City Hall’s Blueprint
For some months, the city has been buying up close to a dozen largely small-business properties along Exposition Boulevard, near Venice Boulevard. They are clearing space for what is intended to be Culver City’s transportation showcase, an elevated light rail station. Following an agenda firmly — but controversially — prescribed by law, City Hall has taken the several steps to obtaining privately held properties for what is called the greater good, the wider good vs. the narrower individual interest. Once a finding of blight is established, the city may negotiate with the property owner. Declarations of blight often are disputed by the private parties.
City Hall Version of Best Buy
Todd Tipton, the city’s Redevelopment Administrator, said that in spite of hefty protests that some landowners have made in Council Chambers the last several years, acquisition plans are proceeding apace. But the process struck a huge bump on Monday night. Aside from the takeover itself, what has made the city’s action a bitter experience for the latest landowners to be affected, say Marc Chiat and Patrick Vorgeack, is the lack of coherent, tangible evidence of the city’s plan. Physically, light rail is still a mystical concept tucked seductively behind a veiled curtain. Although detailed planning has been discussed for years, the entire 9-mile project, from downtown Los Angeles to Culver City, remains far more cerebral than physical. Further, there is an amount of confusion as to whether Culver City will be served by a temporary station in the Westly Street area — strongly opposed by its Eastside neighbors — or by a permanent station in what is called the Washington/National/Exposition triangle.
Nobody Moved
As Mr. Chiat, the owner of 8843 Exposition, and Mr. Vorgeack, of 8829 Exposition, emotionally related their histories at those addresses, the members of the Redevelopment Agency appeared unmoved. This suspicion was born out by 5 to 0 votes in each instance to approve the city’s acquisition of the plots of land. In almost any other setting, the impassioned resistance of Mr. Chiat and Mr. Vorgeack likely would have prompted waves of chatter and heroic pledges of sympathy. Mayor Gary Silbiger, probably the leading civil libertarian in the group, asked one unobtrusive question. Otherwise, a wall of impenetrable stoicism divided the elected officials from the landowners. Agency member Carol Gross told thefrontpageonline.com on Wednesday that the panel’s uniform silence “pleased me and, maybe, surprised me a little.” She declined to elaborate “for the same reasons I did not say anything Monday night.”
