Odd and Ends 27

Let's begin by being confused. New home sales in June fell by 4%. New home sales in July grew by 2.8%. The lending industry is going through some critical times right now, and nobody seems to know where this will all lead.

New construction at Ponte Vista may be more than a year away. The CAC was told that the Planning Department might need "6 months" working with Bisno Development to come up with the number of units the Planning Department will recommend be built at the northwest San Pedro site.

As far as the public goes, the Planning Department has been very tight-lip about what they feel the density of the project should be and disclosing any rumors about what they may be thinking about is not something we should do, at this time.
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Does San Pedro "need" more new housing? I wish somebody in an objective manner would provide information about whether San Pedro and the rest of OUR community actually need new housing for residents, and especially if there is really a "need" for more senior housing in the area.

I have included several compromise ideas that I have had suggesting that there is definitely a "want" for senior housing in San Pedro. I have listed several ideas about adding more senior housing at Ponte Vista, but that can't really happen with R1, which is now what I support.
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All of us know where "The Monster" is being built and how Seaport Luxury Homes seemed to slip through the cracks and get approved. This particular issues has provided all of us a very valuable lesson in that we must not have blinders on and let even 136-unit developments slip by our watchful eyes.

Highland Park is PROBABLY coming. This 134-unit project of patio-style homes being proposed by J.C.C. Homes may be built on the site of the old Kinder-Morgan facility on north Gaffey Street.

Kinder-Morgan will not transfer the site to J.C.C. Homes unless and until the site is determined to be completely free of any and all remnants of the old facility and all the post demolition test prove there will be not environmental hazards left in and around that property.

You can not set up a time-lapse camera system and photograph the processes of demolition and construction that will lead us to find a brand new Target store on north Gaffey as well.

It needs to be remembered that both J.C.C. Homes and the folks representing the construction of the new Target worked closely with the Northwest San Pedro Neighborhood Council. All the efforts by everyone dealing with the local area, the new home site, and the new Target worked to try and find the best results for any problems that may occur in the future. Both Target and J.C.C. Homes were very responsive to the Neighborhood Council area in which they will be located in.
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Sadly, we must continue to report that the folks at Ponte Vista have not shared similar wishes to involve the Neighborhood Council more directly or as well as these two other development companies have done.

It now looks like the developer for Ponte Vista is more adversarial in its dealings with the Neighborhood Council and the area where such a big project is proposed. I would think that Bob and his staff would be working harder to understand and deal with all the issues, rather than taking such a defensive position.

One would imagine that if Ponte Vista is really such a good thing for OUR community, their organization would not have to be so defensive and secretive about the project.
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Remember when Bob proclaimed he would furnish all the information about his 2,300-unit plan, including a public disclosure of the number of bedrooms in that particular proposal. I haven't seen such a public document and I bet nobody else has, either.

If you visit the Ponte Vista Web site, you will not be able to find any illustration of the smallest floor plan that will probably be proposed in the 1,950-unit development, and I still can't find any numbers of units broken down by size, type, and number of bedrooms, if any. The smallest unit illustrated is approximately 800 square feet and the "studio" as illustrated is approximately 850 square feet, according to the illustration.

If you were to visit the Centre Street Lofts Web site, you can view illustrations of the units floor by floor and the smallest units illustrated are about 150 square feet larger than what Bob has in his proposal for Ponte Vista.

You also might want to remember that no new residential development in the area is selling like "hot cakes" and the Lofts have offered buyer incentives to try and lure buyers. Having two years worth of HOA fees and dues paid for as an incentive, is not such a bad thing, in my opinion.
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When Bob proclaims that his vision for Ponte Vista means a beautiful place, he is not kidding.

We toured an apartment complex located on MacArthur Blvd. in Newport Beach that Bob is basing his illustrations on, and I strongly believe everyone was very impressed with the quality of construction and the way the development looked and the amenities offered at that 1100-unit development.

However, how beautiful it could be, and how wonderful of a place it may be to live, plucking down a development about 175% larger then Newport Village on a main arterial of a peninsula, simply makes absolutely no real sense, I feel, and can only lead toward dire consequences if a 1,950-unit project is approved.

I know for a fact that many, many Ponte Vista supporters cringe at the idea of placing 1,950 units in northwest San Pedro. So many of them feel that the plans are just too large for the area.

There may be only about 50% of the folks claiming support for Bob's Ponte Vista that would like to see any more than 1,500-units, and if the survey Bob tried used lower total numbers of units, the support for those lower numbers would grow.