Splitting the Difference
Mr. Tipton’s latest antagonists are two property owners from Exposition Boulevard, Marc Chiat and Patrick Vorgeack. They are the last of a dozen entrepreneurs along a short stretch of Exposition Boulevard who are in the process of being ousted this year in anticipation of possibly building a light rail station at an unspecified date well into the future. Their stinging criticism of the Community Development Dept. and the members of the Redevelopment Agency board has been as colorful as Mr. Tipton usually is colorless.
Criticism of City Hall
The soon-to-be-gone owners said that City Hall was ruthless and generally unreasonable. Mr. Vorgeack, an immigrant, said if America can treat private citizens with such arrogance, he may as well “go live in Russia.”
Community Development personnel seemed to indicate at last week’s Redevelopment Agency meeting that the department was in the midst of relocating all of the businesses. “We have been very successful in relocating businesses and understanding the needs of business owners,” Susan Evans, Community Development Director, said at the meeting. In fact, Mr. Chiat and Mr. Vorgeack later told thefrontpageonline.com, that none of their neighbors have been relocated. Technically true, Mr. Tipton acknowledged. But one owner is presently in escrow and another is negotiating for a Culver City property. Otherwise, he added, “we have signed deals” with 9 of the 12 property owners, excluding Mr. Chiat, Mr. Vorgeack and Les Serfas. If relocation does not work out,he said, owners are entitled, by law, to financial compensation. “We have the responsibility to relocate all of them,” Mr. Tipton said. “By law. We would like to relocate them in Culver City, even near where they are now.” The Community Development official rated as good the chances that a new location will be found for everyone. “We will work with them,” Mr. Tipton said. “We don’t want to forcibly move anyone.”
The Final Days
Mr. Chiat and Mr. Vorgeack said everyone on Exposition Boulevard has been told to be out by January. After the current phase of the process is completed in November, Mr. Tipton said, demolition of the buildings could begin. He indicated this was unlikely, though he did not flatly say so. January is seven months away, he added, “and a lot can happen in that time.” With Mr. Chiat, his wife and two children scheduled to leave this week to live for a year in Italy, how does the Chiats’ departure affect Mr. Chiat’s status? “I imagine his legal representative will be here,” Mr. Tipton said. “If necessary, we could just move (his business and home belongings) to another storage facility.” He recalled Mr. Chiat’s searing words at last week’s meeting: “How can you sleep at night?” Mr. Tipton, in the Community Development Dept. for 15 years — he arrived straight out of graduate school — said that he knows he is doing his job, spearheading the redevelopment of Culver City, “for the benefit of the community. My staff and I are not villains,” he insisted. “It is hard on my staff when they are called names like that. Alicia Weintraub (of the Community Development staff) is one of the most caring people I ever have known.” Responding to the accusation that there was “too broad” of a variation in prices that City Hall offered to the property owners, Mr. Tipton said that “appraisals are based on different variables. It is in the process of discussing those variables that we come to a price. It is often said that we go in and offer the lowest price. But we want a quality project. The people we use are licensed to provide fair value prices.”
Postscript
Mr. Tipton is a 40-year-old native of Arizona. He discovered Culver City just out of high school when he came here for a family wedding.
