Council Chambers Wrong Address?
Hoping for a New Year’s Day reprieve — preferably months’ worth — the brothers went before the City Council on Monday night. They were not quite patted on the head and sent on their way. The Council, seemingly attempting to play the role of disinterested neutral observer, never even opened the door to publicly examine the extreme squeeze the brothers are in. The Council’s succinct message, as articulated by Councilperson Carol Gross, sounded frosty to the brothers: Your hometown is the wrong place to seek relief. We can do nothing for you. Talk to the MTA. Goodbye.
Time Is Shrinking
A week and a half before Christmas, two and a half weeks before New Year’s, the midnight hour is clanging deafeningly in the ears of the brothers. For the first time in their colorful lives, they are feeling like orphans. The saga of the Saez family — from a farming community in Argentina —may be worthy of documentary attention. The four Saez brothers, Gerard, Carlos, Jorge and Julio, and their sister, Laura, were born in one of Argentina’s beautifully bucolic neighborhoods. Their grandparents had migrated from their native Spain to the Argentine where both Julio and Laura, the parents of the five children, were born. In the early 1970s, with their children growing, Julio Saez the elder, who supported his family in the diamond business, decided the time had come to relocate in America. With some families, the concept of “family business” may mean growing bananas or building houses or operating a chain of hardware stores. One of those. For Mr. Saez and his four sons, over the years the “family business” has shifted a time or two. For awhile, they were in diamonds. Landscaping became an interest, and since the late 1990s, the brothers have funded, organized, developed and built, from the ground, a thriving nursery, The Jungle. They inspired hundreds of Culver City residents to swear by their business, and to say so publicly. Restaurants may engender emotional expressions of loyalty. But this kind of four-square fealty is not what nurseries are known for.
Knock, Knock, Who’s There?
Last June, says Carlos Saez, the MTA notified the brothers that even though they have a 13-year lease, the transit agency was reclaiming its property as of Sept. 1. The brothers, apparently through the efforts of Rick Thorpe, head of construction for the light rail project, won a 120-day stay of execution. Separate and conflicting stories are being told, by the brothers and by City Hall, regarding the city’s obligatory attempts to find a new site for the nursery inside the borders of Culver City. The brothers are baffled by the mixed public signals from City Hall contrasted, they say, with inaction in private. They are offended and disappointed that City Hall has never had one conversation with them about the light rail project that elected officials say is wowing all 40,000 residents of this community.
No Voices To Be Heard
Says Gerard Saez: “Nobody has come from any agency in Culver City and told us they are part of building a train or working with the MTA. I find that odd. Maybe the city thinks it is not their responsibility since we are a tenant of MTA. But we are part of this community. We are very active in this community,” as a throng of customers and fans testified on Monday night in Council Chambers. “If you look at our record,” Carlos Saez says, “we have never had a complaint against our business for doing anything that was wrong. We only have had praise from this city and from other cities. That is important in a community.” Gerard said that only from “reading the newspapers” did the family know about the light rail plans for Culver City. He repeated that this is a strange way to treat a hometown business supposedly in the path of the project. Regardless of who owns the land beneath them, Gerard said, why has no one from the city ever attempted to acquaint them with onrushing facts that may smash their business in the mouth in 18 days?
Next: Gerard and Carlos Saez raise the window shades on their feelings about Culver City.
