Third in a series
Re “Why Parcel B Still Lives in the Clouds”
Vice Mayor Andy Weissman was reviewing reasons that long-stalled Parcel B, the unmined property Downtown between the Culver Hotel and Trader Joe’s, patiently or otherwise waits to be developed.
“When the Redevelopment Agency went away 3½ years ago, the Successor Agency had to get state approval to implement the agreement” for converting the land into a showcase mixed-use project.
He did not have to dig far into an intricate recollection before it was obvious why that plump property has sat virtually untouched, like a bride scorned just before she enters the church.
Once Gov. Brown nullified the state’s 350 Redevelopment Agencies, bureaucratic chaos was in the ascendancy.
“There was a time,” Mr. Weissman said, “when there was the expectation that the state was going to come in and tell all Redevelopment Agencies that any property that agencies owned must be put on the market and sold to the highest bidder without regard for any consideration except zoning.
“We had to go through the process of establishing the legal basis for us to be able to go ahead and sell the property to the developer, Combined Development.”
Mr. Weissman said that after permission – no easy accomplishment – was obtained from the state Dept. of Finance “as part of the 2,000-page Long Range Asset Management Plan, the next battle was over the city-owned parking structures.
“There also was talk the structures had to be put on the market and sold,” said the vice mayor. “A parking entitlement went with the Parcel B property that involved the Ince Parking Structure. If we lost the Ince Parking Structure, we could not build out Parcel B without the parking and entitlement in place.”:
In conclusion, Mr. Weissman said that “all of that combined has resulted in a nearly four-year delay.”
(To be continued)
