When the Redevelopment Agency leans up from its death bed this evening at the City Council meeting and transfer – sells – a handful of properties to developers, the City Manager says it will be more than hollow symbolism.
After spending the past year seeking to build a firewall protecting it from outside (read: state) interference, John Nachbar said this afternoon there are two dominant reasons for the city to act as the Agency sun goes down:
• “Our primary motivation is to ensure that the projects we envision for each site occur. It does not mean we have permanent control. But we have a lot more influence over the way it is developed.
• “Secondarily, we gain monetarily as a result. Otherwise, these properties could be taken by the County or the state. Our thinking is the monies the developers will be paying for these properties will be going to the city, not the County or state.”
The underlying – but very public – purpose is that City Hall is covering itself for the time that begins Wednesday when the Redevelopment Agency will have been mandated out of business.
“We are trying to insure we control these projects going forward,” Mr. Nachbar said. “We are contractually obligating the city further with regard to projects” that were acquired and nurtured by the Redevelopment Agency. At midnight tomorrow, the Agency will be legally dissolved by the state Legislature.
“If we have them under contract, we are able to proceed with these developments as we had envisioned all along. It is reducing the risk that something vastly different will occur. There are provisions in the agreements that the developers will commit to what we have envisioned.”
