Re “Mayor Works on Puzzling Out Redevelopment Riddle”
“We are taking action to save as many of our redevelopment projects as we can,” said Mayor Mehaul O’Leary, “so that state can’t Parcel B, for example, into a Wal-Mart or a strip mall.”
The City Council has until two weeks from today to scramble furiously and close deals with two sets of developers for two publicly announced properties, the long vacant northeast corner of Washington Boulevard and Centinela, and Parcel B, in front of The Culver Hotel.
At a special meeting on Monday, Jan. 30, City Manager John Nachbar hopes to declare those projects beyond the state’s reach.
“If the state owned it — because they have ignored all the transfers (of Redevelopment Agency assets to the city) we have done, then they would sell it to whomever,” Mayor O’Leary said. “When the highest bidder finds out, ‘oh, it is encumbered or it has obligations to the area around it, such as extra parking required by the city,’ he won’t be able to build diddly.
“We now have to make sure in the coming days that we can move along these projects a little farther, just a little farther, with the advice of our Redevelopment counsel, Murray Kane.
“If we don’t move them forward, we believe we could be in jeopardy. Everything could be wiped out.”
