City Council Meeting - May 8, 2007
Evening Session

This transcription was made from Cox videotape of the after 9:00PM portion of the May 8, 2007 City Council Meeting to capture council members’ views and positions.

    On the subject of Economic Analysis: Steve Zuckerman commented that feedback from a SCAG [Southern California Association of Governments] representative stated that "when you go to mixed use zoning you are denying opportunities to existing business people because you are going to be raising the rents. So you will get to a different class of business people and the low rent, neighborhood serving businesses are not going to be able to find their way back into the redeveloped area."
    He further pointed out that "you need to build a parking structure which serves the whole district. If you try to park this with subterranean parking under all of these buildings it’s going to be extremely unfriendly to the end user. People aren’t going to like it."

     On the subject of property owners’ rights: Frank Zerunyan believes we should not take away from property owners their rights to be able to propose mixed use redevelopment projects. We should look at each project on its own merits on the basis of the policy that we set. Frank said he would do away with the overlay zone altogether.

     On the subject of how quickly the City should proceed with further re-development: Steve Zuckerman said “I would submit that we are already looking at 300 [housing] units which is huge given how many houses we have in the existing community. It would require a Statement of Overriding Consideration” that I could support”. We should create a situation where we make the public improvements that are minimally desired, we let the public see what the results are, we find out more empirically what the impacts are and then at a later date maybe we go back and expand on those boundaries. It’s a very modest, very conservative approach”. He stated that “we can’t make serious long term mistakes by doing this in bite size pieces. But we can if we over-reach”.

     John Addleman later sided in support of Steve Zuckerman’s view. “Why would you raise the expectations of developers that they could build 459 units? Why is waiting a bad thing? Why is waiting until these units are built out, sold and occupied --- we could sit back and not look at a traffic study that is a supposition? We’re looking at fact. Are we in such a hurry that we have to do this in 1, 2 or 3 years? When we started out we all said this is a 5 or 10 year project. Now what is it? It’s a 6 month project. Add up all the units here and you’ve got a ton and more floating in. There’s no reason to rush.”

     On the subject of her concerns: Judy Mitchell said: "one of my concerns has been the key piece of the puzzle that I see is the Village Shopping area. The reason I think that’s key is that there is a site that’s not doing what we want it to do. We want the buildings to come up to the street. We want to have a nice streetscape with good pedestrian front and that is right smack in the middle of this area and it’s way back from the street. That particular site offers an opportunity to bring a nice streetscape to Deep Valley and also offers the opportunity for development of connectivity between Deep Valley and Silver Spur with the construction of a nice Paseo in that area.”

     Steve Zuckerman admonished “watch what you wish for. We are going to be displacing existing businesses. We are going to be bringing them back into a building that is probably not as business friendly. As much as we would like it -- the constraints that are out there simply dictate that we can’t. I don’t see what the basis for approving that project would be given the impacts we’ve seen. We’re turning a blind eye to it. If we have a significant impact that we cannot mitigate we cannot approve,” He went on to say that “I don’t see past the Laing Urban project. It’s clear from what the EIR tells us that we can’t approve anything beyond what we have already approved without a clear Finding of Overriding Consideration. Even at 300 [housing units] we have created a lot of impact to traffic, most of which can be mitigated at some expense. Steve said he wants to limit development to the South side of Deep Valley and it will be 3 to 4 years before we as decision makers and the general public have a chance to see what is happening and make the collective determinations which are necessary to either go further or to stop. Nothing that comes out is going to change the air quality impacts."

    Judy Mitchell asked Steve Zuckerman “is your real concern air quality – it’s not traffic?”
Steve responded “It’s both. If I were living along PV Drive North with the amount of traffic that’s there – those cars idling there – I have every reason to believe it may be even worse and it doesn’t have to be because it makes it clear that we are so far in exceedence of any quality standards that it’s a huge issue. Making the traffic right gets to things that people live in their every day lives and that they have expectations when they move here and when they live here and that’s the ‘Coolville”, ‘Pleasantville’ thing. I realize that people have different images of things that they want to do and I understand the Coolville view. Some folks say -- well we’ve got a 50’s style commercial district and it’s getting a little tired and it’s time to do something. I think 300 units will do that. The Pleasantville [thinking] is that you know what – that’s exactly why we’re here. We don’t want anything but that. It’s laid back, it’s suburban, we’re comfortable here, that’s why we moved here and we don’t want to see it change.”

     Susan Seamans commented “We can’t help what the rest of the world is doing. We can help what we’re doing here but on the other hand I don’t believe we want to have this look like what just happened in Kansas or just not do anything to improve our downtown."  "You [Steve Zuckerman] said it would be a terrible thing if we improve some of the properties in the middle of Deep Valley because those people wouldn’t be able to have a business any more. Well, I’m sorry but I don’t know of any other city in the world that would zone or make a statement like that --- that they are not going to improve their town to the best of their ability because somebody might have to move out and might not be able to come back."

     Steve Zuckerman responded by saying “I don’t think that displacing businesses that currently meet the needs of the surrounding area is necessarily an improvement”.