{"article":{"id":249627,"heading":"When  Goliath Wins: The Triumph of Redevelopment in Los Angeles","author":"Leslie Radford","created":"2011-11-15 04:48:06","modified":"2011-11-16 18:54:34","last_modified":"Thu, 17 Nov 2011 01:54:34","article":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><body><p align=\"left\"><em>Click here to send an email to Los Angeles City Councilmembers and a copy to the  South Central Farmers asking the council to vote against the sale of  the soccer field land. <\/em> <\/p>\r\n\r\n<table width=\"337\" border=\"0\" cellpadding=\"2\" cellspacing=\"0\">\r\n  \r\n  <tr>\r\n    <td width=\"333\" valign=\"top\"><p align=\"left\"><\/p><\/td>\r\n  <\/tr>\r\n  <tr>\r\n    <td width=\"333\" valign=\"top\"><p align=\"left\"><em>Jan  \t\t\tPerry (r) celebrates with football stadium developer Timothy  \t\t\tLeiweke (l) and the current mayor.<\/em><\/p><\/td>\r\n  <\/tr>\r\n<\/table>\r\n<p>LOS  ANGELES, November 13&mdash;On Tuesday at 8:00 a.m., the South Central  Farmers, their supporters, and the residents of the Central-Alameda  neighborhood will confront the Los Angeles City Council in its  chambers one more time to try to save the Farm and save the  neighborhood.<\/p>\r\n<p>In  the last chapter of a David and Goliath story that will likely end  with the victory of Goliath, on Tuesday, the Los Angeles City Council  will decide whether to sell two and a half acres planned for a  neighborhood soccer field to a local developer. It would be a small  matter if it wasn't a marker for the end of an era in Los Angeles.  When the city council sells the soccer field to Ralph Horowitz, it  green lights Horowitz's sale of fourteen undeveloped acres to a  manufacturing consortium. And with that gesture, the last significant  block of undeveloped land in Los Angeles, the legendary South Central  Farm, will be fed to L.A.'s voracious development monster. <\/p>\r\n<p>City  hall has rolled out the promise of &ldquo;development&rdquo; for a century to  annex and devour everything in all directions, from the fabled orange  groves on the west side to the jazz clubs of South Los Angeles. After  Tuesday's vote, that frontier will close and the remaining history of  Los Angeles will be one of redevelopment&mdash;tearing things down to  build new things&mdash;and selling off public land, undoubtedly public  parks and green spaces, to private interests or, more popularly for  now, the public-private partnerships that turn over public spaces to  private control with long-term leases. <\/p>\r\n<p>It's  not without significance that this bit of land is the last bit of the  South Central Farm, probably the nation's largest urban farm, sold  off to Horowitz by the city council in 2003. A Farm, especially one  that sprung up on an abandoned site without any bureaucratic impetus,  is anathema to the development behemoth. The South Central Farm was a  14-acre community-generated space to answer the community's need for  fresh food. The South Central Farmers who cleared and cultivated the  acreage bypassed city permissions and forced the city retroactively  to hand over the project to the nearby Food Bank's supervision. The  Farmers bypassed both the supermarket industry and the reluctance of  that industry to invest in the low-income neighborhood. They ignored  agribusiness's insistence that urban populations be forcefed a diet  of mass-produced, genetically modified foodstuffs. <\/p>\r\n<p>After  the Farm was handed over to the developer in a fire sale of public  property, Horowitz pledged to gift a small plot on one corner to the  neighborhood for a park. On Tuesday, Horowitz's sometime dinner  companion, Councilmember Jan Perry, will ask the council to give up  the the last piece of the Farm for $3.6M. The vote to support the  sale is likely to be unanimous, no matter what the public outcry. The  Center for Government Studies has revealed that 99.993% of L.A. City  Council votes are without even a single dissension because, the study  concludes, &ldquo;[C]ouncil members face retribution from fellow members  if they break ranks and vote against the majority. This unanimity  complicates assessments of the influence of campaign contributions.  Most council members receive contributions from the same sources, and  virtually all of them vote the same way&rdquo; (Ava Alexander, &ldquo;Money  and Power in the City of Los Angeles,&rdquo; 2010). <\/p>\r\n<p>When  they sold the Farm to Horowitz, the council pretended that the Farm  wasn't providing produce to 350 families and neighbors in the  low-income urban farm desert. The council turned a blind eye to the  demands of hundreds of occupiers, international support and  attention, and dozens of the rich, famous, and influential, to  appease a small-time developer. At the head of the city hall squad  then and now was the Farm district's own Councilmember, Jan Perry.  Two decades earlier, the city had purchased the land from Horowitz by  eminent domain for $4.7M. Area residents blocked a planned  incinerator project, and the city sold the land to the Harbor  Commission. Horowitz sued to get the land back. In a backroom,  off-the-record deal in 2003 approved by the City Council, the Harbor  handed the land back to him for just $5.3M, paid to the City.  Effectively, the city calculated a property appreciation rate of less  than one-half of one percent annually during the the biggest growth  in land prices in U.S. history. Horowitz turned around and put the  land on the market for nearly three times what he paid.<\/p>\r\n<p>Only  those who sat in that room somewhere in the bowels of city hall that  day know what happened, why a city treasure was fed to development.  Presumably, the city council and the Harbor Department had the option  to settle with Horowitz for the sale price but instead rushed to  ensure that the developer's bulldozers would destroy the upstart  Farm. How the city ended up with the payment for land owned by the  semi-autonomous Harbor Department remains a mystery. What's apparent  now is that the Los Angeles City Council is still at the mercy of the  forces that were at work then, and that they are closing ranks to  ensure that whatever happened doesn't impede Perry's mayoral  campaign.<\/p>\r\n<p>According  to the city charter, the Harbor Department has &ldquo;possession,  management and control of all property and rights of every kind  whatsoever&rdquo; over land it owns, except, apparently for the tract at  41st  and  Alameda. The  city had sold the land to the Harbor in 1994 for $13.3M. This past  August, in what points to unresolved issues around the title,  transfer, and sale, Perry asked the Harbor Department to weigh in on  accepting the cash payout instead of the land transfer. Perry  insisted on Harbor Department approval with the peculiar  stipulation that &ldquo;<em>The  Harbor Department has no interest in the pledged property.&rdquo;<\/em> Perry's  influence does not reach to the largely independent Harbor: Harbor  Commissioners refused to sign off on the sale in the face of public  outcry and hot-potatoed the issue back to city hall. Perry responded  with a city council motion that forces Harbor compliance. The motion  to convert the promised land gift to cash includes the following  instructions to the Harbor:<\/p>\r\n<ol start=\"2\">\r\n  <li>\r\n    <p>PRESENT  \tand ADOPT the accompanying ORDINANCE amending the previous Agreement  \tentered into by the Harbor Department and Libaw-Horowitz Investment  \tCompany concerning the Lancer Property (41st and Alameda) in Council  \tDistrict Nine to convert from land to cash and establishing the  \tLancer Site Recreational Improvements Trust Fund for the cash pledge  \tof $3,573,365 to be used for park purposes in Council District Nine.<\/p>\r\n  <\/li>\r\n  <li>\r\n    <p>APPROVE  \tthe Termination and Release of Pledge Agreement and Associated Cash  \tPledge of $3,573,365 between Libaw-Horowitz Investment Company and  \tthe Harbor Department (attached to the Harbor Commission report  \tdated August 4, 2011, in the Council File). <\/p>\r\n  <\/li>\r\n  <li>\r\n    <p>4.  \tAUTHORIZE and DIRECT the Executive Director of the Board of Harbor  \tCommissioners to execute, and the Board Secretary to attest, to: a.  \tTermination and Release of Pledge Agreement between Libaw-Horowitz  \tInvestment Co. and the Harbor Department. b. The associated Cash  \tPledge Agreement between Libaw-Horowitz Investment Company and the  \tHarbor Department. <\/p>\r\n  <\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n<p>The  City took the land from Libaw-Horowitz in 1986 for $4.7M, sold it to  the Harbor in 1993 for $13.3M, and apparently received payment for  the transfer from the Harbor to Horowitz in the amount of $5.3M. On  Tuesday, the council will discuss accepting an additional $3.6M for  the soccer field land. If the deal goes through, from all  appearances, the Harbor Department will have transferred $16.9M from  the sale of its assets to City coffers.<\/p>\r\n<p> <u>The  Lemming Factor<\/u><\/p>\r\n<p>In  2006, Perry led the city council in accepting Horowitz's pledge to  donate the soccer field land to the neighborhood, a small  compensation for the loss of a city treasure. This week, Perry will  ask the same city council, with many of the same faces, to reverse  themselves, because, Perry  told the L.A. Times in August, diesel fumes make the land  unsuitable for children. With Perry, eleven of fourteen  councilmembers, including Ed Reyes, Dennis Zine, Tom LaBonge, Tony  Cardenas, Bernard Parks, Herb Wesson, Bill Rosendahl, Greig Smith,  Eric Garcetti, and Jos&eacute; Huizar, will revisit and revote, in effect  deciding whether conditions have substantively changed since they  accepted the promised soccer field land.<\/p>\r\n<p>In  fact, nothing has changed, or at least nothing that the  councilmembers will say out loud. Ironically, Perry's claim of air  pollution comes from a 2008 Environmental Impact Report to develop a  similar project, a manufacturing and shipping facility for a garment  manufacturer. The South Central Farmers, displaced from the land but  still active in the community, demanded the EIR for that proposal.  The results of that study showed that the project would increase area  air and noise pollution to unacceptable levels. Waving that report,  Perry and the council presumably will deny the neighborhood their  soccer field to make room for a facility that will generate the  pollution that makes the soccer field untenable. No one has mentioned  that the sale will further depreciate a low-income neighborhood  that's already reeling.<\/p>\r\n<p>Perry  has also held out the L.A.-based manufacturing consortium's promise  of 600 permanent jobs. How many of these are transfers from existing  Los Angeles operations is unknown, but even if the promise is 600 new  jobs, the impact will be to reduce the city's unemployment rate by a  mere two-tenths of one percent, according to October figures from the CA  Employment Development Department. In spite of the pollution, the  property depreciation, and the infinitesimal effect on unemployment,  the people living in Central-Alameda are most likely to wake up on  Wednesday morning without their soccer fields.<\/p>\r\n<p>Apparently,  the councilmembers are no less beholden to developer Horowitz today  than they were a half-decade ago when they defied massive public  support for the Farm and practically gave the land to him. All that  has changed since the city accepted Horowitz's pledge to gift the  land is that Horowitz has finally found a buyer, and that buyer is  demanding that the package include the soccer field acreage. In  exchange, Horowitz has put $3.6M on the table to get out of his  agreement. Perry wants to put the money in trust to refurbish an area  housing development and two other parks in her district, effectively  flipping the money back to the developers, maybe to Horowitz himself.  Perry and the manufacturing consortium packed a Budget and Finance  Committee meeting last month with housing residents and a cohort of  employees in matching blue T-shirts, but their demands for desks and  chairs for the housing project were unable to drown out the voices of  neighbors and farmers who presented hours of testimony recognizing  that a park would serve the neighborhood long after the $3.5M was  spent. Councilmember Rosendahl raised significant issues, including  why the manufacturers needed to take the soccer field land for their  facility, but just before the vote, Councilmember Parks held a long,  whispered conversation in Rosendahl's ear, and the final committee  vote was, unsurprisingly, unanimously in favor of Perry.<\/p>\r\n<p> On  Tuesday, Central-Alameda neighbors and the South Central Farmers, the  Davids of this story, will face the city council in what has become a  familiar showdown. On dozens, maybe more than a hundred, occasions  over the past decade, since the Farm was first put up for sale, the  residents and the Farmers have gone to city council to ask to be  heard. The council has never investigated their concerns or referred  them to committee for consideration. Perry has never lost: in ten  years of votes related to the Farm land, thnot a sigle dissenter has  broken the lockstep of city council.<\/p>\r\n<p> <u>Perry  for Mayor<\/u><\/p>\r\n<p>Perry  has made her career out of feeding bits and pieces of land in her  district to developers, regardless of whether that is megadeveloper  Eli Broad for downtown gentrification or a bit player like Horowitz  for a factory instead of a farm. Her latest proposal is to replace  the defunded Community Redevelopment Agency, a state agency that  provided money for developers, with &ldquo;a  very independent, highly focused, small group of people to continue  to attract, retain and develop business, retail and housing  opportunities in and around the Downtown area,&rdquo; reports the Downtown  News. Perry is mounting an elite power base to determine  downtown's future.<\/p>\r\n<p>Perry  is running for Mayor. The largest part of her 2009 council campaign  funding, nearly one-fourth of the money she raised, came from the  real estate industry. Perry is a major player in the speculative  deal with developer AEG to build a football stadium in downtown with  the dream that if L.A. builds it, a team will come.<\/p>\r\n<p> Undoubtedly  it is those connections to developers and influential people, the  Goliaths behind city hall, that Perry hopes to transform into a  successful bid for the Mayor's office. Tuesday's vote will hand her  the implicit endorsement of city council for her election (no doubt  to the consternation of fellow mayoral candidate and city council  President Eric Garcetti). In the unprecedented event that the council  did vote against Perry, their rebuke of the land transfer would  signal that Perry's alliance with developers was not in the city's  best interest, effectively pulling the lynchpin out of her support  with the voters she is relying on to support her plans for further  development. And assuredly, the campaign chests of those who oppose  her would suffer the wrath of the development beast. To developers,  city council rejecting Perry's proposal would signal that Perry could  not manage the city council or shut down grassroots opposition in the  interest of those developers. On the other hand, a council vote for  the transfer is a clear message that, although development in Los  Angeles may be over, Perry and the redevelopment monster are will be  fed. Los Angeles's Age of Redevelopment, when tearing things down to  rebuild them becomes the core of Los Angeles's urban economic  &ldquo;growth,&rdquo; formally begins on Tuesday with the destruction of the  last vestige of South Central Farm.<\/p>\r\n<p align=\"center\"> ###<\/p>\r\n<p align=\"left\"><em>Click here to send an email to Los Angeles City Councilmembers and a copy to the  South Central Farmers asking the council to vote against the sale of  the soccer field land. Just click and add your name to the email, or  replace the text with your own.<\/em><\/p>\r\n\n<\/body><\/html>\n","contact":"leslie@radiojustice.net","link":"","address":"","phone":"","parent_id":0,"mime_type":"text\/html","summary":"On Tuesday at 8:00 a.m., the South Central Farmers, their supporters, and the residents of the Central-Alameda neighborhood will confront the Los Angeles City Council in its chambers one more time to try to save the Farm and save the neighborhood. in the unlikely event they succeed, they might save the City.","numcomment":1,"fileurl":"\/uploads\/","filesize":null,"article_url":"\/news\/2011\/11\/249627.php"},"attachments":[],"comments":[{"id":249640,"heading":"City Hall scene at 10:45","article":"Perry just delivered busloads of PIMA employees to City Hall.\r\n\r\n___________\r\n\r\nMaria, John, it's discouraging to write these articles only to be bumped by your editorial, which says essentially the same thing.  It took 2 or 3 days for this to make the local news column.  I appreciate your support for the Farmers, but I just signed up for a Daily Kos blog so I don't have to use LA Indymedia for coverage.  ","author":"Leslie","parent_id":249627,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2011-11-16 18:54:34","modified":"2011-11-16 18:54:34","fileurl":""}]}