By the Time This Night Is Over , 3 to 2 May Look Good to Builders of 9900

After weeks of delays and furious downsizing by the developers of the original model in a spirit of compliance, 9900 will come before the City Council tonight for a final airing and vote. Barring a community outburst, the decision looks formful.

By the time this is over, 3 to 2 may look pretty good to Mr. Miller.

He and his partner, Judit Meda Fekete, have shrunk the mixed-use building, adjacent to the Downtown U.S. Post Office and bordering on a residential neighborhood, from 5 stories to 4, from more than 60 feet to 43 feet tall, and down to a relatively scant 18 condominiums.

Narrow Majority

These structural compromises are expected to satisfy what appears to be a firmly convicted Council majority — Vice Mayor Carol Gross, Scott Malsin, the master architect of the compromise solutions, and Steve Rose.

This would leave Mayor Alan Corlin and Gary Silbiger on the “No” side, where they have been all summer.

“I am still questioning the size of the project,” Mr. Corlin said this morning, even while digesting the downsizing that Ms. Meda Fekete and Mr. Miller have authorized.

Stating His Opposition

“They might be cutting everything down,” the mayor conceded, “and everything they are doing might be perfectly legal. But I still look askance at the project.”

Mr. Corlin also admitted that the bushel of apples that has fallen on the developers’ heads since the July 9 Council meeting — their first attempt to overturn last April’s rejection by the advisory Planning Commission — “is not all their fault.”

Nearly everyone concedes that point.

The Instigator

It was City Hall that created the issue last year by selling the 3 long-vacant parcels to Ms. Meda Fekete and Mr. Miller. The city’s motivation was that the Washington Boulevard developers would build exactly the kind of mixed-use project that the City Council has been haggling over for the past 2 months and 8 days.

“We sold them this piece of property,” Mr. Corlin said. “But we have to do what we think is right. I am most concerned about the way the building will affect Culver City for the next 75, 80 years.”