Councilmember, Developer Dump Refried Beans on Laurel District

Councilmember Jean Quan and developer AMG, promoter of a height-busting slab of residential units in the commercial Laurel district, refried the rotten beans they served last Fall and offered them again to a Feb. 15, 2007 community meeting.

Last September the design review committee of the City's Planning Commission told AMG & Associates of Encino that their six-story, 141-unit structure was unacceptable and could not receive the requested variances and conditional permits. The committee advised the developer to work with the community.

Instead of conducting serious negotiations with merchants and residential neighbors – through the Laurel District Association, for example – Quan and AMG went into a kitchen and refried the same rotten beans.

The Feb. 15 meeting was stunned to hear that the Planning Commission will hear the application in less than two weeks on Feb. 28.

Signaling that a fix is in, Quan told the meeting that they could appeal the commission's decision to the city council. She spent the rest of the meeting making it clear that she favors the project. Furthermore, she wants the Laurel stretch of MacArthur Blvd. as well as main thoroughfares throughout Oakland to welcome high buildings composed mainly of family-repellent condos and apartments above a commercial ground floor.

Developer AMG tweaked its already rejected plan and seeks five variances and conditional use permits to violate the C-30 and C-31 zoning. Now AMG wants to erect a five-story, 115-unit building. Instead of 1800 square feet of commercial offices or stores on the ground floor, there might be 2800 square feet (leaving only 64 parking spaces for residents, visitors, staff of the commercial offices, and their clients). Asked at the meeting what outstanding contribution the project made in return for these zoning exceptions, the AMG representative offered no concrete answer.

All seven basic problems of the original proposal remain:

• Height: A five-story monolith violates both legal limits and the character of the area. Zoning and master plan requirements exist for a reason, and extremely good grounds should be provided for violating the requirements. Neither AMG nor Quan offered any such reason.
  
• Pollution: The building would nestle next to the 580 freeway. Every day more than 220,000 vehicles drive by the location on 580, High Street, and MacArthur Blvd, emitting soot and exhaust. Suppposedly a 50-foot wall would protect the residents. They would also have to live in units whose windows facing the freeway cannot be opened!
  Still, the building's ventilation system would draw in polluted air, and Professor Constantinos Sioutas of the Southern California Particle Center at the University of Southern California, after examining the configuration, wrote, "The 50-foot wall will do very little to prevent particles from entering homes." The environmental impact is simply unacceptable for any residential building at this location, let alone one for vulnerable seniors. At the very least, a serious environmental quality study should be done. (More on this issue)
  
• Retail character: The lot is zoned retail, and the Laurel merchants oppose granting an exception that would erode years of work building up this stretch of MacArthur Blvd. as a retail district. The financial emphasis of the project will obviously be on occupancy of the 115 housing units, not on the small tail of two or three commercial offices and a flower kiosk.
  
• Traffic: It just makes no sense to locate 115 residential units at a high-traffic intersection next to a freeway. In addition, the layout of the lot and the proposed architecture make a left turn exit out of the parking garage onto MacArthur Blvd. impossible.
  
• Parking: The site would dedicate 58 parking spaces for 115 units. There are no more than a handful of on-street parking spaces on the frontage streets, and the building is not near any quiet streets with residential parking.
  
• Safety: Councilmembers support residential developments that bring in more residents without making any provision to ensure their safety. The block of MacArthur Blvd. just outside the proposed senior housing development is not safe for elderly residents to walk. The stretch of High Street down to the Walgreen's is also unsafe. Oakland's half a police department is already stretched to the breaking point. There would be more calls to dispatch, but no more officers to respond.
  Quan repeated her farcical argument that more residents means more watchful eyes, but she limited her claim in this regard concerning the Lincoln Court project in the Dimond area. She merely said crime had moved down the street! In Quan's vision, Oakland should add residential eyes but no police hands. And as a matter of fact, the Lincoln Court nameplate, made of large aluminum or steel letters on a concrete slab, was vandalized within four months of the opening of the building. Who saw that?
  
• Public subsidy: AMG develops housing with government subsidies, low-interest loans, and tax credits for investors. AMG refused to discuss the financial projections for its proposal. The occupants would be low-income seniors, pressured by limited means to breathe polluted air next to a freeway. Oakland already has 55 percent of the income-based assisted housing in Alameda County, even though the city has only 28 of the county population. Why should government subsidize such an inappropriate development?
  

Councilmember Quan stated her support for multi-story residential buildings – apartments or condos – on this parcel, all along the Laurel stretch of MacArthur, and indeed on main thoroughfares throughout Oakland.

As a Laurel merchant at the meeting pointed out, if this zone-busting precedent goes through, it will set a legal precedent allowing all landowners in the area to hold out for high prices that pay off only with more high rise blocks of condos or apartments. For example, the land under the Albertson's market could go this route, effectively killing the Laurel retail district.

Quan talked about young professionals and retired seniors living along extensive stretches of main thoroughfares. At first she tried to argue they are needed to support the stores, but everyone knows a retail district serves tens of thousands of people in a mile or two radius at a minimum. No serious retail district survives on business from apartments above.

When that argument was exposed, Quan retreated to saying that merchants need to be able to build a few stories of housing above their current one-story buildings in order to make renovation pay. In effect, she invited landowners to hold out for complete destruction of zoning so that they can sell their land for the most dense, but also most destructive, use.

AMG said its 98-unit block at 12100 Sheldon, LA is comparable to its Oakland proposal.

Condos and small apartments – the AMG units average 540 square feet – are not suitable for families raising children. Young professionals move out of such condos after a few years, and frankly, a thriving retail district cannot be based around low-income senior housing. In two or three decades these buildings would approach slumlike conditions. This is the vision of Quan and other councilmembers and their boss, political fixer Don Perata, all of whom are in bed with developers out to make a fast buck.

Quan Digs In Against Constituents

Councilmember Jean Quan dug in at the city Planning Commission against the overwhelming sentiment of local residents and merchants who oppose a massive apartment project that is far too high, too massive, destructive of retail prosperity along MacArthur, and a health hazard for the elderly who would live there.

Persons from the area were the majority of the people who spoke to the Commission at its Feb. 28, 2007 meeting about the controversial proposal by southern California developer AMG & Associates. Eleven residents and merchants spoke against the project, versus four whom Quan recruited to speak in favor of it. Her chief of staff could be seen huddling with them early in the evening to arrange details.

Quan also enlisted speakers from outside the area to speak, including an official from a nonprofit housing development agency and Oakland activist James Vann. The latter lost a bit of his reputation as independent, progressive activist and drew a gasp from the audience when he said that the councilmember supports the project as though that were a reason why someone would favor it.

AMG developer Gevorgian offered at least one lie and some revealing details. He claimed he had taken input at five community meetings, when in fact he or his staff attended only two such meetings. Perhaps he counts the fact that councilmember Quan's chief of staff advocated for the project, in place of the developer, at some semi-private meetings with community activists.

(Councilember Quan later wrote in her weekly newsletter, "Contrary to statements we have noted on some listservs, I and my office do not have a formal position on this specific project. Our office mediates development issues constantly, we work towards consensus when possible usually pushing all sides until a compromise or final decision is made." (March 3, 2007). Since no one ever said Quan had a formal position, she is arguing against a straw man – distorting the question as she so often does – in order to deflect attention from her unceasing pressure on the community to give in to AMG. In addition, the Planning Commission's design review committee told the developer to work with the community, not with the councilmember.)

Developer Gevorgian also disclosed that he is "not 100 percent sure of the financing mechanism" and made a related remark that he is not requesting a City subsidy "at this time."

The staff planner wrote a report for the Commission that reads like a legal brief in favor of the project, although he, too, was caught with a false statement. He all but said that the C-30 and C-31 zoning of the parcel allowed all-residential development. Called to account an hour later, he clarified that these zones are commercial, and that residential cannot be the entirety of a structure. The AMG proposal is more than 60,000 square feet of apartments versus at most 3,100 feet for two or three offices or shops – a mockery of the notion of "mixed use."

Councilmember Quan's heavy-handed attempt to push through the AMG proposal is a perversion of office.

No, this is not something that people avoid in polite conversation. The dictionary defines perversion as the act of turning something to a wrong use. "No oppression is so heavy or lasting as that which is inflicted by the perversion of legal authority." – Joseph Addison

When councilmember Quan hosted the November 2005 conference on "Envisioning MacArthur," nothing of a residential project for this parcel was mentioned. Nor did Quan expound then on how a retail district must capitulate to massive high-rise apartment and condo development, which she now portrays as inevitable.

In 2006, with no public transition, Quan became a complete advocate for developer AMG. Residents and merchants saw her new attitude at both the community meeting of Sept. 18, 2006 prior to the Design Review hearing, and again at the community of meeting of Feb. 15, 2007 prior to the Planning Commission hearing. They noted how Quan interrupted audience members who had a critical question or comment.

At the February meeting, Quan all but announced that the project would get the approvals it needs, no matter how community members might appeal.

As one resident put it, Quan's behavior "makes it look like the councilmember is more interested in exchanging favors with/for monied interests rather than representing the community."

The current AMG affair is not the first time Quan has perverted the office of councilmember. In November 2005 she was also busy spending $11,000 of City of Oakland public money on a campaign brochure for an increase in our Landscape and Lighting Assessment tax, a brochure the City had stuffed into 95,000 residential garbage bills.

In the Summer and Fall of 2006 the councilmember found a third way to pervert office. Quan accepted, if she did not actively solicit, more than a dozen contributions from businesses having and seeking contracts with the City. The contributions, from $2,000 to $10,000 each, were for her Measure N bond campaign. Questioned about the propriety of creating political obligations to City contractors, Quan defiantly said, "Do a few City contractors give money to politics? Yes, and they should." (North Gate News Online, Nov. 15, 2006)

Now Quan is engaged in a full court press to approve the AMG project despite zoning law and community sentiment. Laurel residents and merchants, like more and more of Quan's constituents, are fed up with the councilmember's open sellouts to special interests. Quan has already advised her constituents that if they appeal past the Planning Commission to the city council, she will win there and they will lose. (Listen to her remarks, 22 seconds)

However, Quan did not win the easy victory she anticipated at the Planning Commission Feb. 28. A group of constituents represented by attorney Leila Moncharsh has demanded a CEQA review of the hazards to the elderly residents targeted for the project, including severe pollution from the adjacent freeway. The Planning Commissioners, the rest of the city council, and the city attorney must consider whether the legal and political risks are worth it. Councilmember Quan, unabashedly perverting her office to the end, will force them to make a choice between her political clout, which may not be so large these days, and the defense mounted by community activists.