In one of the bitterest homeowner showdowns at City Hall in recent years, neighborhood gas station owner Jin Kwak overcame small but mighty residential opposition early this morning to handily win City Council approval to renovate and expand his business at the corner of Culver Boulevard and Motor Avenue.
This caps a fragile but sophisticated vision Mr. Kwak has nursed for the last five years for his family-run business.
Only the predictable populist Gary Silbiger dissented when the Council finally voted 4 to 1 at 45 minutes after midnight to green-light Mr. Kwak.
For the second time in the last few weeks, the Council overturned an earlier unanimous rejection by the Planning Commission of a redevelopment project.
Sleepy-eyed Council members mechanically persisted for another half-hour before surrendering to fatigue at 1:20 a.m. One casualty of the shortened evening was a likely volatile discussion of rules enforcement against safety-flaunting skaters at the new Skateboard Park. It was postponed.
Million-Dollar Plan
Construction of an automated car wash in the rear and a convenience store in the front of the gas station is expected to take four months, once the process is certified. So far, the cost is pegged at $1 million.
A bundle of details remains to be addressed before Mr. Kwak can reconfigure his 19,000-square foot property where historians say a gas station has stood for about 75 years.
Numerous restrictions and requirements, authored mainly by Councilman Scott Malsin, tentatively have been attached to the approval tag. Councilman Steve Rose strongly objected to a number of them. But he was mollified when Vice Mayor Carol Gross intervened and urged Mr. Malsin and Mr. Rose to postpone their disagreement until the City Hall staff formulates the proposals and brings back the list to the Council for approval in a few weeks.
Among the intended requirements:
A scheme by which Mr. Kwak would be forced to compensate an open-ended number of neighbors who would complain that noise from the reconfigured gas station had invaded their property and private lives.
A directive compelling Mr. Kwak to hire a kind of traffic-cop. He would be posted near the drive-through car wash. In deference to neighbors, he would tell each automated customer to turn down his radio (even though the windows presumably would be rolled up) .If a queue were forming, the traffic cop would instruct drivers to kill their engines so as not to pollute the air.
Signage explaining the car wash system would be mandatory.
Mr. Kwak might be limited in the kind of car wash services he could offer.
Although Mayor Alan Corlin, normally a polished, imperturbable steward of Council activities, retained the reins of authority throughout the evening, he made notable departures from standard procedure.
In the past, he has routinely rejected pleas from Mr. Silbiger, the peoples’ favorite advocate, to give ordinary citizens a wider role in policymaking.
For no particularly evident reason, the mayor gave in to Mr. Silbiger last night when the Councilman insisted that protesting residents, especially their chief spokesman, be granted at least equal status and equal time with the appellant.
Changes in Procedure
Not only did Mr. Corlin broadly accede to Mr. Silbiger, he broke with tradition in other ways. The mayor allowed the residents’ spokesman to respond to the supposedly final assertions by Mr. Kwak’s side.
When Mr. Kwak’s lead attorney, Richard Hamlin, sought to have the last word before the Council, Mr. Corlin said no. Instead, he permitted the residents’ spokesman to be heard last.
An unusually large, and somewhat divided, audience clung to its seats in Council Chambers through a droning mélange of histrionics, embarrassing, obviously false claims, wild, arm-waving but unprovable claims and repetitive imputations of dense, arcane decibel data. One colorful resident who identified himself as a realtor, never stopped moving his arms, his feet or his mouth once he reached the speaker podium. Milking the moment for maximum drama, he claimed millions of dollars in lost property values would result from the gas station expansion. At that, one Council member rolled his eyes.
Another protestor, perhaps intending to be hyperbolic, questioned why Mr. Kwak would build a car wash when everyone knew Culver City had a car wash on every corner. Mr. Rose took her seriously. In fact, he told the crowd, there are three.
Endurance Test
With one member of the Council periodically nodding off as the calendar changed days, the merits and the alleged risks to residents of the gas station renovation were dramatically debated for a record 4 1/2 hours.
At length, neighbors — largely in the person of spokesman Mark Langston and his proxies — inveighed against a greatly feared increase in noise once an automated car wash and convenience store are constructed. He and others complained about a potential spike in street traffic and in pollution from cars patronizing the car wash and convenience store.
‘Data Should be Studied Further’
As Chambers were emptying out, neighborhood activist Rich Waters said he was not convinced the Kwak side had scored a deserved victory. He challenged reliability of the statistical claims and findings reported to the City Council by a high-powered team of noise/traffic/environmental specialists hired by Mr. Kwak.
“You have to take a closer look at the crazy numbers these people are floating around,” Mr. Waters said. “They really should be looked at again.
“Mr. Silbiger said it depends on when and where their findings were made. In court, you get testimony from the prosecution and from the defense. Sometimes they are diametrically opposed. Since that is what happened tonight, where does that leave the citizens of Culver City?”
Through his extensive but under-publicized community work, especially but not only with youth groups, Mr. Kwak, a 67-year-old Korean émigré who has owned the Valero station for 34 years, has accumulated an enormous reservoir of goodwill.
Decisive Factor
Loyalty appeared to be the touchstone to an outpouring of support for him at a crucial juncture in his evidently admirably lived life..
With a nudge from loyal friends inside the Sister City Committee, for example, 13 of the 23 residents who commented on the car wash project favored Mr. Kwak. Over the months, he has collected more than 4,000 petition signatures, a Culver City highwater mark for recent years.
One ironic development: According to two City Council members, one of the petition signers was Barbara Honig. She is the wife of Mr. Silbiger, who enjoyed quite an effective night even if he was on the losing side.
The Final Word
Kwak attorney Paul Jacobs, a Culver City pillar who reminded the audience he served 16 years in elected office, was glowing as he walked up a side aisle after the post-midnight verdict.
“ I am glad the Council applied the law and standards as they exist, and found the project in compliance,” he said.
Succinctly, Mr. Jacobs concluded that “the decision turned on fact and evidence rather than fear and apprehension (expressed by neighbors).”
