Hi Everyone:

The proposed developer Luzzatto posted a notice in the laundry room and office and folded up one at everyone’s mailbox whom he wanted to see, that there would be a meeting (with free food and drinks) in our community room 6:30-8 4/16/12 for him to go over new architectural plans and relocation proposals for the proposed development at VTP land, 2930 Colorado. I wrote the e-mail to all of you on Sunday about why Peter Naughton (my husband, the urban planner with a masters’ degree from Cambridge in England, who after graduation won a worldwide competitive fellowship to advise the kingdom of Norway on how to save village cultures while drilling for North Sea oil) and I were not sorry we had not been invited. I am copying that e-mail after this one, for those I confused completely by the way I answered one of David Latham’s about it instead of indicating the subject clearly.

Peter and I handed out shortened versions of our Tenant Impact Report submitted on 4/9./12 to the City to the tenants who attended the meeting. One of us was at each end of the sidewalk, at the only two ways to get there, so that is how we know we gave flyers to all the tenants attending. I said we handed out 14, 2 to one tenant who asked for a second one, which I think she went right in and gave to Luzzatto. This is how we knew only 13 tenants attended, and that included Catherine Eldridge, who told me as she was going in she had to go because she’s co-chair of the Homeowners Association, not because she cared to hear anything Luzzatto might say. I remembered later that I had given a copy of the flyer to Susan Millman (not sure about her last name), a Legal Aid attorney for about 15 tenants, she told me. So that means only 12 tenants attended.

We also mentioned earlier that Luzzatto would not let reporters who were there in–claiming he wanted the tenants to be able to speak freely. But of course he didn’t ask the tenants if they objected to reporters being there, and if he wanted people to be able to speak freely, why did he have about 10 of his employees there? Speak freely, indeed. He also had two ON-DUTY SM police there, so that does not indicate any care about stifling tenants’ ability to speak freely. Now we know there were only 12 tenants and one lawyer, plus about 10 of Luzzatto’s employees and two police. Many tenants who came were old and/or sick, one blind and tiny, but LL thought he needed a private security force–paid for by the taxpayers, just as his proposed development would be. He has consistently picked on whoever appeared to be the weakest among us, trying to get people to move, so who came to this meeting were again those. It is unconscionable that two on-duty SM police were there, when I have heard from a VTP tenant that back when we had a criminal for a manager here and he was peeking in her windows attempting to burglarize her trailer, she could not get the SM police to come. It is obvious who is paid off here, and by whom.

I have talked to three of the people who attended today. They all told me Luzzatto had changed his proposed development to 93% residential. One said the remaining 7% was industrial and the other two did not know. In any event, neighborhood retail on the ground floor was a major part of the LUCE for this cockamamie Mixed Use Creative District (“MUCD”) LUCE put VTP land in, so I don’t see how a proposal of industrial use could fit with the General Plan, which for this purpose is LUCE. That is a requirement of the Development Agreement process, as the City employees who keep trying to get us to take one of Luzzatto’s relocation proposals keep telling us. DAs do not have to agree with the zoning ordinances for the neighborhood (which are Mobilehome Park in the case of the subject property and R-2 and Industrial for the neighborhood). They have to conform just to the General Plan.

So I count this as a major victory. All of us harping on the Lionsgate approval being 100% commercial and the LUCE saying the District has to be 50% commercial, 50% residential, would seem to have made them realize creative office was never going to get past the courts. Notice, however: no industrial in LUCE for the MUCD. But LL has to have some mixture, or else it wouldn’t fit in MUCD for LUCE, either, as the Lionsgate one did not.

As far as the relocation proposals, it appears the only changes were he had a specific apartment complex he thought we would like to move to, Alta Vista, I think someone said. I don’t know where that is, probably close to the beach I’d bet? But no one I know is interested in moving to an apartment s/he would never own, one with common walls and no private entrance, yard, or adjacent parking, to say nothing of rent of $1500 or more a month compared to our present rents of $350-500. I also heard he said if people apply for Community Corp or Mountain View housing by June 30 he will not subtract the $1500 from the whoop-de-do relocation benefits he has offered, as he claims he will for everyone else who has not moved or applied for CCSM or MV by then. Other than that, I heard nothing new. Our TIR showing the 25 characteristics “adequate replacement space in a mobilehome park for our mobilehomes and ourselves”–footnoting the law that gives us a right to all that and the duty of the developer to mitigate the impacts on us if it is not possible to give us it, is already or will be soon posted at the Documents section of www.occupysm.com.

Onward and upward.

brenda barnes