Not So Fast
Councilman publicly calls out developer for not including residents in St. Luke property plans
By Andre Coleman 03/27/2008
When Councilman Steve Haderlein walked into the community meeting at the chapel of the old St. Luke Medical Center Wednesday night, it was clear he was not happy with the way things were going.
Dressed in jeans and a striped, button-down shirt, the usually low-key Haderlein placed his young daughter in the back row with a book and then folded his arms and listened quietly as residents from East Pasadena voiced their complaints about Beverly Hills-based DS Ventures’ plans for the 13.4-acre former hospital property, which include a 356-unit senior living campus, a park of some sort and underground parking.
Finally, Haderlein spoke up.
“You are disrespecting this neighborhood,” Haderlein said to Nat Read, head of the public relations company that was hired by DS Ventures to help promote the company’s plan. “I wouldn’t even be here, but I had to come here because of the way you are handling this. You have given these people a week’s notice about this meeting by using door hangers, which you and I both know is not the best way to notify people, and now you are trying to push this plan on them which violates the city’s general plan.”
Read attempted to keep things calm by pointing out that he had asked the audience if the door hangers were effective at the beginning of the meeting. However, many said they would have preferred email or a postcard.
“You didn’t know door hangers are not effective?” Haderlein asked in disbelief. “I have run three campaigns and I know they are not the most efficient way, but the cheapest way to connect with people.”
Haderlein 1, Developers 0.
Haderlein’s office was not notified of the first community meeting between developers and residents on Feb. 6. After that meeting, Read told the Weekly that representatives of the developer had “gone door-to-door and talked personally to every neighbor or left a door hanger about the meeting.”
Irma Stranz of Emergency Care Now!, a group that is pressing for an urgent care medical facility at the St. Luke site, told the Weekly that meeting only included people who lived within 500 feet of the facility. Residents of Altadena, like herself, were not invited to participate. Neither was the press.
“They only invited people within a two-block radius of the facility,” said Stranz. “We’ve said from the beginning that there needs to be an urgent care facility at the site and affordable housing, and not shoehorning all of these little condos in one place. We would very much like to have a large meeting with Nat Read with a cross-section of the community there.”
The plan by Emergency Care Now! to develop a medical facility was not addressed at Wednesday’s meeting.
Currently, the only emergency rooms serving Pasadena are Huntington Hospital in West Pasadena and Methodist Hospital of Southern California in Arcadia, some 10 miles from East Pasadena and portions of Altadena.
According to the developer’s current plans, 180 rooms in the former hospital, which was sold to Caltech in 2003 for $20 million after being shuttered by Tenet Health Care the previous year, will be used for an assisted senior facility. Three additional buildings will be built containing 171 additional living units. Residents at last week’s meeting worried that the units on the south end of the project will be too close to existing homes.
“The general plan requires community involvement and this developer has done everything to limit involvement,” said Haderlein. “The plan they presented is a high-density project and the general plan calls for high-density to be in the central district or near the Gold Line [light rail system]. This plan tries to put high-density housing two miles from Gold Line.”
The city had spoken with the developers about placing a park on the site, located just south of the Altadena border and less than a quarter-mile away from Pasadena High School, but residents nearby worried that a park would attract loiterers and increase noise. A passive park that would not include ball fields, swings or areas designated for activities received broader support.
City law requires developers to rent 15 percent of housing units at below market rates, or pay in-lieu fees for the creation of affordable housing.
“There are a number of issues here,” Emergency Care Now! member and longtime affordable housing advocate Marvin Schachter said of the future of the St. Luke site. Schachter also was not invited to Wednesday’s meeting.
“This is the last piece of property of development in Pasadena of any size and the city has control over it. Is 15 percent of the housing dedicated to inclusionary housing enough? The cost of assisted living ranges from $4,000 a month. As seniors grow older and become the fastest-growing demographic, we have to ask ourselves: What happens when you can’t pay $4,000 a month?” Schachter asked.
The day after the meeting, Read said he did not know if the plans would be changed. He said the developer would meet again with the neighbors at an unknown time.
“My philosophy has always been to focus on the issue, not the person” Read said. “[Haderlein] and I disagree on the issue. There are lots of issues where we agree. Where we disagree, I hope we can keep it to the issue and not make it anything personal.”
DIGG | del.icio.us | REDDIT