Complete Victory?
“I believe we can block the whole thing,” the attorney Robert P. Silverstein, a king among land-use legal specialists, told this newspaper.
Regardless of the time needed, he added, he has carved out the next 18 months to stage a campaign to derail City Hall.
Talk Toughens
“I am at their throat, and we are going forward,” Mr. Silverstein said.
“They will have no certainty about their project, I promise, until at least late next year.
“City Hall is going to have to tell their investors and their advisors they are not going to see an end or know the outcome until at least the end of ’08.”
Silverstein Parlay Plan
In horse-racing parlance, his no-nonsense strategy is a kind of Daily Double.
On the one hand Mr. Silverstein uses scorching, nearly unprecedented, language to characterize the attitude of most, but not all, redevelopment personalities at City Hall.
While the adversary is perceived to be reeling from those hot coals, he lands a whopper from the opposite direction.
All the Way
Unlike other attorneys, Mr. Silverstein is not seeking (only) monetary justice for his client.
He means for his client to remain in business where he is even though everyone else on the street has turned out his lights.
Not Dainty
Mr. Silverstein did not score a landmark redevelopment case victory over the city of Los Angeles last September — rescuing Bernard Luggage, near the intersection of Hollywood and Vine — by dealing in daintiness.
The artist/businessman Marc Chiat is Mr. Silverstein’s remaining Culver City client following an apparent denouement with Mr. Chiat’s neighbor, Patrick Vorceak.
Made for Each Other?
Stylistically, Mr. Chiat and Mr. Silverstein may have been a match made in anti-redevelopment heaven.
City Hall has been chasing Mr. Chiat across at least two continents, and his lawyer does not think he is close to being tackled.
The Chiat family divides its time between Southern California and Europe.
Anyone Seen Chiat?
It is not clear whether City Hall has known the artist’s whereabouts at any point since the family’s last departure.
The well from which these twin fountains of aggression, energy and determination spring for both men is the government’s right to declare a property blighted, assert the power of eminent domain, and seize a business owner’s property without his consent.
By this method, government routinely destroys people’s careers and well-being, Mr. Silverstein said.
Scheduled to go to trial with his Exposition Boulevard client against City Hall toward the end of summer, Mr. Silverstein said Culver City’s redevelopment leaders should get used to seeing him and hearing from him.
Not Going Anywhere
He plans to stay until he has obtained what he regards as justice for the Final Business Owner on Exposition Boulevard.
Justice, to the lawyer, means lights on, open for business, with Mr. Chiat’s Exposition Boulevard career ruffled but breathing confidently.
Exposition is middle-aisle crucial to Culver City’s grand redevelopment plans for the Washington-National-Exposition triangle.
What if?
Some nights Mr. Silverstein goes to sleep trying to imagine what the many tentacled Culver City light rail-plus project would look like with the centerpiece missing.
Next: Mr. Silverstein’s opinion of government workers and the agencies that employ them.
