The Feature Event?
The main attraction for the Redevelopment Agency will be the selection of the 9-member Citizens Advisory Committee for the South Sepulveda Boulevard redevelopment.
Demolishing established property returns to the menu for the Redevelopment Agency after being pulled back without a meaningful explanation shortly before meeting-time two weeks ago.
City Manager Jerry Fulwood used the entirely unenlightening phrase technical reasons to explain why he ordered it yanked.
What Happened to Triangle?
On that same evening, demolition of the dozen or so buildings in the doomed Washington-Exposition-National boulevards triangle was coupled with tonights demolition project on the agenda.
Mysteriously, as far as the public is concerned, destruction of the triangle also was yanked.
No reason was given.
None of Publics Business?
It was killed without explanation, or, to say it differently, with Mr. Fulwoods never-mind style, saying, blandly, for technical reasons.
Todd Tipton, the Interim Community Development Dept. Director, employed almost identical language to describe why the triangle demolition plan has been delayed.
On the evening that it was pulled, he announced, generically, We have more work to do.
What Did City Manager Mean?
City Council members have said during the intervening period they have no idea what Mr. Fulwoods technical reasons means.
The Agency convenes at 7 this evening in Council Chambers at City Hall to ponder a 4-item agenda. The first 2 are so narrow they may only interest the families of the parties involved.
Meanwhile, the newest teardown candidate, known as the Pleasant View site, is a longtime group home at 11056 Washington Boulevard, just east of Sepulveda Boulevard, near the law offices of Mayor Gary Silbiger.
Mid-Town Location
Three properties comprise the three-quarters of an acre on the block City Hall has targeted. The south-side-of-the-street block is kitty-corner from Tellefsen Park.
So far, City Hall has acquired the largest chunk, the old group home, and hopes to complete transactions shortly for the other two.
One of the two remaining parcels is owned by an electrical contractor. He approached the city to make a deal.
3 Businesses Involved
In the third case, the city is negotiating with an attorney, it was learned, concerning the 3 businesses on the grounds a gun store, a hair salon and a technology business. Talks are expected to proceed smoothly and swiftly.
Nearly every redevelopment project City Hall has launched in recent years has contained a strong element of controversy.
Refreshingly, the Pleasant View case, which is just becoming public, does not appear to be disputatious.
No Shortage of Targets
In its never-ending search for prospective property to improve within the confines of Culver City, the Community Development Dept. is not even close to running out of candidates.
Unlike, say, the westerly intersection of Washington and Centinela, which has been hanging around in a state of indeterminate flux since the turn of the century and still is City Hall hopes to move fast on the Pleasant View site.
In the awkward, sometimes backward, sometimes flatly inaccurate language commonly favored by government agencies, here is the way City Hall characterized its vision for improving the Pleasant View property:
Lingering, Languishing Language
The Agency is seeking an experienced developer to construct and develop a high quality in-fill project.
In an effort to eliminate the blighting influence, the attendant attractive nuisance and security problems of the group home, staff feels that this site should be demolished immediately.
What City Hall was struggling to tell the community was that during a 3-week period in April, it intends to level the former group home property.
In the meantime, the city is shopping for a developer who will build, not an in-fill property, as it stated, but a fill-in property, in a fairly undefined, low profile area in the middle of a stretch of blue-collar properties.
A Favor for the City
Talk about getting rid of blight, City Councilperson Carol Gross said yesterday. This demolition will be doing a service to the community.
Ms. Gross said that after the city acquired the group home property last year, the proprietor placed the Culver City residents in other group homes that he owns.
