Santa Ana : Suit Filed to Acquire Site Near Shopping Mall
The city redevelopment agency has sued Bruce Walkup, a prominent San Francisco attorney, to force the sale of a 16-acre site just south of the Fashion Square shopping mall to the city.
City Atty. Ed Cooper said that $14.35 million was deposited with the Orange County treasury in support of the lawsuit.
“This is part of the acquisition process,” Cooper said. Walkup, his wife and other owners of the disputed site “had been offered full appraised value, which is the amount of the deposit,” Cooper said.
After plans for the $400-million renewal and expansion of Fashion Square were announced last year, Walkup and the other owners of the Main Street Shopping Center sued the city to exempt the property from expansion plans or force the redevelopment agency to use eminent domain.
Mike Dumbrowski, the Main Street Shopping Center’s general manager and an ownership partner, said the city’s lawsuit will not be opposed.
“It’s a tool available to us and to the agency,” he said Wednesday. “We’re making them use that tool to take the property, and we feel we’re better protected if they take the property this way.”
Dumbrowski described the lawsuit as “a friendly action.”
Walkup is one of the nation’s leading personal injury attorneys.
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