Arcane and Forgotten Issues Both Fog up the City Council’s Non-Decision on 9900 Culver

Two sets of decision-makers who were not sitting on the dais were very clear about their convictions.

All five members of the Planning Commission previously had declared that, as presently drawn, the project is unacceptable.

On the Other Side

Wrong, said all members of Community Development Director Sol Blumenfeld’s staff. The project is appropriate. It should have been green-lighted straight-through. They strongly encouraged the City Council to bless the project.

Charged essentially with choosing one of two options — affirming the Planning Commission’s turndown or outrightly approving it with several accompanying tweaks — the City Council opted for choice No. 3: Punt.

Not This Time

By turn, overwhelmed, confused and offended by a choking abundance of supposedly tangled details they were unable to interpret or demystify, exasperated Council members ultimately skated away from a binding decision.

After batting a beach ball back and forth for four hours, the Council unanimously put off a final ruling until Monday, July 23.

Crucially, they ordered city staffers to produce the key documents that were executed at the time of last year’s sale of the property by the city to the private developers, known corporately as Uptown Lofts LLC.

Missing Element

Speaking in the midst of the folderol as a private member of the community, John Kuechle of the Planning Commission identified one problem.

He said the “difficulty” with the city staff’s recommendation for approval of 9900 Culver was that staffers never expressed those reasons to the Planning Commission before it voted in April.

That may — or may not — be because Mr. Blumenfeld, six weeks on the job, had not yet arrived in Culver City. In stentorian tones last night, he staked out the city staff’s approbation stance.

Leaving No Doubt

Even though Mr. Blumenfeld was by far the shortest-timer in the room, he spoke with unshaken firmness and comprehension of events that had occurred well ahead of his mid-spring appointment.

Later, in an apparent attempt to mollify one of the principals in 9900 Culver, he spent 13 minutes with her in the lobby of City Hall after the Council’s non-decision decision. Afterward, Mr. Blumenfeld hurried away, declining comment.

Surveying the Council

Here is where the members of the City Council stood before the mayor brought them around to his way:

Gary Silbiger, flatly against 9900 Culver, calling the five-story, ground-floor retail, 23-condo building outsized for the neighborhood.

Vice Mayor Carol Gross, unapologetically vouched for the project.

Steve Rose, unclear.

Scott Malsin, unclear.

Both acknowledged that they were stymied by opposing principles that left them conflicted.

Which Way?

Mayor Alan Corlin was the hero or the villain of the night, depending on one’s viewpoint. He claimed to have unmasked hidden treasure, the night’s core problem.

After the other four members of the Council had wrestled each other to a standoff over what they believed, Mr. Corlin fingered a heretofore Council-ignored trove of documents as the suspected culprit.

In the zagzigging debate that stretched like a used girdle from the 99-Cent Store over Council Chambers, Council members frequently wandered down arcane, even irrelevant alleys.

Mr. Silbiger engaged the knowledgeable traffic engineer Barry Kurtz for almost half an hour.

Feathery Impact

They — well, mainly Mr. Kurtz — talked about the vagaries of estimated traffic patterns that would be affected by the project. Leaning on dozens in one case and hundreds of national studies in another, Mr. Kurtz contended that traffic would be little affected by 9900 Culver.

Fearful neighbors, without data, vehemently disagreed.

Memories Lane

The documents Mr. Corlin kept returning to cover a transaction last year that was little noted at the time nor long remembered, especially by members of the City Council.

What is in the transaction papers?

Some members of the Council — Mr. Corlin did not appear to be among them — believe they hold the key to the showdown vote in two weeks.

The Redevelopment Agency sold what is known as 9900 Culver, the property across the street from City Hall that had been a parking lot for 60 years, to Uptown Lofts LLC for $2.5 million. The principals of the newly formed company are Judit Meda Fekete and Joseph Miller.

Which Is It?

In a few ways, city observers say, the property is neither fish nor fowl, and that was the flashpoint for last night’s increasingly bitter argument.

Among the several rudimentary and debatable points.

Is the southwest corner of Culver and Duquesne part of Downtown or residential?

Mr. Rose asked later, “Where does Downtown start and where does it end?”

Answers were all over the dais, none authoritative enough to persuade.

Populist Opinion

From a populist standpoint, the majority of residents probably would draw the line at City Hall. The “majority of residents,” however, are not rendering the eventual decision.

Depending on where, it is decided, Downtown ends, different codes and standards would apply.

The vaguest and most nagging question of all seems to be whether, at the time of last year’s sale, the city made legal — but now challenged — “promises” to Ms. Fekete and Mr. Miller to surmount the code blurriness.

Whether the city did or did not — and the point was practically billyclubbed into submission — the five persons who professed puzzlement last night approved the sale, in fact endorsing whatever agreements may have been embedded in the documents.

Trying Times

These Council members have been known for their strong, immovable opinions.

Not this time. They reacted during the evening as if they were watching a tennis match being played with two balls instead of one. When their heads stopped bobbing, they receipted for a headache instead of clarity.

The public was no help.

Community members who spoke out with passion failed to enlighten or to bolster the partisans on either side.

The “yeas” and “nays” were fairly even, and the messified broth was cluttered by a few neutrals.

Waiting and Waiting

The bizarre outcome left the principals, Ms. Fekete and Mr. Miller, hungrier than ever for a result.

Through the evening, he, in particular, eloquently, colorfully, defended the history, the facts, the vision and the aesthetics in 9900 Culver, evidently to scant advantage.

Their Reactions

Understandably, neither was happy, although Mr. Miller seemed more upbeat.

Ms. Fekete was annoyed that Mr. Kurtz’s traffic findings were so lightly dismissed.

Mr. Miller, who said his side has spent an additional $1 million on the project, remained confident of a positive result. “I know when the full Council sees the paper trail,” he said, “they will understand where we are coming from.”

What of ‘Promises?’

Turning to the crux of Mr. Corlin’s assertions, Mr. Miller said emphatically the Council will find “not that promises were made but that good-faith negotiations had taken place. We placed our faith in the city to do what they said they were going to do.”