Racetrack inserts itself in Albany council race

By Justin Hill
CONTRA COSTA TIMES

Peter Tunney says that in his more than 25 years as general manager of Golden Gate Fields, neither he nor the racetrack had gotten involved in Albany City Council elections.

This year he has — mailing four pieces of campaign literature to Albany residents.

The first piece was a letter dated Oct. 12 in which Tunney wrote to residents, listing “facts about Golden Gate Fields and the Albany waterfront.”

Then, on Oct. 26, another piece was delivered that describes what would happen if the racetrack closed.

On Monday, residents received two pieces: The racetrack’s newsletter that lists “facts” and recent contributions by the racetrack to community organizations and another piece that opens with “4 things (candidates) Marge Atkinson and Joanne Wile don’t want you to know.”

“We just thought it was time to set the record straight,” Tunney said. “I think we have an obligation to correct what are just flat-out lies.”

Atkinson and Wile, running as the Save Our Shoreline Team, are opposed to any large-scale development on the racetrack’s land along the waterfront.

In the letter to residents, Tunney writes the campaigns for Wile and Atkinson distributed fliers to voters that were “tainted with misleading and untrue statements” about the racetrack as well as “outright falsehoods.”

Tunney says Atkinson and Wile’s campaign has spread lies that the racetrack plans to introduce casino gambling. He also argues the two candidates want the racetrack to close, which would mean higher taxes for Albany households.

Brian Parker, Atkinson’s and Wile’s campaign manager, said the racetrack is trying to buy the election. It needs a friendly City Council to accommodate development of a mall and casino at the racetrack, he said.

“They’re bought and paid for in Washington,” Parker said. “I guess they wanted them bought and paid for in Albany. … We deserve better than that.”

Atkinson and Wile have responded to the Golden Gate Fields mailers with their own piece accusing the racetrack of lies. They say they have never stated they want the racetrack to close and that Golden Gate Fields is misrepresenting the impact a potential closure would have on residents’ taxes.

On Wednesday, a separate piece from a union of racetrack culinary employees features an Albany resident who says he was one of the founders of Citizens for the Albany Shoreline and is voting for Caryl O’Keefe and Francesco Papalia.

Reach Justin Hill at 510-243-3578 or jhill@cctimes.com.
 

Call it Mall Brawl II, the inevitable sequel to the 12-round
Glendale grudge match.

Once again, developer Rick Caruso is seeking to build one of his
signature open-air shopping villages — this time in Arcadia. And
once again he wants to build it right next to an existing mall,
whose owners are fighting him tooth and nail.

With negative ads, dueling polls and intense public lobbying, the
dispute resembles a particularly nasty and personal election race.

“They’re attacking each other every day in the newspaper,” Arcadia
City Manager William Kelly says. “I can’t tell you how many law
firms are involved on both sides of this.”

The fight has roiled the small San Gabriel Valley bedroom community,
but it has implications beyond there. Land-use experts and urban
planners see it as a battle between two ways of shopping: large, old-
fashioned enclosed malls versus newer, smaller, open-air shopping
centers that have a Main Street feel.

Westfield Group, owner of the Westfield Santa Anita mall, has
launched an all-out campaign to block approval of the Shops at Santa
Anita, an outdoor “lifestyle center” similar to the Grove — Caruso’s
popular shopping village next to the Los Angeles Farmers Market.

Westfield, a Sydney, Australia-based company (which owns several
other L.A.-area malls, including the Century City Shopping Center,
Eagle Rock Mall and Fox Hills Mall) has helped fund anti-Caruso
citizens groups and gathered thousands of signatures to fight the
new development.

Caruso, who estimates the project would generate more than $5
million in new tax revenue, has courted the community by offering
free office space to the local school district.

The debate dominates City Council proceedings and fills the pages of
the local newspapers.

Westfield has taken out full-page ads warning that Caruso will flood
the city with ugly billboards, charge for parking and overwhelm the
city’s streets with 30,000 additional cars per day.

“We fundamentally don’t believe the market is big enough” to support
both malls, said Peter Lowy, Westfield’s managing director. “It’s
just bad urban planning.”

Caruso’s camp has countered with ads that state: “You can’t trust
Westfield to play it straight.”

The level of acrimony has shocked area business leaders.

“I’m surprised it’s gone as deep as it has. It does look like we’re
in for a long war,” said Beth Costanza, executive director of the
Arcadia Chamber of Commerce — which has both Westfield and Caruso
representatives on its board of directors. “We’ve just been sitting
in the middle watching the bullets fly.”

By all accounts, this is just the beginning.

Caruso, Westfield executives and Arcadia officials predict the
dispute will eventually come down to a public referendum sometime
next year. Until then, the trench warfare will continue.

“I can lay it out for you now, the whole legal and electoral
timeline,” said Lowy, the Westfield executive. “The only thing I
can’t tell you is who’s going to win.”

The Arcadia conflict almost exactly mirrors Caruso’s recent fight to
build in Glendale, next door to the Glendale Galleria.

The Galleria’s owners, General Growth Properties, battled Caruso’s
plan down to the wire, finally attempting to overturn the Glendale
City Council’s approval with a public referendum in 2004.

Caruso won in a close vote and his project, dubbed Americana on
Brand, is now under construction.

“Wherever I go, the mall people are going to try to fight me,”
Caruso said in an interview. “They’ll resort to anything…. In the
process, we’ll both spend a couple million dollars.”

Behind both the Glendale and Arcadia disputes is a generational
question about the future of American shopping habits. Caruso and
others argue that the traditional covered mall is becoming obsolete.

“There is a belief that this sort of model has run its course,” said
professor Raphael Bostic of USC’s Lusk Center for Real Estate.

Both locally and nationwide, the new trend is toward smaller, more
stylized outdoor centers. Caruso’s proposal for the new center,
which would be built in an unused section of the Santa Anita
racetrack parking lot, includes open-air plazas and a large lake at
the center.

“What Caruso is doing is making a bet on his style of mall,” Bostic
said.

In addition to the battle for customer dollars, a second mall in
Arcadia would prompt an automatic competition for tenants, driving
down the rent that Westfield can charge its store owners.

Even in the wake of his Glendale victory, Caruso already had his
sights set on the coming Westfield fight.

“In Arcadia, they had a wake-up call this morning,” Caruso told The
Times the day after the Glendale vote. “If they fight us, they’ll
wind up losing, and all they’ll do is burn a lot of bridges.”

So far, that’s exactly what’s happened. The Westfield campaign has
placed the company, which owns 128 malls on four continents, at odds
with the Arcadia city government.

“The animosity is pretty high right now” between Arcadia and
Westfield, said Kelly, the city manager.

In May, Arcadia Mayor Roger Chandler issued a statement denouncing
Westfield’s “aggressive and divisive marketing campaign.”

Lowy counters that the city is “hellbent” on approving the Caruso
plan and says that Westfield’s concerns about the project
were “dismissed out of hand” from the start.

“We would argue that the city put us in this position,” Lowy
said. “I don’t know why they turned their backs on us. It seems
petulant.”

Each side has used the ballot box to harass and hinder the other.
Citizens groups backed by Westfield gathered signatures for
initiatives that would ban large billboards and outlaw paid parking
in shopping centers — both aspects of Caruso’s original model.

Caruso countered with an initiative that would ban big-box retailers
such as Target and Wal-Mart from the city — a shot at Westfield’s
ambition to attract such a store.

At the city’s request, Caruso dropped his initiative. Westfield
continued with its effort, angering the mayor and the city
government. The two Westfield-sponsored initiatives will be on the
Nov. 7 ballot.

Westfield and Caruso expect the project to be approved next spring,
at which point Westfield will probably start gathering signatures
for a public referendum on the entire project.

“The minute the referendum qualifies, it will get nasty,” Caruso
said.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-
arcadia30aug30,1,2377700.story

This City Council delegated shaping the waterfront planning process to the Planning & Zoning Commission (P&Z).  At the second special meeting of the P&Z last Monday night 8/28, many citizens requested that the process slow down to include greater notice and wider community involvement.

But the current City Council appears hell-bent to select the consultant before the next City Council can be elected and a progressive majority may be formed.  (Councilmembers Maris and Good will be replaced in November.)

The present City Council simply does not represent the majority viewpoint on waterfront development matters; otherwise, there would not have been the need to circulate the Shoreline Protection Initiative during their tenure. 

Some current councilmembers actually have been quoted as wanting Caruso to come back, and seem prepared to acquiesce to Caruso’s demand for a guaranteed final EIR–before submitting the application!

At the special meeting, citizens Marge Atkinson, Joanne Wile and Nan Wishner (by email), Wynnette, Ed Fields, etc., spoke up for establishing trust before shaping an outcome; for achieving consensus before setting a course; for greater input before setting a pre-determined deadline (i.e., writing a ballot measure for the 2008 election). 

“Why is Park & Rec included,” one questioner asked, “and not Social Justice or the Arts Committee, for example?”

Granted, in the end the P&Z did increase the number of members of the selection committee from five to seven and stretched out the condensed schedule a couple of weeks (yet still to be chosen before the next City Council takes office).  But, no members from the public at large, no members from other committees/commissions, no further deliberations on the consultant selection after the November election.

Selection of the consultant to conduct the city planning process may very well pre-determine the final outcome of that process.  

To earn trust, the P&Z should extend the current timetable to provide greater notice, more reasoned deliberation, and wider citizen input, rather than rushing to judgment before the new council–which with your help will include both Joanne and Marge–can be seated.