Read here how the enemy talks among themselves when they believe we are unable to hear them prattling.
Density Hawks vs. Community Doves
[img]1862|right|John Walsh||no_popup[/img]The Hollywood Real Estate Mega-Speculators and their bought-and-paid-for local elected politicians openly concoct bald-faced lies for the general public to eat up, saying that the reason for subways and tall towers built next to their rail stops is to banish evil gridlock from Los Angeles.
Big RIC's (Real Estate Industrial Complex) motivation always is un-selfish, according to Big RIC itself.
Make an un-friendly visit to the density hawks' own website perch (cp-dr.com) where these odd birds feel free to tell it like it is when gabbing to one another. That is because they believe that nobody might be eavesdropping on Big RIC and friends communicating on the internet.
Consider carefully the website below. Draw the obvious conclusions: Don't the Mega-Speculators sound a whole lot different behind closed cyber-doors compared to the Real Estate Lobby's incessant mass media pronouncements. American Communists called this tactic the Party Line vs. the Mass Line.
The real purpose of building urban transit rail lines is to make a buck out of the cancerous spread of upscale population growth, which the Density Hawks delight in dubbing “Elegant Density.”
This scheme has nothing at all to do with getting people out of their cars to reduce freeway congestion. Such tacit internal admissions may be found all over the California Planning & Development Report website below.
Subways actually create congestion from the massive development they make possible through unrestrained Real Estate Speculation.
The massive W-Hotel, next to the Hollywood/Vine Redline subway station, incidentally, is a money-loser, so far. Only a fraction of its condos sold to the super-wealthy they were unsuccessfully aimed at. Empty condos are being rented out at a steep monthly loss.
Astounding, Isn’t It?
Since the Blue Line light rail to Long Beach opened in 1990, according to U.S. Census statistics released recently, auto traffic in L.A. County has proportionately increased not decreased.
That's despite $10 billion invested in the past 25 years on planning and construction of light and heavy rail, thanks to the three L.A. County sales tax measures passed by the confused voters.
The Red Line ridership forecast, found in the federal-state EIR/EIS, turned out to be a figment of MTA's imagination. The official forecast made to U.S. Dept. of Transportation in the 1980s was 300,000 weekday Red Line Subway boardings by the year 2000. The Red Line's actual subway ridership for 2012 was 160,000 weekday boardings. Pitiful.
The Bus Riders Union quietly has folded its tent, leaving only URLA (United Riders of Los Angeles) to continue this never-ending struggle against Transit Racism that has caused a million hours of MTA bus service to be.cancelled over the past six years.
There is an additional is $1 billion (and counting) in deferred MTA rail maintenance out there that ultimately must be dealt with.
When? How about after the first big rail accident? There also is $300 million in deferred bus maintenance over our rail-building at-all-costs ahead. (Google the L.A. Times for confirming documents.)
There is no place now to examine these critical issues since the MTA Inspector General position remains unfilled by the MTA Board – amazingly enough since 2007.
What Construction?
Big Rail is supposed to fire up skyscraper construction at the stations. Certainly not at the Hollywood/Western Station where the real estate development situation is so down and out that a station-attached second-hand clothing store recently went out of business for lack of customers.
All the while, Hyper-Hollywood Get-Rich- Quick Guys in very expensive suits continue indulging in highly profitable, strictly-speculative Real Estate transactions that primarily involve gaining entitlements (city approvals) to erect skyscrapers (to be erected, perhaps, in the dim uncertain future) near these same rail stations or somewhere else in the general vicinity.
The Columbia Square (historic CBS building on Sunset Boulevard) just changed speculator hands for $60 million a couple of months ago. The project planning stage has stretched out for more than 15 years with nothing to show for the effort except a passel of dabbling speculators who became rich along the way.
The brand new two 30-story towers promised as replacement currently remain trapped on the artists' rendering sketch-pads. Just like the never-built Millennium Project Towers a couple Hollywood blocks away.
Meanwhile the abandoned rat-infested CBS Building still sits there, allowed to deteriorate under the noses of all Hollywood. (Those are four-legged Hollywood rats being referred to here, not the two-legged rat variety.)
Remember, investing in real-time real estate construction and high-rise office-building operations by shelling out your own corporate financial assets is highly risky business. It must be avoided at all costs if a beginner speculator seeks to become fabulously wealthy very, very fast.
Shrewd speculators get super-rich in a hurry. They invest other people's money, which gets acquired in far-off places like Shanghai or Dubai. They pocket a healthy cut off the top of that huge overseas investment bankroll that invariably arrives from somewhere distant from Hollywood!
That is the cardinal rule of mega-investment. It must never be broken if these gold-plated Hollywood-targeting middlemen want to become financially super-successful while investing here in Tinseltown.
Never forget what happened to the Downtown Real Estate Giant, McGuire-Thomas, when they started using their own money in their own deals: They promptly went bankrupt.
This is also what the Community Redevelopment Agency, as handmaiden to the local Hollywood Lords of Mega-Real Estate Speculation, was all about!
The Community Redevelopment Agency always was there in an emergency to subsidize or bail out Mega-Speculator/Developers who got in a jam.
CRA exists no more, having disappeared into thin air, thanks to Gov. Brown.
Read below what this booster website (cd-dr.com) says about their old friend the Community Redevelopment Agency?
Eric Garcetti's Moment
By William Fulton
From 22 May, 5:50a.m.
We all woke up this morning to the news that Eric Garcetti – longtime City Council President, Councilmember from Hollywood, and son of former L.A. District Attorney Gil Garcetti – will almost certainly be the next mayor of Los Angeles. What does this mean for planning and development in L.A.?
Far more than his opponent Wendy Greuel, Garcetti has been a high-profile political figure on planning generally and smart growth and infill in particular. At the same time, however, his reputation around town has always been that he’s not as much of a policy heavyweight as Greuel. Of course, he’s got to compete with the legacy of Antonio Villaraigosa – the politician who can legitimately go down in history as the guy who changed L.A. from a car town to a transit town and set the table for “elegant density.”
So what does the guy do?
Garcetti always has been an eloquent and forceful advocate for a truly urban Los Angeles. While it’s made him the darling of the planners, it hasn’t always gone down well with his constituents, which has caused him to straddle the issue on occasion.
Witness his approach to the controversial, 55-story Millenium Towers project in Hollywood. On the one hand, Garcetti has held out Hollywood as the “template” for the new Los Angeles. On the other, after he finished first in the primary, he came out against the Millenium project.
The practical reality is that as mayor he’ll have to straddle more than ever. That’s what big-city politicians have to do.
But Garcetti’s got a great opportunity here to push L.A. in the right direction. He’s a charismatic young politician who talks about this issue in a winning way – maybe the first truly urban mayor the city has had. He’s not saddled with the baggage of controversy that always followed Villaraigosa around and, thanks to Measure R, he doesn’t have to fight the battle to actually build the transit. Villaraigosa already won that battle for him.
What Garcetti has to do is seize the moment. The city is changing. The transit is getting built. A lot of people already have bought into the idea of “elegant density.” Even as he straddles, Garcetti can bring his constituents along by pushing the idea that new development in L.A. must revolve around the rail transit stations – responding to emerging market demand, improving those neighborhoods, and protecting existing single-family neighborhoods all at the same time.
Eric, it’s your moment. Jump on the train. Get moving this morning.
Mr. Walsh may be contacted at hollywooddems@gmail.com
