One of the oddest aspects of the extended trial of the Village Trailer Park and its residents by various City officials is their twisted depictions of the trailer park, the
mega-commercial project that its owner wants to build on the trailer park site and the residents themselves.

The Planning Commission just concluded a three-act hearing on the project. It took so long because the commissioners clearly don’t like the project, for good and more than ample reasons.

It’s too big. It’s a brick and mortar closed fist of a development. It gets in its own way. It has virtually no open space, and diminishes rather than enhances the neighborhood.
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Though the Commission can and, on prior occasions, has advised the Council against negotiating a development agreement, it seemed unwilling and unable to do that in this instance. Wednesday night, it discussed advising the Council to delay any decision on the development until the Bergamot area plan is complete, but could only muster three votes for the utterly sensible measure.

Ultimately, rather than doing its duty and advising the Council against negotiating a deal for a seriously flawed commercial development that they believe will diminish its neighborhood, the Commissioners composed a list of suggested “improvements” for the Council’s consideration.The Commission, in this instance, was also charged with reviewing the City staff’s “relocation plans” for residents of the trailer park who don’t want to “relocate,” don’t believe the City has the authority to move them and are in the midst of a multi-layered legal assault to prevent their removal.

Many of the residents are older people, some are disabled,some have little money. In the so-called “plan” the staff prepared for the Commissioners’ consideration, they were instantly reduced to clichés. They were old, so they were fragile, possibly in the early stages of … dementia, in need of “case management.”

Aside from all that, moving out of one’s home is at the top of the stress list, ranking with the death of a child and divorce.

Some of the residents appeared before the Commission at the first hearing, and returned for the Wednesday night meeting. The Dispatch has run articles by some of them. They may be old, and even fragile, but they are smart, sophisticated, articulate and mad as hell.

They have launched a number of legal challenges, and are quite capable of devising their own “relocation plan” should they suddenly decide that they want to trade their idyllic park for tiny units in the project, or some other inferior digs. But, in this as in so many other situations, the City preferred to play Big Brother and make all the decisions, and so the Commissioners chose not to discuss the relocation plan for the residents with the residents.

Meanwhile, there is a communiqué from Brenda Barnes, one of the Village Trailer Park’s more
out-spoken advocates.

According to Barnes, they are now picketing from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m, Monday through Thursday, in front of the park at 2930 Colorado Avenue, protesting “the Council’s consistent support of this project from 2007 …our impact is becoming enormous. We are seeking more volunteers…and plan to move to corners where SM voters are likely to be stalled during rush hour and sign up 20,000 voters to support a smart development slate for November.”

Barnes also noted that they may give tours of the Park “showing the mid-Century iconic buildings that should have been landmarked, as well as 50 fruit trees and 100 decorative trees, along with the cute yellow and white trailer Lily Tomlin lived in in “Shortcuts,” a Robert Altman movie filmed here.

She goes on to say that “The City Council’s directions to staff have been abominable. We have had up to SIX City employees at once, including two Department managers, come to meetings and try to coerce residents into moving. They did this even after there was no redevelopment money, so two of the prior replacement housing options–all of which were only rental options, not to own as we do now–had disappeared because there was no money to fund them.

“The design is just the last of many many travesties, but it is an important one. If the City Council had not all along supported a design including 4.45 times the current density, which is at R-2 level (28 units an acre, when R-2 is 15-30), then the enormous profit that motivates the developer would not be in the project, so the development pressure would disappear of its own infeasibility. Such density on a property that is NOT IN THE BERGAMOT AREA–a fact the planners keep trying to hide–is not permitted in LUCE. The project also is not now a Mixed Use Creative District project, which is what it is supposed to be to fit here under LUCE.

“Commissioners Winterer, McKinnon and Kennedy succumbed to the wrong legal advice the City Attorney’s office has consistently given about this site, that the developer has a RIGHT to close the Park under state law, which is just not what the cases say, a legal issue clearly framed and ripe for adjudication, so I’ll take care of that now. However, within that incorrect framework, they did as well as could be expected.”