First in a series
Re “Dead. That Is What Redevelopment Agencies Seem to Be.”
[img]1305|left|Andy Weissman||no_popup[/img]The apparent almost-instant mercy killing yesterday of California’s 400 Redevelopment Agencies by the State Supreme Court smelled no less acrid this morning when Culver City officials awakened.
The air space over City Hall was clotted with raging uncertainties and roaming speculations.
The state of Parcel B — which used to be described in the old days, before Thursday — as the budding jewel of Downtown now may be no more than a plot of land that somebody else (the state) owns and largely controls.
To community leaders, that is a sickening thought.
City Councilman Andy Weissman’s law office is in the bosom of Downtown, where the heartbeat of the four-decade-old Redevelopment Agency has performed major surgery in recent years.
Question: A day later, is the outlook any different than it was immediately after the ruling?
“Yes. As I look over the landscape of Downtown, all I see is state-owned property,” Mr. Weissman said tartly.
“The panorama of forfeited properties is stunning.
“I am not a hundred percent sure of this, but assuming that all of the Redevelopment Agency assets — the (upheld) legislation contains a provision that invalidates cooperation agreements. Assuming that survives whatever legal challenges may ensue, and assuming that there isn’t any revival of legislation that comes about quickly, all of that assets the Agency owns get forfeited to the state.
“So the Kirk Douglas Theatre now belongs to the state. Town Plaza, I believe, belongs to the state. Parcel B belongs to the state.”
Precisely, what does that mean?
“It means the state becomes the seller, or the ultimate disposition authority, with respect to all of those parcels of property. They can sell them to whomever they want for whatever they want, with little to no input on our part with regard to the nature of any of the projects.”
Would the state be obligated in any manner to consult you?
“I don’t know what the implementation would be. My scant recollection is that the language AB 26 (the key part of the lawsuit by the state redevelopment association that was validated by the court) provides for the winding down and dissolution of agencies. But I don’t know what it says of our role in the wining down. I also don’t know what happens after everything is wound down.
“Worst case scenario: We have no effect, no ability to influence. We just wait to see whom the state sells the property to. We just have to deal with it.
“If they decide not to sell Parcel B and decide to build a new prison on Parcel B, we may not have much to say about it.
“If they take site on Washington/National and decide that would be a perfect place for a CalTrans maintenance yard, we may not have anything to say about that.
“If they decide a dollar a year for 50 years from the Center Theatre Group no longer makes sense and they can get out of the lease for the Kirk Douglas, and they want to turn it into whatever, there may not be anything we can d about it.
“There is a whole lot of uncertainty. But it doesn’t sound, from this elected official’s perspective, tat there is any upside to the decision by the Supreme Court.”
(To be continued)
