A lone business owner, Mr. Surfas was dwarfed by the giants on the other side. In the absence of Mayor Gary Silbiger, away on holiday, the Redevelopment Agency — without one teardrop of drama or hesitation — voted 4 to 0 to adopt a vague-sounding document known as a Resolution of Necessity. This is a mechanism, the next link in a takeover chain, that shortly will result in officially transferring four of Mr. Surfas’ properties — just east of Downtown — from his ownership to City Hall’s. A court ruling is expected by Nov. 1 to formally close out the anguishing transfer. Among numerous dimensions of this forced change of hands that infuriates Mr. Surfas is the fact that a precise use of the property never has been identified. Every man, woman and child in Culver City knows that City Hall has been talking about transforming the several blocks directly east of the Downtown Trader Joe’s store into a light rail station that may be built in a few years, in many years or never. No one south of heaven appears to know the correct answer. Mr. Surfas and his legal counsel have seemed to believe that was a valid ground, among others, on which to resist the city’s blandishments. Stiffening, City Hall was brooking no such talk. Last seen, Mr. Surfas was offered $4.89 million by City Hall for his complex of four properties at three National Boulevard addresses, 8824, 8825 and 8828, plus 8803 Washington Blvd. He said no to three separate offers, in March, May and July.
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For those in the audience who are keeping score, with the pending denouement of the Surfas case, properties of only two other desperate-to-hang-on owners in the area known as the Washington/National Triangle remain to be finalized. Everybody in town knows the final score. The only lingering doubt is how long the game will last in each case.
Story of an Underdog
The crisis of the city taking Mr. Surfas’ properties against his will is a sizzling political issue that is blighting the relationships between city halls and business owners in numerous American communities this summer. In a case late last month in Cincinnati, a court flipped the seizure procedure. It voted to preserve a cluster of private homes. But this kind of outcome is rare.
The Beginning of the End
Mr. Surfas opened his last-ditch appearance before the Redevelopment Agency with unvarnished, frills-free words. “I am here tonight to disagree with the taking of my property,” he said. “The difference between me and a lot of other people whose property you want to take is that I have a proven track record. I don’t talk a lot at Culver City meetings. I just do things. I buy things, and I make it happen. Look what I did on Site B. I had no subsidies, no owner participation agreement. If Surfas loses these properties, then Surfas loses the beauty pageant going on here. Look what I accomplished. In only 11 months I was able to build (a block of properties). For those of you who don’t know what real blight is, I took it on. Plus the popularity of Surfas’. We are not just a business. I am not just a landlord who is collecting rent. I am an entity here in Culver City. (Following an argument with Agency Chair Steve Rose over how much time he would be allotted — ultimately 8 minutes in two separate appearances, he said that) I don’t have the time to give you the different reasons you should vote against the (Resolution of Necessity). I’ll try to make it quick. There’s public interest, necessity, public good, property to be acquired (as) necessary for the project. The answer is, it cannot be answered. For 3 or 4 years, I have been hearing about what the city is going to do to (my) site. To this day, nobody can tell me anything but wonderful innuendoes about housing, mixed-use, transit-friendly. Well, what is it exactly? I have seen a few renderings. But today, after 3 years, you still don’t have a proved project to approve.” Mr. Surfas went on to say that he was “willing to work with the city so that taking is not necessary.” In Council Chambers, though, his ideas blew away like smoke from a nearly extinguished cigarette in a hurricane. “There is a problem and a solution with the taking of my property,” he said later, again to no avail.
No Time to Quit
After pledging never to surrender, Mr. Surfas kept his word. He explained that the four contiguous buildings of his business, along National and Washington, are an integral, coherent unit that must remain intact in order to survive. “Surfas’ is (in actuality) one big store that just happens to have a street running through it,” he said. “It was kind of like Abe Lincoln saying, ’A house divided against itself cannot stand alone.’ My store cannot stand without the 30,000 square feet that I own across (National Boulevard). It isn’t just a warehouse.” After ticking off about a dozen uses, Mr. Surfas said that “more importantly, it’s customer pick-up. Also, the staff on both sides of the street interchange with each other. They interchange with customers. Customers come to both sides. We are restocking our shelves by the hour, not by the week. We are not a big chain where we have a crew coming in the middle of the night.” Even, however, as Mr. Surfas was begging City Hall, the clock that counted — one hand said “Surfas,” one hand said “City Hall” — tolled midnight for the businessman.
COUNCIL NOTES — Tom Camarella, the chair of Fiesta La Ballona, which starts a one-week run one week from next Monday,and his wife, the entertainer Ronnie Jayne, form a cymbal-crashing team. For this year, they are combining their performance and organizational and personality talents to lead the Culver City Democratic Club through high-energy meetings, and, as the second half of summer beckons, they are temporarily transferring those skills to Fiesta La Ballona. Without setting back entertainment too many months, they rounded up group of Fiesta volunteers to sing to the Redevelopment Agency, and the television audience to remain Culver City that Fiesta time is hovering into view…Agency Chair Steve Rose, who loves to travel, is freshly returned from a shivering, bone-chilling 7-day cruise through Alaska, the largest state in the history of the world. The sail was mapped from Vancouver, B.C. to Seward, Alaska, with a number of stops. He adjusted to temperatures in the mid-50s. Mr. Rose’s one-word impression: “Large.” “We went through part of one national park, which is 18 1/2 million acres, which is bigger than the state of New Jersey,” he said. “Alaska is bigger than Texas, California and Montana combined. There are only 3 cities on the coast of Alaska you can drive to. Juneau, the state capital, you can only reach by airplane or boat. They told us of a town 30 miles away. It is 15 minutes by helicopter, but 8 or 9 hours by car.” Ice was ubiquitous. Mr. Rose and the ship’s traveling party spent two frigid hours one day hiking across a glacier. With most icicles having melted, Mr. Rose appeared to be thawed out by the start of last night’s meeting…
