardless of the entity that let the EIR contract.
Regardless of who prepares the EIR, the applicant pays for its preparation. They also pay fees to the lead agency and often to the reviewing agencies to review, comment, etc., the document.
If you really want to give the EIR process teeth, then fix the weak link in the process. That is, as long as a project can be approved, regardless of its significant impact on the environment, because a decision maker states that it will somehow help its setting or population, etc., the EIR process is useless. Rather than courts just judging the EIR on whether or not it is accurate, complete, compliant, etc., they also should focus on demanding real documentation that the project has overriding considerations for its approval. For instance, saying that the Universal Project or the Westfield expansion at Fashion Square Sherman Oaks will bring jobs, improve area circulation, increase property values, bring tax dollars, etc., needs to be finely documented and reviewed (including by the public). So much more needs to be done to truly fix the EIR process and CEQA.
Of course, what a great site and informative posts, I will bookmark this site? Regards, Reader.
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