Who Will Save The LA River From The CRA?

My latest article over at CITYWATCH:

If one wants a reel (i.e., Hollywood) world equivalent of the real world danger to the LA River in Downtown, it would be a silent film starring Simon Legree (i.e., the appointed Community Redevelopment Agency leadership) tying the hopes and dreams of Downtown Los Angeles, for a LA River lined with parks and mixed uses, to the railroad tracks while a locomotive – packed with special interest groups - comes barreling towards us at ninety miles an hour.

To back up a bit, the City of Los Angeles is planning to spend at least a billion dollars (though no comprehensive business plan yet exists) to turn the LA River into a public amenity lined with parks and mixed uses – except in one area.

In the most per capita park poor part of the entire city – the part of Downtown represented by the Downtown Los Angeles Neighborhood Council - the approved plan will not allow us even a single park in our neighborhood; we will also not get even one unit of housing in the area with the single biggest jobs/housing imbalance nor will we get anything resembling the kinds of public amenities every other neighborhood in Los Angeles along the river will get.

And when I asked over a year ago why we were the only neighborhood not to be allowed any parks – I was told by two different staff members that it would conflict with the city's industrial policy since only industry was going to be allowed along the 'new' LA River in our neighborhood.

Now, no other city in this country – for that matter– no city on this planet (since Stalinist five year industrial plans have gone out of fashion even in Russia – if not in Los Angeles) would ever dream of lining a river in the most congested and populated part of the city with railroad tracks, high tension lines and wall to wall factories – forever.

Ironically, though – as I demonstrated in an earlier CityWatch article, while the city's industrial zoning policy will work in some parts of the city – this policy will actually destroy jobs and prevent jobs from being created in the older parts of Downtown.

But here's the best part. Since building heavy industry facilities in the heart of the city is no longer financially feasible – the CRA will have to give these factories 30 years of vast tax subsidies to pay them to destroy the LA River in our neighborhood.

Please inset the appropriate Vietnam War metaphor of your choice here.

But this situation had been recently – seemingly - looking up. Our three elected officials, Jan Perry, Jose Huizar and Ed Reyes had recently overturned the CRA's stonewalling of two major live work projects near the LA River and the city council had also just passed a resolution condemning the CRA and the Planning Department's unilateral implementation of their industrial policy. And … at public meeting after public meeting, at least 95% of the speakers – and sometimes 100% of them – strongly opposed every aspect of this plan.

Every single Downtown community and business organization with an elected board has opposed this policy – including those representing the property and business owners this plan is supposed to protect.

The only people to support this plan are appointed city officials, people being paid by city contracts – and organizations that do not represent Downtown.

So one would think that since the public the CRA 'serves', the industrial users the plan is supposed to 'protect' and the councilpersons elected by the public to represent them are all opposed to this policy– that the CRA would finally back off from their plan.

Well, not in LA.

Last week I went into an AIA (American Institute of Architects) meeting on the future of Downtown. One of the panel members was Cecilia Estolano, the head of the CRA. She greeted me warmly before the meeting started and I took that as a sign that she – finally – was willing to work with us downtown to develop a real world plan that
will create jobs, housing and parks along the LA River.

I say finally because after years of guarantees that the public would be involved in the drafting of this plan – the long promised public workshops were canceled last December – between Christmas and New Years Day when no one was in town. And then, even after the CRA and Planning were forced to hold public hearings on their betrayal, they still refused to in any way discuss or debate their policy with us. They just stoically listened to our testimony against their plan,
declined to engage in any kind of debate – and then went back to
implementing their plan with a complete disregard of the public input.

But instead of addressing any of that during her presentation last week, Estolano instead announced her latest initiative for Downtown – a policy that was created, as usual, behind closed doors - to line the banks of the LA River – particularly within the DLANC boundaries - with not just industry – but heavy industry. "Green" heavy industry

Yes, her proposal is now to destroy our environment with 'green' heavy industry to build products to improve other people's environments.

Again, insert appropriate Vietnam War analogy.

And the best part is – this new plan was again developed without any input from – or even the knowledge of - anyone in the affected areas. This was the first I had ever heard about it and when I asked around the next day, my suspicions were confirmed. Not a single one of the stakeholder groups had been contacted plus no one at Planning or
even in the CRA office in Downtown had ever heard of this new plan, much less had been consulted about it.

When the Q & A session started, I announced we had just witnessed why this city does not work; that we are still a city where some of the biggest decisions affecting our communities are still made behind closed doors. And that even when these plans are opposite of what the community wants – or needs – the community will still be ignored if they are in conflict with the desires of politically connected special interest groups.

Estolano's response to my remarks was that there was no green manufacturing policy for the length of the LA River in Downtown – even though she had just announced to the audience that there was one and she had just passed out a map showing the project's boundaries.

I'll give her the benefit of the doubt and agree she actually does believe in her mind that there will someday be some public involvement in this proposal. I'll do this despite the fact the CRA has still refused to engage in any debate with us on the specifics of the
existing industrial zoning plan and that it has still refused to allow any kind of meaningful two-way dialogue with the community on the planning process for this issue – for the past two years.

Now, on a cynical sidetrack, it appears clear to me that changing the 100% industrial zone along the LA River into a 100% 'green' industrial area – even though that would prevent – for a variety of reasons – the actual regreening of the LA River - is just a new way of re-packaging their old idea by adding the buzz word 'green' to their plan.

But the delusion that large factories making green products are going to be suddenly built anywhere in Los Angeles – much less in Downtown Los Angeles ( just like the 1990's hallucination that LA would suddenly become the center for the manufacturing of rapid transit equipment if we built subways) – is exactly that – a delusion.

What the politicians and special interest groups are ignoring is that with Downtown's outdated infrastructure, high wage costs, high business taxes, high utility fees and many other obstacles to manufacturing in Downtown – no one is going to set up heavy industry in an area that is far more expensive to do business within than in other states, other cities in LA County – or even in other parts of the City of Los Angeles. And even if they would – the massive public subsidies would far outweigh the gains.

Even more to the point, since green products are inherently more expensive than non green products – and they are often considerably more expensive - manufacturers must find the lowest cost places to make their products if they are to be at all competitive within the marketplace.

The bottom line is - of all the types of manufacturing – green products are among the least likely to locate in a high cost area such as Downtown Los Angeles.

And everyone who has a clue of how business works – and who is not dependent on the public teat – knows this to be true.

So where does this leaves us?

Well, pretty much where we started.

Nowhere.

But at some point in time the CRA's leadership might actually learn they need to work with us to get anything done. Someday, they might even stop acting like an occupying army determined to destroy all resistance to their initiatives (and shooting anyone who dares go off-message) and understand they are supposed to serve our community – and not attack it.

The tragedy is that we all want the same things for our community. Good paying jobs, a greener environment, parks along the LA River, better transportation – and housing for everyone. But none of this will ever happen with the current bunker mentality of the CRA.

I might add that that when Estolano first came into office, I was very impressed by her speech on how the CRA would be actively involved in grass roots community building. I was so impressed I offered to give her a tour of Downtown to show how we had turned the former heroin district into a vibrant community filled with new jobs and how with modest amounts of working capital we had accomplished far more than
past, failed multi-million dollar projects of the CRA had in the same neighborhood. And she said she looked forward to that tour. But after six months – and a half-a-dozen unreturned and unacknowledged phone calls and emails and letters – I finally gave up.

Just like a lot of people Downtown are giving up on the idea that the CRA can ever be our partners in building a new Downtown for everyone.

But it shouldn't - and doesn't - have to be that way. So, just maybe, one day that attitude might start to change.

And, luckily, it will only take one person to accomplish that. But first she will have to start returning our phone calls.

(Brady Westwater is a writer, a long-time downtown and neighborhood council activist and Chair of the LA NC Congress Economic Development Committee. Westwater is a regular contributor to CityWatch. He can be reached at: bradywestwater@gmail.comThis email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it ). _

Livable Places Dead!

I had heard that Livable Places - one of the few affordable housing developers that tried to have a sustainable financial business plan which did not depend on endless subsidies was in trouble - and I knew that something big was about to be announced - but I was still shocked to see in Curbed LA that they have just closed their doors.

Below is the opening of the letter announcing the closure from Joe Linton; the rest can be found at the Curbed LA link above.

Colleagues -

It is with great sadness that I am writing to let you know that Livable Places is closing. Seven years ago, our board of directors set ambitious goals for a new nonprofit organization to advocate for land use policy reform, and to develop affordable housing that demonstrated the feasibility of smart growth. Since then, Livable Places has worked on multiple policy issues and initiated two developments offering 160 homes and leveraging $60 million as we strived to build for-sale housing affordable to working people with minimal subsidy.

We began construction as speculation and frenzied demand drove up construction costs, and we started marketing homes as the turmoil in financial and real estate markets began. The credit crisis raised the requirements for buyers that we targeted, and the glut of higher priced housing lowered demand for new homes overall. The impact on the Southern California economy has been dire, and for Livable Places, the economic downturn has proved fatal.

How the LA Media Blew The Story Of The LAPDHQ Audit!

My latest CITYWATCH story:

Reviewing press coverage of Laura Chick's audit of the LAPD Headquarters cost overruns, there desperately needs to be some clarification from Laura Chick’s office on who was at fault.

Was it the city for not having a approved building site, the city for allowing the Civic Center Authority to not meet in ten years and the city for allowing the small 911 emergency call center to be built on the same block as Parker Center – making it impossible to later rebuilding the PHQ on the site – or was this all the BOE’s fault. Because right now – the BOE is taking a lot of the blame for decisions – it had nothing to do with.

This report might have an addendum to address the real causes for the overrun so we can prevent similar problems in the over billion or two dollars in projects that will happen in the civic center within the next ten years.

Second, the press needs to correct its existing error-filled coverage of this project. Not one story even mentioned that the city had failed to develop a master plan for the civic center after over forty years, nor did they even mention the existence of the Civic Center Authority, much less how building the 911 Center on the Parker Center block made it impossible to rebuild the PHQ on that site.

Third, the press needs to engage in some serious investigative reporting that used to be done by the much missed Jeffrey Anderson, David Zahniser and a few others during a brief golden age at the LA Weekly and as used to be done by the LA Times on huge, multi-year long investigations.

But the Times needs to learn that one or two good reporters with some real working knowledge can accomplish a lot, even when compared dozens or reporters and a huge budgets. Unfortunately, the new young hires at the Times have little interest in discovering, much less, reporting, the truth; they are only interested in pushing their own preconceived political prejudices to the exclusion of anything resembling serious news reporting.

Unsurprisingly then, the biggest winner in getting the story right came from the media outlet with the smallest budget – CURBEDLA – when Josh Williams – alone – was able to decode from the report that the Audit admitted that the blame for the overrun was not due to the BOE’s supervision.

The second biggest winder was the Downtown New which has the bet coverage and which got the most quotes from people on each side, giving the most complete and balanced coverage – but which still did not talk with a anyone who would point out the real culprits. It’s the City’s fault.

Going to the opposite end of the spectrum, the second biggest loser – the biggest we’ll save for the last – was the Daily News even though it got off to a decent start with an article covering much of the back story about the delays due to the site problems, but which emphasized the role of the BOE in that – while ignoring the real reasons. But then they blew it with an editorial that blamed the entire problem on the BOE and – somehow got the original building cost as being a 100 million as opposed to the 303 million given by both Laura Chick and the article in their own paper.

Hopefully, the new editor will eventually retract the editorial.

And that brings us to our biggest loser – The Los Angeles Times. So how did the City desk cover this major story? Did they address the real underlying problems of the city and did the editorial page then follow up with a call for true reform?

Well, no.

Because there was no story in the paper and because there was no story – there was no editorial.

A major story that dozens of other news sources covered in detail did not warrant even a single line in the Los Angeles Times. In fact, when the Business Section of the paper wrote about the contractor of the PHQ being purchased – they were the ones who had to ‘break’ the news of the audit several days later.

And that’s another reason why these disasters continue to happen. While our city faces increasingly difficult challenges, when it comes to our paper of record telling us the facts we need to know to hold our public officials accountable – there is no one at the LA Times City Desk who even knows what questions to ask – much less knows how to answer them. And the next generation being currently hired – doesn’t even give a damn.

Why Do So Many LA Times Writers Seemingly Just Make Up 'Facts'?

It's getting harder and harder to believe anything one reads in the Los Angeles Times these days. Setting aside the special case of the Metro Section which even other writers at the LA Times say they can not trust the 'facts' in it - no section is free of stories that have parts that are just seemingly made to back up whatever the writer is trying to prove. Today, I will cite just one of many examples from yesterday's Sunday Times - using just a single paragraph from it to demonstrate the current crisis at the Times.

Before Teddy Roosevelt's time, cowboys had a nasty reputation, thanks to Billy the Kid and other violent outlaws who ran roughshod over the frontier. Buffalo Bill's Wild West shows and late-19th century dime novels combined to recast the cowboy's image as an Anglo-Saxon hero and heir to the Arthurian Knights of the Round Table.

So let's look at the chronology the writer cites as historical cause and affect. First there was the age of Billy the Kid and other such outlaws who gave cowboys a 'nasty' reputation. Then came Buffalo Bill's Wild West Shows and the dime novels and they changed the cowboy's reputation by the time of Teddy Roosevelt.

The truth is, of course, the exact opposite of those statements. The first novels glamorizing the new breed of Westerner started at least in the 1840's - and Kit Carson was first lionized in 1849. Plus the dean of the dime novelists (a specific form that started in 1860) was Ned Buntline who started writing about the West no later than the 1860. By 1869 he had written his first book about Buffalo Bill. He later convinced Buffalo Bill to take to the stage in... 1872... and Buffalo Bill was touring the country by 1873 and did so for the next ten years performing Wild West stage shows. Then in 1883, he extended this brand by adding outdoor Wild West show extrvagandas.

Billy the Kid, however, was little known until his death in... 1881... and he only came to national fame after his killer - Pat Garrett - published his account of his life in 18882 - nine years after Buffalo Bill had started performing throughout the country and one year before he started his Wild West shows. And as for Roosevelt - he didn't become President until almost 30 years after Buffalo Bill first took to the stage.

Clearly - the time line the writer presents is... impossible. Now I assume the writer was taking this from materials provided by the Autry Museum, but even the most basic knowledge of American history should have alerted the writer and the editors that this cause and affect time line simply could not have happened. Particularly bizarre is the statement that before Roosevelt's time (and he came on the national stage only in the 1890's) - the American cowboy had a nasty reputation, since this was long after the Wild West Shows and the dime novels had captured the American imagination.

In fact, I'd really like to see any factual proof that there ever was any period in which the American cowboy had a 'nasty reputation. But, of course, facts are increasingly not what you are going to find in the LA Times.

Martha Groves Promoted To Editorial Column Writer At Los Angeles Times!

Former Metro news reporter is now writing an editorial column in the Metro section and her first editorial runs today. The beginning of her very well written column attacking a new condo project in Beverly Hills - starting with a particularly damning speculative first sentence - is below and the rest of her editorial is at the above link:

Beverly Hills approves condo project
A $500-million condo-hotel plan may also win City Council passage. Many residents are concerned about traffic congestion.
By Martha Groves
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

April 11, 2008

If you hate to sit in traffic at the intersection of Wilshire and Santa Monica boulevards, prepare to discover your inner reserves of patience.

To the dismay of residents wary of overdevelopment, the Beverly Hills City Council has approved a high-rise condo and retail project for the eight-acre site of the defunct Robinsons-May department store.

Who Really Busted The LAPD Headquarters Budget? Or - Why Can't City Hall - Or The Press - Get Anything Right?

My lastest offering at CITYWATCH:

Who Really Busted the LAPD HQ Budget Or – Why Can't City Hall Ever Get Anything Right?

by Brady Westwater

When local politicians demand to know who caused the budget overruns at the new LAPD Headquarters Building (the PHQ) – all they need to do is …. look in a mirror.

The same advice can be given to a majority of the voters in the City of Los Angeles.

Not wanting to face reality, though, everyone seems content to blame the one city entity not responsible for the cost overrun – the Los Angeles City Bureau of Engineering; the city agency that administers the city's construction projects; the city agency about which some outraged writers have asked how can we allow these same people to keep screwing over us taxpayers again and again? Unfortunately, it's easier to fall into that type of rhetoric with all the widely publicized cost overruns at the Los Angeles United School District, the MTA's over budget subways and the County'sendless nightmare at King-Drew Medical, to name just a few local fiscal fiascos.

The only minor problem here is that the Bureau of Engineering – the BOE - had nothing to do with any of those disasters. In fact, in striking contrast to those out of control projects, their two largest projects in the early part of this century were done on time – or better – and they all were built well under budget. But, of course, you never saw any headlines on that; so to better understand what really happened at the PHQ, we need to look at the true record of the BOE.

First, the BOE built 32 public libraries from Prop DD funds and brought them in so far under budget they were able to build four more new libraries from the savings. Next, the BOE supervised 600 million dollars of Prop Q funds for 13 different public safety projects. Of them, three are finished and 95% of the work is done on the rest of the projects; and these projects are also all on time or ahead of schedule - plus the BOE just announced to the city council that they will come in under budget at about 65 Million dollars.

Not that you will ever read one word about any of this in the press, of course.

Now does this sound like an agency so badly managed that 32 changes have to be made to its procedures (as controller Laura Chick has proposed in her recent audit) to prevent another PHQ disaster from happening? And if they are not responsible – then who is?

Well, the first culprit is – us. This badly needed new facility (and one good quake and Parker Center – and everyone in it - is toast) was twice taken to the voters – and twice rejected. So the funds had to be cobbled together from other sources to get it built – and this was at a time when both land and construction costs were rapidly increasing.

But the real perps in this mess are the decades of elected officials representing greater Los Angeles who failed to properly plan how our Civic Center was to be developed.

But this was not always the case. Starting in the 1960's a joint powers org – the Civic Center Authority – was set up by the City and County of Los Angeles (with participation by the feds, the state and three other government agencies), to plan the Civic Center, and they initially accomplished a lot. But they stopped meeting over ten years ago (among other reasons, turf problems prevented certain decisions from being made) – and they never put together a master plan for where the new city and county facilities would be built.

With no plan, when there was a need to build a new 911 communications center, the city just plopped the 911 building on a corner of the block containing Parker Center, despite the objections of a group of us who said this would prejudice any future development of that critical block.

And then – when it came time to build a new Police Headquarters and jail and motor pool – because of the setback problems from the 911 Center – it was discovered – surprise, surprise – they could not build a new PHQ on the block without tearing down Parker Center and the jail first.

This was the only reason why the new PHQ was not built on that site.

This then caused the city to purchase the 1st and Alameda site, only to try and change to the Transamerica property after the residents of Little Tokyo proved how devastating the project would be to their community (at least two land swaps deals were also considering during all of this), but then that new site didn't work and so the project went back to First and Alameda and lastly – finally – it landed at 1st and Spring, where another group of residents fought it, further delaying it.

In just that first year, I personally attended over 50 public meetings and many more private ones.

But even then, even once the new PHQ site was located – the city still had to find another adjacent parcel for parking and the motor pool. So by the time it was all over – figuring out just where to build everything – almost 3 years hadpassed since the decision to build was made in 2003. It then took another almost two years to close escrow on the land for the parking which is just now starting construction.

This brings us to Laura Chick's in most ways highly accurate – though often misinterpreted – performance audit which finds a number of reasons for the escalation of the project's costs. The main ones though are increasing land costs, increasing construction/labor/materials costs and the inability to get contractors to bid in an overheated market. All three of these would have been avoided if the city had a master plan for the Civic Center – with a vetted and approved site for the project before they started it.

Or, if they had not built the 911 Center in the worst possible location.

As for the proposed reforms for the BOE in the audit: the BOE's administration was another reason she gives for possible – though those reasons are considerably more speculative than demonstrated - cost increases.

Even Laura Chick admits that almost all of the price increases of the project were justified by the real world costs by the time the land was actually bought and the buildings were actually being built – and not by any mismanagement – and I feel she proves her case exceptionally well here.

And the report pretty clearly demonstrates, that very little – if any – of the increased costs could have been realistically stopped, even with her proposed reforms, valid as many of them are.

The main reform she proposes – the Construction at Risk Method – is probably banned by the city charter and would have never been allowed by the city attorney.

Additionally, no convincing proof is offered in the report that there was anything the city could have done to have gotten a second bidder – another valid concern of hers.

And, I disagree with a few other of her assertions, such as the statement that the one retired person – who is still working on the project, was the only person with working historic knowledge of the project.

I can easily state as someone who was daily involved in this project - and in contact with everyone in the city family involved with it – for the first three-plus years – that is simply not true. The leadership team at the BOE is an unusually deep one, and it was one I often deeply argued with about highly technical policy considerations.

As additional proof of my assertion that the BOE's previously successful guidelines were not the problem, once the site was nailed down and construction started – and it is now 65% finished – it has been running with less than a 2% of budget in change orders – which given this project's history – is nothing less than a Mohammed becoming a Holly Roller class of miracle.

So, has the city corrected their underlying mistake? Have they reconvened the Civic Center Authority (which Jan Perry did call for... back in 2002)? Is the city now working on better – any – coordination among the over dozen – yes over a dozen– projects and
plans currently in the works in the Civic Center? Well, that answer is simple.

No! Non! Nyet!

I mean, this is the City of Los Angeles. The city government where the real motto is, what is mine is mine and what is yours, should be mine.

And if current soap opera starring Laura Chick, Tony Cardenas and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa in their Bloods/Cripps styled showdown over gang turf doesn't prove that to you, I don't know what will.

So each of the dozen projects in the Civic Center area will continue to plod along – with little or no communication among them, all of them headed to hell in a handbasket. And there is no longer even a mention of developing a new plan for the Civic Center, other than in the far distant community plan update.

Now this might give one the impression that our city is led by a bunch of morons and idiots. It is not. We are lucky to have many capable and even gifted leaders in this city – capable and gifted people who just happen to sometimes act like morons and idiots.

And trust me, there is a very real difference, as small as it may at times seem.

William Goldman once famously said, about Hollywood, that it was a place where 'Nobody Knows Anything'. But if he was talking about City Hall (rather than about our second largest purveyor of smoke, mirrors and fertilizer) – a better quote might have been – "The Place Where Nobody Ever Learns Anything". (Brady Westwater is a writer, a long-time downtown and neighborhood council activist and Chair of the LA NC Congress Economic Development Committee. Westwater is a regular contributor to CityWatch. He can be reached at: bradywestwater@gmail.comThis email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it ) (Current construction photos from CurbedLA blog report.) _

CityWatch
Vol 6 Issue 30
Published: Apr 11, 2008

Free Comedy Walk Downtown TONIGHT! 8:30 PM - 10 PM Thursday April 10th!

Free Comedy performances at six venues within one block of 5th and Spring! Do the Famous DOWNTOWN Art Walk - and then do the DOWNTOWN Comedy Walk!

COMEDY WALK - April 10th, the 2nd Thursday
Get Free Tickets at www.ComedyWalk.com - OR JUST SHOW UP!
Six Simultaneous Comedy Shows 8:30pm-10pm

Venue #1
Downtown Comedy Club
501 S Spring Street
Los Angeles, CA 90013
200-seat club
Hosts: Garrett Morris
& Kevin Garnier
8:25 Host Warm-Up
8:30 D'Sean Ross
8:40 Mikey Scott
8:50 Erik Lundy
9:00 Stevie Mack
9:10 Alex Nussbaum
9:20 Gayla Johnson
9:30 Dan Dominguez
9:40 The Mooney Twins
9:50 Ernie G

Venue #2
The New LATC
Los Angeles Theater Center
514 S. Spring St., Theater #4
Los Angeles, CA 90013
80-seat cabaret
Host: Stefanie Northcutt
8:25 Host Warm-Up
8:30 Todd Thomas
8:40 Vanda Mikoloski
8:50 Joe Wilson
9:00 The Mooney Twins
9:10 Ernie G
9:20 Marly Halpern-Graser
9:30 Rebecca Addelman
9:40 Alicia Simmons
9:50 Jodi Miller

Venue #3
The Canadian Room
Canadian Building
436 S. Main
SRO 2,200 sq. ft. storefront
Host: Sandra Milliner
8:25 Host Warm-Up
8:30 Red Herring
8:40 Rebecca Addelman
8:50 Laughs on Demand
9:00 Chris Adams
9:10 Mikey Scott
9:20 Go People Go!
9:30 Stevie Mack
9:40 Joe Wilson
9:50 Alex Nussbaum

Venue #4
The Onion Room
Spring Arts Tower
207 W. 5th Street
Los Angeles, CA 90013
1,400 sq. ft. SRO
Host: Heather Ignacio
8:25 Host Warm-Up
8:30 Marly Halpern-Graser
8:40 Scott Vinci
8:50 Jodi Miller
9:00 Will Weldon
9:10 Red Herring
9:20 D'Sean Ross
9:30 Laughs on Demand
9:40 Erik Lundy
9:50 Vanda Mikoloski

Venue #5
The Backstage
Spring Arts Tower
211 W. 5th Street
Los Angeles, CA 90013
1,600 sq. ft. SRO
Host: Shereen Saiyed
8:25 Host Warm-Up
8:30 Go People Go!
8:40 Gayla Johnson
8:50 Dan Dominguez
9:00 Alicia Simmons
9:10 Scott Vinci
9:20 Todd Thomas
9:30 Chris Adams
9:40 Will Weldon
9:50 Red Herring

Venue #6
The Chicken Room
Spring Arts Tower
211 W. 5th Street
Los Angeles, CA 90013
1,000-sq.ft SRO
Host: Gabrielle Pantera
8:30pm-10pm
Gosh! Talk Show
Three-minute interviews with each of the comedians in a talk show format.

*Chris Adams, comedy webseries www.theopenmikers.com
*Rebecca Addelman, Toronto, Comedy Network, www.raddelman.com
*Daniel Dominguez, Verizon Viva! Vision www.funconsuming.com
Ernie G from Comedy Central's Make Me Laugh, www.ernieg.com
Go People Go!, this Christian folk singing sensation .
Marly Halpern-Graser EVYY winner 2007, YouTube.
Gayla Johnson, from Comedy Store. www.GaylaJohnson.net
Mary Kennedy, Laugh Factory. www.marykennedy.info
Laughs on Demand, sketch/improv www.laughsondemand.com
Erik Lundy, National Lampoon Radio. www.workplaceofthedamned
Stevie Mack, SpikeTV. www.steviemack.com
Jodi Miller, Mondays at Comedy Store. www.myspace.com/jodilmiller
The Mooney Twins, BET. www.mooneytwinsnetwork.com
Garrett Morris, original SNL cast.
Alex Nussbaum, stand-up. www.alexnussbaum.com
Red Herring, L.A. improv. www.myspace.com/redherringimprov
D'Sean Ross, Laugh Factory. www.myspace.com/dseanisfunny.com
Mikey Scott, Queers of Comedy. www.queersofcomedy.com
Alicia Simmons, from Newark, plays at clubs on both coasts.
Todd "J.T." Thomas, The Comedy Store. www.myspace.com/jtthomascomedy
Scott Vinci, stand-up guitar comedy. www.funnyordie.com
Will Weldon, Alt dot Comedy Lounge. myspace.com/willwelldone
Joe Wilson, co-host of Dork Forest Radio www.dorkforestradio.com

*Denotes EDGY, may not be suitable for children.

--
Brady Westwater
213-804-8396

Cecilia Rasmussen Has Left The Room. 'LA Then And Now' Column About LA's History Is Now History Itself.

In a city where it's history is too often forgotten and ignored - and too often gotten wrong in the pages of the LA Times - one of the few dependable sources - both in frequency and in factual accuracy - was Cecilia Rasmussen's 'LA THEN AND NOW' column. And I say 'was' because the LA Times - in an act of incredible stupidity encouraged her to accept a buyout, and she did accept.

Both the Los Angeles Times and Los Angeles will be lesser places for this.

Below is the opening of today's final column:

L.A. THEN AND NOW
DNA tests could force a rewrite of city's history book
On the record, the 'Father of Glendale' had no children. But did L.C. Brand have a secret life and 2 sons?
By Cecilia Rasmussen
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

April 6, 2008

For more than 20 years, I've been writing about local history, and never once has Southern California let me down. I've found no shortage of tycoons and beggars, dreamy spiritualists, mad-eyed killers.

This 227-year-old city has had a few angels, but it's the others who often make for the most fascinating storytelling. The housewife from Milwaukee who in the 1920s lived in a house above Sunset Boulevard -- secretly keeping her lover in the attic for a decade until he came downstairs to murder her husband.

The religious cult that called itself theDivine Order of the Royal Arms of the Great Eleven and used sex, religion and animal sacrifices to separate believers from their money. The 18-year-old who in the 1880s fatally shot her boyfriend in the eye and was acquitted after her lawyers called her a victim of "menstrual madness."

I've written about cowboys and swindlers and crazy inventors, about a one-eyed Swiss watchmaker and a silent screen star who broke into film at age 75, after real-life dramatic experience as a Civil War spy.

To get those stories, I've had to do quite a bit of sleuthing -- trekking through mountains, visiting crumbling mansions and knocking the dust off ancient court files.

But in all the years, I've never gone to quite the lengths I had to for this, my final Then and Now column.

There was no way around it. To be sure this story was true, I needed DNA tests. But I'm jumping ahead of myself. Maybe I should start at the beginning.

The rest is at the above link.

LA City Nerd Lives!

LA City Nerd's website may still be blocked - but I just got an email saying he had accepted my months old invitation to FACEBOOK. Hopefully... his website will soon also be back.

Why Does New York Have TWICE As Many Foreclosed Upon Homes As Los Angeles? And Then In Chicago....

New York? With more lender owner - as opposed to just in foreclsoure homes - than... Los Angeles? Hell, according to the Wall Street Journal - the greater New York area is in worse shape than even San Bernardino Riverside - both in absolute numbers AND in percentage of homes owned by lenders!

Los Angeles - Long Beach-Glendale - .6%
Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario - 1.1%
New York-White Plains-Wayne - 1.2%

And now for the really bizarre stats. Granted Detroit is almost at the bottom (with the average sale price now at - but look what city city ties Detorit (with the average Detroit home now selling for... $22,000 - and I'll have frie with mine) - and look what city has both the most lender owned homes AND the highest rate of lender owned homes in the nation:

Detroit-Livonia-Dearborn - 2.4%
Denver-Aurora - 2.4%

And... the biggest loser is...

Chicago- Naperville-Joliet - 2.5%

Chicago has almost as many foreclosed upon homes than the next runner-up.... Atlanta. Yes, Chicago has 46,000 lender homes while LA has only 11,000 and Riverside also only 11,000 - over twice as many as both areas put together.

And the lowest foreclosure rate - by far - of any of the cities on the chart is... Los Angeles!

Cool Article About LA By Cara In LA Times!

The impending demolition of the infamous 'erector set' parking garage across Grand Avenue from Disney Hall for the Related Group's Grand Avenue Project has awaken an unsuspected poetic muse in Cara Mia DiMassa. Her Column One musing about the intemperate temporariness of Los Angeles is worth reading:

Built not to last -- yet still standing
In a city known for the fleeting, downtown's 'Erector set' parking lot is one of the civic pieces that've lasted for years. But its time is near.
By Cara Mia DiMassa
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

March 25, 2008

Even before it opened in 1969, the "Erector set" parking lot at the corner of 1st and Olive streets downtown was one of Los Angeles' most reviled structures.

Richard G. Mitchell, head of the Community Redevelopment Agency, complained that it was just another monolith of concrete, asphalt and steel atop Bunker Hill. The mass of girders and slabs, perched atop what look like stilts, "fights you," Mitchell said. He predicted it would have a "depressing effect" on downtown.

Robert Bolling, president of the Southern California chapter of the American Institute of Architects, agreed, warning that the structure would have a "deleterious effect on the fabric of the city."

At the time, the 1,062-car structure's saving grace was that it was temporary. Planners promised the "portable parking structure" would be dismantled and moved somewhere else, replaced by a more fitting form of architecture.

But as with so many pieces of the L.A. landscape, it wasn't that simple. The fact that it is still here "does say something about the mythology that all of Los Angeles is temporary," author D.J. Waldie said. "Even something that is supposed to be temporary has hung around longer than many residents of the city."

The city is full of examples of how Angelenos tend to take the impermanent and make it endure for the ages. The Olympic rings were meant to hang on the Coliseum only for the 1932 Summer Games -- but still adorn the structure. The Hollywood sign was erected to boost sales for a housing development in 1923. MOCA opened the Temporary Contemporary in 1983 as a provisional exhibition space at a downtown warehouse; it's still in use. We end up relying on those symbols as pieces of our civic fabric, evidence of the fact that we have history and permanence.

The parking structure is officially known, in the bureaucratic parlance of Los Angeles County, which owns it, as "Parking Lot 17."

For a generation of Southern Californians, the strange convergence of steel and asphalt has been the place where citizens parked before filing over to the criminal or civil courts nearby to serve jury duty. Over and over, proposals were made to replace it with a skyscraper -- only to have the plan fizzle and the structure remain.

Looking at it perched atop Bunker Hill, some confused it with a half-finished office building. And as the hill became populated with true architectural gems -- MOCA, the Cathedral and then Frank Gehry's Walt Disney Concert Hall -- the "Erector set" became even more of a blight.

"It's been such an eyesore, such a blot on the landscape," said Donald Shoup, a professor of urban planning at UCLA and an expert on parking.

In a few weeks, workers will finally begin removing the structure. As planners originally promised, it will be replaced by something more architectural: a Frank Gehry-designed condo and shopping complex clad in glass, concrete and limestone.

The structure went up in a matter of months in 1969 as a quick fix for a pressing problem. A survey conducted in 1966 showed that more than 250,000 cars were entering the city center each day, but there were only 81,000 parking spaces.

The designer, engineer Charles Bentley, was marketing what he called a "revolutionary concept": a low-cost portable parking structure that could be erected in a matter of weeks over an existing lot and taken down and moved as land uses changed. His $850,000 edifice was put together much like a child's Erector set. Concrete floors had connectors embedded into them so that they could be easily joined to the support columns and beams.

"I was kind of fascinated by the whole concept," said Samuel Wacht, the architect Bentley tapped for the project. "In some ways, it's like a tract house: If you get one floor plan, you perfect the economic design of that . . . and you can repeat it and effect the savings."

L.A. turned out to be the first major American city to try temporary parking buildings.

The county tapped Bentley to build the structure on the block between 1st and 2nd and Olive and Grand after watching his company, Portable Parking Structures Inc., build a similar edifice on the corner of what is now Temple and Judge John Aiso streets. (It too is still in use.)

L.A.'s cutting-edge parking concept won attention from futurists, who saw only one flaw. "Their appearance -- which is most charitably described as functional -- does not do much to improve the aesthetics of a neighborhood," Time magazine wrote in 1969.

Criticism of the building's austere design, Wacht said, is "probably a fair statement. . . . I guess in those days colors were not as important as they are today.."

But what's important to remember, Wacht said, is that the structure wasn't meant to be pretty; it was meant to be temporary. And as it turned out, the buildings were the product of a rather abbreviated era. Portable Parking Structures built only about two dozen of them -- none of which was relocated anywhere but the trash heap.

"The truth was, they tended to be somewhat ugly," said Gerald Katell, a former president of the company.

And.... more at the above link....

If Waytt Earp Was Still Alive...

... he's be 160 years old today.

Happy birthday, Wyatt!

Affordable Housing In Los Angeles - A Real World Solution

Below is my essay on a plan for financially sustainable affordable housing in Los Angeles. It is written as a response to the head of the City of Los Angeles Planning Commission - Jane Usher - who wrote me a very complimentary letter to me about my article on the evils of SB181. Below are the links to those to stories and below that - is my article this week:

My first article: http://lacowboy.blogspot.com/2008/03/why-sweat-al-qaeda-when-sb1818-is.html

Jane's Response: http://www.citywatchla.com/content/view/1078/

My SB1818 Solution: http://www.citywatchla.com/content/view/1068/


Affordable Housing-A Real World Solution

By Brady Westwater

Dear Jane,

First, thank you for your kind response to my CityWatch essay on the Density Bonus Bill (SB1818).

While we have on occasion disagreed on the way to preserve the character of our neighborhoods while we build new affordable housing, we have always agreed on what we want our future city to be; a place where everyone can be adequately housed. Unfortunately, the way in which we chose to try and do this has divided us – and everyone else in LA – and this has created the disconnect that has prevented that goal from ever being achieved.

I also know we equally strongly agree it is no longer sufficient to say simply what we are against – but what it is we support. I equally strongly feel that someone such as yourself, who has in the past supported a government mandated solution, can help bridge our mutual divide by joining with neighborhood councils to support a new post-ideological solution; a solution that even free market, libertarian Angelinos who instinctively oppose any type of inclusionary zoning, might not just accept, but even embrace; a true solution to build meaningful amounts of affordable housing for the first time in our city's history.

In that spirit of radical pragmatism, I propose we create an overall
housing initiative that respects the free market and follows our community and specific plans. It also, though, must provide the necessary funding to allow not just a handful of affordable housing units to be built (which is – at best - all that any of the current proposals will provide) - but is also must be a long term meaningful solution that addresses the root causes of our housing crisis. We must work together to make housing more affordable for all Angelinos and not just a lucky few.

Now before getting into a more detailed examination of a possible solution, first a few bullet points about our present situation and about some potential solutions:


1. Increasingly, study after study demonstrates the lack of affordable housing in any city is tied to the overall lack of all kinds of housing, i.e. – if not enough market rate housing is built – then all housing will eventually become unaffordable.

2. Since it is unacceptable to have affordable – or any - housing that overrides the community and specific plans - or destroys environmental safeguards without any community input or control, we must develop a financial plan that will allow more affordable housing – and all housing in this city – to be built without unacceptable density bonuses.

3. To do that, we need to speed up the process of updating community and specific plans so we can create community approved plans that will allow housing providers the knowledge of what they can build on their land. We also need to streamline the permitting process so that projects that meet the community approved plans can be built without being tied up for years of red tape and political maneuvering.

4. We need to realize the only way to maximize affordable housing is to remove the burden from private developers. But that can only be done if we at the same time provide a new financial model for professional affordable housing developers to build far more housing than they currently building. We need to concentrate on real world solutions and not ideological posturing.

5. This new financial model can begin by turning the existing housing trust fund into a land buying trust to acquire distressed properties for resale to affordable housing developers. This trust, though, needs be precluded from buying any projects in which more affordable housing is destroyed than is being built – and their emphases should be on buying undeveloped – or severely under-developed sites.


6. All these housing developers should then pay back into the revolving fund all the money for the land either at close of escrow or upon the recording of either the construction loan or the permanent financing. The fund or a related entity should also develop a mechanism to help finance the housing projects in a way that would
have no net cost to the city.

7. Lastly – each of these projects has to be a combination of affordable housing and market rate workforce housing – with a retail
and commercial component when possible – to 100% fund the affordable
component. This then frees up the capital to build more such
mixed-income projects, just as the land trust would be paid back to
buy more land.

8. The goal of this program is to develop financially sustainable
affordable housing while also creating enough market rate housing to
bring demand and supply into balance in this city. All such projects
would be required to meet community approved plans.

Now, needless to say, making any of these proposals work in the real
(as opposed to the theoretical) world requires considerable thought
and debate. And for a more detailed consideration, we need to examine
the two major sets of subsidized housing initiatives that exist today
in the City of Los Angeles.

The first program is the existing housing trust fund and the second
programs are initiatives such as the existing and the new proposed
inclusionary-zoning (IZO) plans, including the just passed …
and now infamous … Density Bonus (SB1818) ordinance.

The existing trust fund is/will be $100 million dollars in city funds to help build new subsidized housing. It is well intentioned, but it will build comparatively few units since it calls for enormous public subsidies per unit and that will automatically dramatically limit the number of units that can be built. By definition, it will not begin to cover the shortfall of needed new affordable housing, even with its multiplier affect due to leverage and matching funds.

The second set of initiatives, the yet to be passed mandatory city wide
inclusionary zoning plan, along with some other existing inclusionary
zoning plans – including the now iSB1818 enabling legislation – will
also provide very few new units compared to the size of the demand. In addition, all these inclusionary zoning ordinances have the potential danger of having the reverse of their intended affect.


Mandatory inclusionary could easily limit the building of new housing
(thus creating city wide increases in the costs of existing housing), plus it will make the non-subsidized portion of the new housing more expensive as the developers have to recover the cost of subsidizing the 'affordable' units, particularly as the proposed density bonuses to make these projects fiscally feasible face considerable opposition from the neighborhood councils – even among councils willing to accept
subsidized housing. And with the current downturn in housing construction, it could stop almost all new construction – thus creating a far greater housing crisis in the future.

Government mandated inclusionary housing programs ignore the reality
that report after report has discovered; the more barriers a city puts in the way of housing being developed – the more expensive housing is in that city. So the irony is, the efforts made in this city to make housing more affordable, will only result in making it more expensive.

We have met the enemy of affordable housing – and it is us.

What these reports have convincingly demonstrated is that no program
which makes it both harder and more expensive to build housing (and more difficult to get financing) will create an increase in overall housing. This will, unequivocally, have the end result of less housing being built, rather then more, unless the entitlement process and rules are dramatically changed. And changing the rules to overrule our community and specific plans simply is not acceptable.

Therefore, understanding this, the current inclusionary zoning proposals - all allow for density bonuses for developers, lowered parking requirements, taller buildings than the land is currently zoned for, and reduced amounts of open space for each project – and most of these options are unacceptable.

And, if that is not bad enough, all of these proposals will also completely strip the local neighborhoods – and the neighborhood councils – of the right to have ANY say in what is being built in their neighborhood.

This demonstrates the danger of having city policy written by single issue, special interest groups and their lobbyists and lawyers.

Special interest groups invariably see their own private goals as being so important that no matter how devastating their projects or proposals have on the rest of society, they see their way as the only morally correct way.

NC's, however, should not allow any one single special interest group to dictate the future of our neighborhoods – whether it be the subsidized housing developers or market rate developers who are not dealing with the actual needs of the communities they are building within.

But we need to not just oppose bad legislation, but to also provide real world solutions when the city will not – or can not.

The first solution is to speed up the process of developing new community plans. We need to create the real zoning that Gail Goldberg has proposed and then remove politics from zoning and allow housing providers to get building permits within the community plan's guidelines in a fraction of the time it currently takes.

More than anything else, that will bring down the overall cost of housing in our city and it will make it easier to build housing that conforms to community endorsed community plans. That is the one – and the only – way to make housing overall more affordable in this city for the average person.

Housing providers should to be able to easily get building permits if – and ONLY if –they meet pre-existing community vetted community plans. Unfortunately, we are a long way from being able to do that. But that is exactly why new, enforceable community plans need to be one of our top priorities; both to protect our communities' integrity and to keep housing prices in check in Los Angeles

But while this will still not address the need to create more low income and workforce housing that will not be built by free market developers.

Fortunately, though, there is a way we can get that housing built, too.

The concept is two fold.

First we need to take the existing housing trust fund and turn it into
a revolving trust fund that buys land and resells it to affordable housing developers. And, strictly by chance – with land prices about to decline even
faster than housing prices - now is the perfect time to create this program.

As banks foreclose on unbuilt – or partially built projects – and
developable land becomes harder and harder to sell – we are at the
very beginning of a major buying opportunity for affordable housing
developers. And the best buys will come from sellers – and banks
– who need to sell a property – today.

I can think of no better time to create a 'vulture' fund to buy distressed properties.

However, to do that, there is one major obstacle in this process. The city moves at a glacial pace when it comes to doing… anything.

Therefore, a non-profit public private organization should be set-up
to buy land expeditiously whenever developers and/or owners have to
sell their property – immediately. And by being a non-profit, it will
be able to give tax deductions for full or partial donations of the
land. But more than anything else, this land trust needs to be created
with the sole mission of finding and buying bargain priced land anywhere in this city – the second it becomes available.

This land trust – since its sole job is to buy property - should be
run by hard-headed ex-businessmen who know how to buy land. No
politicians, no non-profits who might be re-buying the land the trust
acquires. We need people who live and breathe getting the best possible
deals on dirt. And they will be mandated to only buy undeveloped or
dramatically under developed properties – thus removing existing rent controlled apartment houses from their menu, which will remove the
unintended negative consequences of SB1818

But it is the second part of the program that makes the concept work.

Each project in this new program would be required to build a combination of subsidized (at varying rates and for varying income levels) AND market rate housing (which can be either for sale or for lease or mixed), along with retail and commercial components – when appropriate.

And if the land is industrial-zoned, part of the project could be used to create new jobs and if the parcel is large enough, part of the land could be reserved for park space.

The density for the project would depend on community plans and the nearness to appropriate transit (an upcoming essay on how to create a workable jobs/housing/transportation matrix will further address this).

But – again – any and all of these benefits will only be possible if the land is bought at the right price, hence the need for the land trust run by professionals in land acquisition.

And once the trust buys the land – it will put the land – or a portion of it – out to bid to housing developers who will then make proposals that need to go through a community review process. But since the project will need to meet the existing community plan and since a basic framework will need to be adhered to – there needs to be a limit on how much time that process could take. That way both the needs of the housing provider and the community can be met.

The basics of the community plan need to be followed; after that – it's whoever has the best track record at providing quality housing at the best price with the best overall result for the community. This gives the developers an incentive to create community acceptable projects so they can remain eligible for future land purchases.

Now why has this type of land trust and this type of development not
been done in the past?

There are several possible reasons.

First, it has been felt by some not be a proper use of public funds. to build market rate as well as subsidized housing. But by thus being able to build far more housing of all types in financially self-sustaining complexes, the greater supply will eventually act as a brake on the increase in housing prices, along with, in the long run, creating far more new affordable housing. This creates a far greater public good than just the building of subsidized housing projects. And even the market rate housing in these projects should emphasize workforce rather than luxury housing.

And, remember, LA has a huge supply of affordable housing units. They are just being presently priced out of many tenant's range by the lack of enough market rate housing being built.

Ironically, that market rate shortage is the biggest housing problem this city has right now. The lack of enough true market rate housing being built – and the inability for builders to build cheaper market rate housing due to all the red tape the city requires, even long after the appropriate zoning has been agreed upon – is what is destroying our affordable housing supply.

The second reason given by non-profit housing developers is that
lenders tend to shy away from this type of mixed income project,
particularly when very low-income units pass a certain percentage of
the units. And some existing lower income housing developers feel it
will be hard to lure market rate tenants/buyers into complexes with
lower income tenants.

But these subsidized housing developers can not have it both ways. They can not say that they cannot make these types of projects work – and then expect private developers to make a profit using this same formula. And with the gentrification of some of the toughest neighborhoods in LA – with heroin addicts sprawled on sidewalks and rampant gang activity – having some subsidized units in a project in a decent neighborhood is not going to keep people from buying or renting well-priced units.

The third reason given by non-profit developers is that lenders tend
to shy away from this type of mixed income project, particularly when
low or very low-income units pass a certain percentage of the units.
And there has been some historic truth to this. But there are ways –
which I will address later – in which financial controls can be
installed to make these types of projects easier sells to lenders –
and to greatly reduce the risk taken by the non-profit developers.

This is where the city and its housing fund and existing government financing programs can make the big difference.

First, possibly using the trust fund mortgages as collateral, the city
can in someway guarantee these loans with the appropriate financial
controls installed that will be discussed later. But that is only one
possibility and one, which may – or may not be – feasible.

Second, the city might issue bonds of their own to give the non-profit
developers lower cost loans due to the city's credit rating for the
parts of the project that might not be fundable though more
conventional sources. And, again, this has its pros and cons but it
may also be part of the solution.

Then once these types of projects develop a track record – and
particularly as each specific non-profit (or profit making) developer
develops their own track record – it will become easier and easier for
them to obtain financing.

Additionally, as these developers do more of these projects, they will
develop greater expertise on how to make this kind of project work.
And they can also then help unions, artist's groups, churches,
universities, co-ops of any kind and other community organizations
develop housing programs for their own members by contracting out on a fee only basis to such organizations.

Fashion workers can have condos near the Fashion District, city employee unions can build buildings, hotel & supermarket unions canhave scattered projects around the city and each college can have its own housing clusters.

These organizations can also band together with other organizations each having ownership of different parts of one project for its members and then have a fee only non-profit developers build the project.

There is no limit to the numbers of non-profit housing providers that can be created once we develop a core group of experienced developers to work with these non-profits. And with a built-in supply of buyers and tenants, these projects would be less susceptible to the vagaries of the market and would be able to build in down times when materials and labor are less expensive.

Lastly, the major problem of community resistance to subsidized projects will be greatly reduced by having all kinds of housing in these projects, making them a better fit in all kinds of communities – and more acceptable to both lower and upper income neighborhoods. Plus, by needing to keep their market rate tenants and commercial tenants happy, the owners will have to make certain their projects are
not creating any quality of life problems for the neighborhood


Meanwhile, by freeing up market rate developers to develop market rate housing without the expense of having to subsidize any of their units (unless they, of course, want to subsidize a percentage of their units utilizing tax credit financing who will now be MORE available to them assuming the non-profit developers can utilize other programs), they will not only build more housing, but they will be able to afford to offer their units at a lower prices.

Lastly, I am not even addressing all the other types of financing non-profit developers often use to make their projects pencil out that can still be utilized in these projects. All those types of subsidies are still on the table

And, of course, the more units that are built – the lower the prices will become. This will particularly happen if the increased housing production of all kinds finally brings the supply of housing into a balance with the demand for housing.

But with over three million people in this city, we can never, ever build enough affordable housing to meet the demand. I repeat, never. Ever. Under any circumstances.

It is simply too expensive to subsidize enough NEW housing to meet the needs of people who make substantially less than the median income, particularly when so many hundreds of thousands of existing older units can meet their needs.
And it is also a completely wasteful use of our recourses with all the other needs of our society.

The only long-term solution is to create enough new market rate
housing to stop the gentrification of lower-priced neighborhoods.

It is just that… simple.

Now… as for how to deal with the risk on all these projects so they can become more credit worthy – and protect the long term financial viability of the non-profits, there are several ways of dealing with this. But rather than deal here with the minutiae all of them, I will address just four of most important built-in protections.

First, while the community has to have a strong role in selecting which developer gets each project – the first look needs to come from the Trust that buys – and sells – the property. They need to first narrow down the list to qualified developers with established financial track records and proven expertise in these types of projects. And if any community supported group – or – God help us…
'politically connected' group can't make that initial cut – they can still team up with a proven developer. This gives us a first level of protection.

Second, as the original trust fund loans are paid off, a certain amount might be kept in short term securities to cover any of the mortgages should they go into default. And each of the projects – as long as the city is still on the hook for the mortgages, might have a signed quit claim which would allow either the city or the overall development company to take over the project, if necessary, should it
go into default.

In addition, each loan guarantee (should a city loan guarantee be a
part of the project) would be pre-negotiated with the lender to expire
after either a certain net income is generated or the mortgage is paid
down to a certain level. That way the city will not be on the hook for
too many properties.

But these are just suggestions for a much longer discussion that needs
to be held.

Third, while some groups may need short term financing, many non-profits are capable of buying the land out right (once the city has bought it at the 'right price") – and the city's financial involvement will only be very short term then before the money gets paid back – and re-lent out again.

But it is the fourth protection that is the big one.

When each project is finished, ONLY the market rate units (and any
commercial/retail spaces) will be leased or sold. The subsidized units will only be leased or sold AFTER the market rates units that subsidize them are sold or leased.

This way the developer will know what numbers of units can be subsidized – and at what rates they can be subsidized. This guarantees that each project will be financially self-sustaining.

Later, as rents go up on the market units, they can further subsidize
– if necessary – the other units. Or they can re-rent out formerly
market rate units at subsidized rates as they become vacant after the
rents rise in the other market rate units.

But, again, initially, no below market units would be sold or rented
until the project is guaranteed to be financially viable. And if the
market is trending downward, an additional level of security might be required.

Then there is the final, possible kicker in this project – and it could be a big one.

All these projects might have 15-year mortgages – for two reasons.

First, whenever market conditions change and the housing market crashes – interest rates usually drop, and the projects can be refinanced – and they can be refinanced with 30-year mortgages with lower payments if need be - to keep the project sustainable.

So even while that kind of severe rental rate drop is an unlikely
event, it does give each project a further fail-safe mechanism to keep the projects solvent.

But the real advantage of the 15-year mortgages is that in 15 years –
each one of these projects will be fully paid off.

Totally free and clear.

With zero mortgage payments.

In just…15 years.

At that point each project can either be refinanced to build more
projects, or all of the renal units can be made very affordable – or, more likely – a combination of these two options.

The end result is not only a self-sustaining, self-replicating original housing fund – but also providing long term financing for much larger amounts of affordable housing – with a huge cash infusion into the program starting 15 years from now, and continuing for every year after that.

So rather than many programs in which housing becomes less affordable
after the mortgages have been paid off – under this program – the
housing will become more consistently MORE affordable over time. Now
can you imagine what LA would be like if this type of thinking had
taken place in the 1930's or the 1950's?

The most shortsighted aspect of much subsidized housing is that some of it will become non-subsided in the future. Here – exactly the opposite would be true. Not only will the original units always remain affordable… forever– but also the ability to create more subsidized units will increase.

A true long term, financially sustainable – albeit, partial – solution to our housing crisis.

But it is just one of the policies that need to be adopted to make this a city with livable neighborhoods, abundant, affordable housing and a city where owners will out number renters. And while increased density is wrong for most of the neighborhoods in this city, we need a handful of more dense neighborhoods both to
prove the needed housing, to reduce suburban sprawl –and – equally
importantly – to create the great urban cores that can only happen
within areas of considerable residential density.

The other parts of the puzzle can be solved by creating a RX Zoning
overlay of our existing zoning code to voluntarily preserve the
quality of life in existing neighborhoods (and that proposal will soon
appear in CITYWATCH), by greatly increased density in areas such as
downtown that are appropriate and by passing a new condo conversion
ordinance to allow tenants to buy their own units.

And then there's greatest home building opportunity in the city's history which can be done in conjunction with the re-greening of the LA River Downtown along existing hard rail lines that lead straight to Union Station (and a self-financing plan to do that soon to appear in CITYWATCH).

Except, of course, the city in its ever infinite lack of wisdom – has just banned all housing along the LA River throughout Downtown Los Angeles.

But that's another battle for another time.

For now, we need to save the quality of life in our city's other neighborhoods by first stopping SB1818 and then by making a commitment to create a financially self-sustainable affordable housing program that can provide affordable housing within our existing zoning guidelines and our existing community and specific plans.

So Jane, are you ready to team up with the NC's on finding a common solution on the affordable housing crisis? Are you interested in working with us on this?

I'll be looking for your response in the next CITYWATCH.

(Brady Westwater is a writer, a long-time downtown and neighborhood council activist and Chair of the LA NC Congress Economic Development Committee. Westwater is a regular contributor to CityWatch. He can be reached at: bradywestwater@gmail.com)

Six Theaters Of Free Comedy TONIGHT On Art Walk!

THURSDAY March 13th 8:30 PM - 10:00 PM

Yes, for the third month in a row - Comedy Walk comes to the Downtown Art Walk! 90 minutes of top comics performing in six venues within half-a-block of 5th and Spring Street - including the historic Palm Court Ballroom at the Alexandria Hotel and the new Los Angeles Theatre Center.

Program schedule and venues for this Thursday, March 13th, 8:30pm-10pm
for COMEDY WALK are below...

Print FREE TICKETS...

http://www.comedywalk.com/2008/rsvp.cw.0803.html

THIS MONTH'S COMEDY WALK PERFORMERS...

*Rebecca Addelman, Mario Artiga, *Joe Bartnick, *Peter Berman, *Pat
Boccuzzi, Travis Clark, Competitive Awesome (sketch), *Daniel Dominguez,
*Ian Edwards, Dickie Funkbuckle, Marly Halpern-Graser, Gerry Katzman,
Andy Kern, Shaun Latham, Laughs on Demand (improv), Erik Lundy, Vanda
Mikoloski, *The Mooney Twins, The Mutiny (improv), Mike Nielsen, Red
Herring (improv), *Melanie Reno, Iliza Schlesinger, Mikey Scott, Scott
Vinci (music), *Joe Wilson, *Elisha Yaffe

PROGRAM...

Venue #1
Downtown Comedy Club
Alexandria Hotel Palm Court Ballroom
501 S Spring Street
Los Angeles, CA 90013
200-seat club
Hosts: Garrett Morris & Kevin Garnier
8:25pm Host Warm-Up
8:30pm Mario Artiga
8:40pm Joe Wilson
8:50pm Competitive Awesome
9:00pm Pat Boccuzzi
9:10pm Joe Bartnick
9:20pm The Mooney Twins
9:30pm Dickie Funkbuckle
9:40pm Ian Edwards
9:50pm Peter Berman
10:00pm Garrett Morris

Venue #2
The Chicken Room
214 W. 5th St.
Los Angeles, CA 90013
1,000-sq.ft SRO
Host: Pam Van Zandt
8:25pm Host Warm-Up
8:30pm Erik Lundy
8:40pm Laughs on Demand
8:50pm Shaun Latham
9:00pm Travis Clark
9:10pm Melanie Reno
9:20pm Andy Kern
9:30pm Marly Halpern-Graser
9:40pm Rebecca Addleman
9:50pm Joe Wilson
10:00pm Goodnight

Venue #3
The New LATC
Los Angeles Theater Center
514 S. Spring St., Theater #4
Los Angeles, CA 90013
80-seat cabaret
Host: Kimberly Douglas
8:25pm Host Warm-Up
8:30pm Red Herring
8:40pm Andy Kern
8:50pm Mikey Scott
9:00pm Peter Berman
9:10pm Mike Nielsen
9:20pm Scott Vinci
9:30pm Elisha Yaffe
9:40pm Travis Clark
9:50pm The Mooney Twins
10:00pm Goodnight

Venue #4
Wyatt Earp Room
Alexandria Building
212 W. 5th Steet
Los Angeles, CA 90013
1,000 sq. ft. SRO
Host: Amy Asmuth
8:25pm Host Warm-Up
8:30pm Dan Dominguez
8:40pm The Mutiny
8:50pm Elisha Yaffe
9:00pm Erik Lundy
9:10pm Gerry Katzman
9:20pm Mario Artiga
9:30pm Laughs on Demand
9:40pm Vanda Mikoloski
9:50pm Iliza Schlesinger
10:00pm Goodnight

Venue #5
The Onion Room
Spring Arts Tower
207 W. 5th Street
Los Angeles, CA 90013
1,400 sq. ft. SRO
Host: Stefany Northcutt
8:25pm Host Warm-Up
8:30pm Mike Nielsen
8:40pm Iliza Schlesinger
8:50pm Dickie Funkbuckle
9:00pm Ian Edwards
9:10pm Red Herring
9:20pm Competitive Awesome
9:30pm Pat Boccuzzi
9:40pm Mikey Scott
9:50pm Joe Bartnick
10:00pm Goodnight

Venue #6
The Backstage
Spring Arts Tower
211 W. 5th Street
Los Angeles, CA 90013
1,600 sq. ft. SRO
Host: Heather Ignacio
8:25pm Host Warm-Up
8:30pm Scott Vinci
8:40pm Vanda Mikoloski
8:50pm Rebecca Addleman
9:00pm Marly Halpern-Graser
9:10pm Dan Dominquez
9:20pm The Mutiny
9:30pm Gerry Katzman
9:40pm Shaun Latham
9:50pm Melanie Reno
10:00pm Goodnight

LACMA Jumps Wilshire Boulevard - AGAIN!

In this morning's Los Angeles Times, the above linked article quotes the seller of a building and adjacent construction site on the south side of Wilshire to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The quote was that LACMA has now 'jumped' Wilshire.

Alas, no one at the LA Times seems to realize that LACMA years 'jumped' Wilshire when it purchased the southeast corner of Wilshire and Spaulding which is presently being used as a parking lot. The rest of the article, though, is worth reading.

LACMA's latest purchase: land
LACMA purchases a tract across Wilshire from the new Broad Contemporary.
By Anne-Marie O'Connor
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

March 12, 2008

Further expanding its 20-acre campus, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art has purchased a sizable parcel of land across the street from its ambitious new showcase, the Broad Contemporary Art Museum, for what sources involved with the deal said was close to $12 million.

City Councilman Tom LaBonge said the parcel would not only expand the Miracle Mile museum district but also possibly serve as a stop on a future subway to the sea.

"This is a victory. Urban lights is what this is all about," LaBonge said, alluding to the Chris Burden sculpture of streetlights newly installed along Wilshire Boulevard at LACMA.

"This is part of the big plan," LaBonge said. "It's all going to be complementary, and one day there's going to be a subway stop there, and everybody in the county can ride transit to that wonderful complex of art museums.

"We should build our city culturally," LaBonge said in a telephone interview from Washington, where he was attending a National League of Cities conference and lobbying Congress on issues such as air quality, the Los Angeles River restoration and Los Angeles International Airport.

LACMA spokeswoman Barbara Pflaumer said she was "delighted" by the acquisition but could offer few details, such as the size of the lot.

"We saw this as an opportunity to develop key parts of the campus," Pflaumer said. "We don't have specific plans for the property. It was an opportunity to buy something, and we bought it. . . . We'd love a subway stop."

Pflaumer said the county did not pay for the purchase but declined to say who had. The reported price was about half of what LACMA paid in 1994 for the May Co. property adjacent to the museum.

LaBonge, whose district includes the site of the purchase, said the parcel encompasses a five-story office building completed in 1960, at the southwest corner of Wilshire and Ogden, and a construction site to the rear of it, which had been planned as a loft complex by a division of Miami-based Lennar Corp.

Kevin Farr, president of the Southern California division of Lennar Urban, which sold the property to LACMA, said the purchase closed escrow in late February.

"They've jumped Wilshire Boulevard," Farr said. "We had been working on a development, but the museum was a much more interested buyer than we were a developer at this point."

Lennar's Southern California urban development group, which builds high-density residential projects, had planned to build "Gallery Lofts," whose address was listed as 6006 Wilshire Blvd.

The projected complex was an upscale residential project intended to "bring loft-style living to new heights" of "metropolitan energy, urban luxury," according to its online brochure.

But at the moment, the project is an unfinished low-rise skeleton that many of its neighbors view as an eyesore.

LaBonge said the LACMA acquisition solidifies a cultural hub in walking distance of the Page Museum, the Petersen Automotive Museum and the Craft and Folk Art Museum.

"You go up three blocks to the Farmers Market and you're in heaven," he said. "Just like in the nation's capital in the Mall, Los Angeles will have a wonderful location. There's a lot of complement when you cluster museums together. It's a great plus."

Getty Gauguin Grab Makes New York Times Website Front Page - But Not...

.... on the Los Angeles Times website.

March 12, 2008
Getty Museum Buys a Seldom-Exhibited Gauguin
By EDWARD WYATT
LOS ANGELES — The J. Paul Getty Museum announced Tuesday that it had acquired “Arii Matamoe,” an 1892 painting by Paul Gauguin that has been in a private collection in Switzerland for decades and has been exhibited publicly only once since 1946.

The museum would not identify the seller or say how much it paid for the work. Getty officials said the painting was in good condition and would probably go on display next month after cleaning and modest restoration.

Another painting by Gauguin from the same period, “Te Poipoi” (“The Morning”), was purchased by a Hong Kong collector in November at auction at Sotheby’s for $35 million, or $39.2 million including the buyer’s premium.

Created during Gauguin’s first extended stay in Tahiti, “Arii Matamoe,” whose title Gauguin translated as “The Royal End,” depicts the severed head of a Polynesian man resting on a white cushion set on a low table or serving platter. A mourning nude female figure crouches nearby, framed by skull motifs on the wall behind her. In the background, other figures rest outside the house.

While the painting may have been loosely inspired by the death of the former Tahitian king Pomare V, just after Gauguin’s arrival in Tahiti in 1891, it does not depict an actual person or even common Tahitian death rites, said Scott Schaefer, the senior curator of paintings at the Getty.

Rather, Mr. Schaefer said, Gauguin probably created the painting “to shock Parisians” when it was exhibited in 1893 at Durand-Ruel’s gallery. The only recent public viewing of the painting was in 1998 as part of a Gauguin exhibition at the Fondation Pierre Gianadda in Martigny, Switzerland. Mr. Schaefer said the painting had had only three or four owners in its history. It was moved from Paris to Geneva in 1941, he said, was sold during World War II and once subsequently to a private collector there, where it has remained.

Michael Brand, the Getty’s director, said the acquisition was “one of the key moments in the history of our collection.” The museum owns three other works by Gauguin: “Eve (The Nightmare),” a transfer drawing from 1899 or 1900, the artist’s later Tahitian period; “Portrait of a Tahitian Girl,” a black chalk drawing from 1892; and a wood sculpture, “Head With Horns,” from 1895-97.

Elizabeth Childs, a Gauguin scholar who is chairwoman of the department of art history and archaeology at Washington University in St. Louis, described “Arii Matamoe” as a major painting in which the artist uses “a wonderful mélange” of motifs and symbols from Tahitian, Javanese, French, Peruvian and other cultures.

“There are enough references here that it is clear that Gauguin was remaining interested in proving himself to a Parisian art market,” Ms. Childs said, even after he retreated to Tahiti.

Though the subject matter, the public display of a severed head, had no specific reference in Tahitian society, the death of Pomare V might be relevant to the work, Ms. Childs said. Pomare had overseen the annexation of Tahiti as a French territory, and his death left the French as the only real power there.

Variety Has AFTRA Settlement Story at.... 5:42 PM Sunday....

.... and it's Monday and the Los Angeles Times still does NOT have the story up on their website....

AFTRA makes networks deal
Org reaches tentative three-year deal
By DAVE MCNARYAFTRA has reached a tentative three-year deal with networks on its network code, which covers work by its members on nonprimetime TV.
Agreement -- reached late Saturday in New York -- includes wage increases, higher employer contributions on pension and health gains and new-media terms that mirror the provisions in the recent DGA and WGA deals. AFTRA's negotiating committee endorsed the pact unanimously.

AFTRA's move opens the door for the performers union to begin negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers on coverage of primetime TV. No date has been set, but talks are likely to start in late March or early April.

Although AFTRA has threatened to negotiate a deal on its own, it's expected SAG leaders will agree this week to joint bargaining under conditions of the two unions' 27-year-old Phase One agreement (Daily Variety, March 7), though the situation has not been finalized following a long feud. AFTRA has asserted that SAG violated Phase One by instituting block voting on its negotiating committee and accused its leaders of being inflexible; SAG's accused AFTRA of shilling for producers by signing cable shows to lower initial terms.

The AFTRA deal, which still must be ratified by its national board and members to go into effect, came a day after expiration of the previous contract. AFTRA had extended the expiration twice -- first from Nov. 15 and then again from Jan. 31 -- so the WGA could reach its deal first.

Current contract covers about $400 million in annual earnings from dramatic programs in syndication or outside primetime. It also includes daytime serial dramas, gameshows, talkshows, variety and musical programs, news, sports, reality shows and promotional announcements.

Negotiations began Feb. 19. Reps from SAG, the WGA, IATSE, AFM and Actors Equity attended portions of the sessions.

The AMPTP noted the contrast with the WGA negotiations, although it didn't mention the WGA by name. Talks with the writers began last summer and didn't conclude until Feb. 9 -- three days before the end of the WGA's strike.

"The AMPTP applauds the latest labor agreement between AFTRA and the television networks," it said. "This agreement shows what can be accomplished when both sides approach the negotiating table in a timely, serious and focused way."

AFTRA prexy Roberta Reardon called the pact a "major milestone" for AFTRA. "This contract is extraordinary for performers and made significant progress on many fronts, including importantly, new media jurisdiction and compensation," she added.

AFTRA said other gains include increases in "extra rehearsal" and overtime rates by 25%; retetention of universal coverage for background actors in all formats; raises in minimum call provisions for singers and stand-ins; raising exclusivity thresholds for performers under contract; establishing a day rate for dancers on awards programs; and guaranteed health and retirement coverage for stunt coordinators on serial dramas.

Is Anyone Home At The LA Times? Nikki Publishes PRESS RELEASE from AFTRA Announcing Contract Settlement at 7:46 PM - AND...

.... the Los Angles Times doesn't have a word about the settlement for non-prime time shows (as opposed to prime time shows which still need to be negotiated)... FOUR HOURS later!

But the website does have a 1933 earthquake story that says Southern California was just starting to grow in.... 1933; and, of course, that is almost exactly when the amazing growth of the first third of the century was just beginning to slow down.

Will Saturday Night Live Select The Next President Of The United States?

After watching the first new Saturday Night Live show after the strike and its spoofing of the mass media's love affair with Obama - it was clear that the media was going to have to change its reporting of the campaign. Then after Clinton's brilliantly handled appearance the following week, it was even more clear that any swing voters watching - would be likely swinging her way.

Then add to that the trial in Chicago and the NAFTA disaster, and the race has started all over again.

Maybe. And we'll soon know after the polls close.

Why Sweat Al Qaeda When SB1818 Is Destroying Los Angeles! Stop The Density Bonus!

My essay in today's CITYWATCH:

Will Janice Hahn Save Us from Forces of Greed?
Repealing Density Bonus Bill
By Brady Westwater

Right now – while your children lie asleep in their beds – you may get a phone call at 3 AM when a neighbor finds on his computer a notice about a massive apartment building being built next door with far too few parking spaces, zero open space, vastly more units and considerably more height that the property is legally zoned for.

And in exchange for your neighborhood's permanent loss of parking, mature trees, green spaces for children to play in, light and air - and in exchange for all the increasing gridlock and congestion – this neighborhood-destroying new development will include a handful of affordable units that will invariably be far fewer in number than the ones in the usually rent controlled apartment building being torn down for the new building. And there will not be a thing you or any of us will be able to do to stop this.

Nor will all of us combined be able to stop even one of the tens of thousands of other developments of this type throughout our city that have just been 'legalized' – even though every single one of them will violate our neighborhood approved specific and community plans.

So we will have all to suffer the negative effects of inappropriate development – and far fewer affordable rent-controlled housing units throughout our city - thanks to the city council's recent approval of the biggest payoff developers have ever received in this city.

In fact, right now – throughout our city - sleeper cells of developers and architects are designing massive, neighborhood busting complexes of the type you and your neighborhood council – mistakenly – thought your community plan protected you against.

Now you may ask – how can this be happening?

And why now?

SB-1818 … popularly called the Density Bonus bill … in all its various forms, has been around for many of years. It is one of two types of laws passed in Sacramento that infringe upon our rights to plan our own future.

The first type mandates a certain amount of affordable housing in each city and mandates that city's will provide adequate housing for all of its citizens. This type of legislation ensures that each city provides its fair share of low income housing – and most people support this type of a general mandate.

Then there is the second type of law that strips cities of the right to protect single family and lower density neighborhoods and make it illegal for cities to fully consider congestion, public safety, traffic and the historic character of neighborhoods when permitting new housing. All too often this law type is lobbyist driven and disproportionately rewards developers for including even a tiny amount of low income housing in their projects.

And Los Angeles had no choice but to approve a law of this type … SB1818 … because it is a state law that legally requires the city to do so.

So what can we do about this? What can we do to stop the bulldozing of the historic and low density neighborhoods of our city?

Well, the answer was proposed at last Saturday's LA NC Congress meeting when Janice Hahn described her fight against the Los Angeles version of SB1818 that the city council just passed. Her audience had a suggestion for her. Some of us proposed she introduce a bill demanding that the state legislature repeal this now infamous SB1818 – and every other law that steals from the citizens of this state the right to protect our existing neighborhoods.


And it's important to remember that repealing these bills does not in any way repeal the legal requirement for California cities to build their fair share of affordable housing. All this will do is to allow each city to develop its own plan to meet these still state-mandated goals.

SB1818's repeal also does not keep the city of Los Angeles from passing each of the rules the City Council just passed should the city feel these are the rules we should be following.

Its repeal would allow us to achieve the same goals and to do so after we have created our own guidelines that respect our community plans. And our laws can also be rewritten so that there is a correlation between increased density and a real world increase in affordable housing units.

So this bill's repeal will protect our neighborhoods, slow the destruction of existing affordable housing units – and allow construction that creates a net increased in affordable housing units.

So why would any member of the LA City Council not support this? There is one reason - and only one reason only.

Right now, because a local version of SB1818 is mandatory, members of the city council can vote for developer-enriching, affordable-housing bulldozing, neighborhood- destroying laws by claiming they are being forced to do so by a state law.

But if that law goes away – then they can no longer use that excuse.

Of course, we all know that no single member of our city council would ever stoop to doing that. So there should be no problem getting a 15–0 vote on this and have it ready for the Mayor to sign within say… thirty days?

So Janice – are you ready to introduce that bill?

And NCs' – are we ready to support her?

If so, look for an example of a resolution your neighborhood councils might want to consider passing in the next issue of CITYWATCH. It’s time to get past the talk stage and start walkin’ the walk.

And also look for an announcement soon from the LANCC Economic Development Committee on its upcoming forum on 'How to Build Financially Sustainable – And Neighborhood Friendly – Affordable Housing.’

(Brady Westwater is a writer, a long-time downtown and neighborhood council activist and Chair of the LA NC Congress Economic Development Committee. Westwater is a regular contributor to CityWatch. He can be reached at: bradywestwater@gmail.com

Grand Avenue Dead Horse Kicking!

Below is my latest CITYWATCH essay:

Grand Ave Project: Usual Suspects Looking for Dead Horses to Kick
Dubai or Not Dubai
By Brady Westwater

When the Grand Avenue Project obtained equity financing from Dubai two weeks ago, all the usual suspects quickly took to their hobby horses to exhume dead horses to kick. And, as expected, the easiest expired equine to batter was the claim Los Angeles taxpayers are giving away hundreds of millions of their tax dollars to the developers – which now include the Royal Family of Dubai.

Unfortunately, the people making these claims are either not familiar with the complicated financial aspects of the project – or, if they do understand them, they choose to ignore them for their own political benefit.

The reality is that not one cent you or I are currently paying is being given any developers – royal or commoner - to enrich themselves. Instead, in an increasingly risky financial market, and despite the increasing cost to the developer, and the daily more difficult real estate market – Related (the developer) is still going ahead without asking for any changes in the development agreement.

As far as the current agreement, let's look at the supposed 'hundreds of millions' of dollars being given to developers, to quote Walter Moore, among others.

Exactly as before, the only direct subsides the developers are getting is an rebate of future tax revenues from the project– about $66 million - $60 million from the future hotel tax and the $6 million future parking tax for 20 and 5 years respectively. That's right. The only direct subsidy is coming from money that would only happen if the project is built.

Not one dime being given to the developers is coming from existing revenues. And the only reason there is a parking tax rebate, is because the City/County have mandated that the public parking – but not the condo or hotel parking – be subsidized at below market rates. And, as for the hotel, the only other major hotel being built Downtown - at LA Live - is also getting a temporary rebate on its hotel tax, which the city agreed to in order to get enough new hotel rooms built to stop the flow of red ink from the convention center; a rebate, I might add, that is far less than all the sales, property and other taxes the hotel will generate for LA.

So whether you agree – or disagree –with that strategy – (and there are very legitimate reasons to disagree with it and I would have structured it somewhat differently myself) that is a policy precedent the city made prior to the approval process of Grand Avenue so the LA LIVE hotel could be competitive with existing hotels – many of which are non-union with lower operating costs - that have long since amortized their development costs.

What most people forget though is that to get to the point where those two subsidies kick in- the developer also had to grant a massive public benefits package to get the approvals to build. Union jobs at the hotel and 100% unionized construction crews, requiring Related to pay far higher salaries than most other LA developers, job training programs, and other community benefits; costs that add far more to the project than the subsidies they are receiving. The biggest public benefit is the requirement that 20% of all the units in the project will be rented at not just far below market value – but, in some cases, likely below even the cost of maintaining those units. And as with much housing of this type – it will be financed though tax increment funds that are restricted to affordable housing – and cannot be used anything else, along with the sale of bonds.

So that is money that will eventually flow through to the residents of those units – and not the developer.

Additionally - there are two things no one ever discusses about this project.

First, should it cost more to build these affordable units – or it costs more to maintain them over the years – 100% of that overage will come not from us – but from the developer. Second, the only thing that will make serious money on this project is the sale of condos and the rental of market rate units. But 20% of those units will either not make the developer a dime - or might even cost them money.

Now to put that in perspective - imagine you own a store – and you had to sell 20% of everything in it at no profit – or even a loss; or suppose you work at a factory and 20% of the hours you work – you don't get paid. And just as a store only has so much shelf space to sell from and you have only so many hours a day in which you can work – Related is only allowed to build so many condos.

So would you agree to those terms?

Of course not.

Or, at least, not unless you were given other incentives to enable you to afford to do so.

And one thing no one ever talks about. In 99 years – the taxpayers of Los Angeles – will own the land free and clear.

Lastly, Waller Moore says that the city and the county should use an upcoming meeting where they have to approve the new financing package – to bail out of the project; that we should withdraw from the project based on the reasons why CALPERS pulled out. Well, CALPERS pulled out because pension funds have to demonstrate they can meet their short term ongoing needs; so their investments need to demonstrate they will be secure in the short term – and not just – the long run. A country such as Dubai (which will be only a minority limited partner) is the perfect passive investor. They are looking at the long term – just as the city and county are - financial benefits of the project.

And since Related has already paid for the property – even before getting their final approvals - the only way the city/county can terminate the deal is if they can prove that the new lender is financially incapable of funding their part of the project. So if the city and county lawyers can't prove that, the developer will win a law suit that will dwarf any money we are putting into this project.

But to know that, of course, one would have to have actually read – and understood – the financial documents about the Grand Avenue project. (Brady Westwater is a writer, community activist and a regular contributor to CityWatch. )