A Fire at the Grass Roots : El Segundo Group Makes Political Headway on Limiting Growth

The way Ed Erdely sees it, the Group United for Residential Rights is a grass-roots “happening.”

“There is a core of residents who want to keep El Segundo with a small-town atmosphere,” said Erdely, co-chairman of the 18-month-old political action committee. “They do not want to be awash in crime, traffic, noise and pollution.”

Even supporters of the group would probably say that the 46-year-old Erdely is exaggerating the situation a bit.

Nevertheless, many supporters and detractors of his organization agree that El Segundo has problems stemming from its dramatic growth in recent years. These problems have helped the group, known by its initials as GURR, become a powerful political force.

‘Willing to Go to War’

Echoing the concerns voiced by growth-control groups in Los Angeles and elsewhere who blame rampant development for a laundry list of woes, Erdely’s organization has already scored two victories with El Segundo voters and is hoping for a third next April.

“What we represent is an ideal,” said 58-year-old Nestor Synadinos, the group’s other co-chairman. “If we see a problem, we’re willing to go to war on it.”

Last spring, the group, in what it dubbed a David and Goliath scenario, squared off against El Segundo-based Continental Development Corp., working to defeat a local referendum that would have given the company the zoning change it needed to build a 1.1-million-square-foot office and retail project. It collected more than twice the number of voter signatures needed to place the question on the ballot and won the battle, even though it was outspent by the developer more than 10 to 1.

More recently, GURR opposed a measure on last month’s ballot that would have imposed a 4% utility users tax on residents and businesses. Although the group did not actively campaign against the measure, which city officials say was needed to make up a decline in sales tax revenue, Synadinos and Erdely helped write the ballot argument against the tax.

It said that voters were being asked to “plug the massive tax leaks caused by the high-rise office buildings” that have been built in the 5.5-square-mile city. The measure was defeated by a landslide.

But the group is shooting for its biggest victory next April. It has placed an initiative on the ballot which, if passed, would drastically reduce density levels in new commercial and industrial buildings. City officials estimate that if the measure becomes law, floor space in new office buildings may be cut as much as 40%.

City officials say that GURR has undoubtedly tapped into discontent felt by many residents concerned about the city’s growth--residents who have come to resent the glistening rows of steel and glass high-rises that have sprouted on the east side of Sepulveda Boulevard, which bisects the city.

Although El Segundo’s west side, dominated by the sprawling, 1,000-acre Chevron U.S.A. Inc. refinery and by quiet residential neighborhoods, has maintained its small-town flavor, the rapid commercial development on the east side has brought big-city problems such as traffic congestion, the officials say. Although about 15,000 people live in the city, about 100,000 work there.

“Twenty years ago, El Segundo was essentially a small town, and 75% of it was strawberry and bean fields,” Mayor Jack Siadek said. “And I don’t think anyone at that time fully comprehended what was in the offing.”

GURR was formed by Erdely, a demolition contractor, and Synadinos, who owns a vending machine company, specifically to fight the Continental project, although both had spoken out on growth issues in recent years.

Joining them has been Synadinos’ wife, Le, who served on the City Council from 1982 to 1986 and who frequently butted heads with a council majority on development issues. She was defeated when she ran for reelection.

Nestor Synadinos said the group does not hold regular meetings and has no official membership list. Erdely said it has about 40 hard-core members. It relies on donations and has a “couple of hundred of dollars” in the bank, Synadinos said. The group is registered with the state as a political action committee.

Some of its supporters also are active in the 220-member El Segundo Residents Assn., which bills itself as a community educational group. Steven Edlefsen, president of the association, said there is a close relationship between his group and GURR because both believe that El Segundo has been victimized by “overdevelopment.”

Real Issues

Notwithstanding the adversative role that GURR often plays with city officials, some of those officials agree that El Segundo faces heady decisions over how to guide future development.

“We can’t handle either from an environmental or city-service standpoint the projected build-out over the next 15 years,” said Planning Director Lynn Harris.

El Segundo officials also acknowledge that the city has created many of its own problems by refusing to get more involved in plotting growth.

City Manager Arthur Jones, who is retiring this month after nearly 20 years on the job, said that as early as the 1960s, El Segundo had an unwritten policy to encourage commercial growth on the east side. The goal was to increase revenue for the city by turning the east side into a so-called “International Mile” of high-rises occupied by corporate giants.

But officials were reluctant to exercise the power they had to control or direct the growth, Jones said. That attitude prevailed when the city’s largest landholder, Chevron, began developing and selling hundreds of acres of vacant land. (Since 1969, 388 acres of Chevron land in El Segundo has been developed, a company spokesman said.)

“This city has screwed itself many times because of its attitudes on many things,” Jones said. “ . . . We have made horrendously bad decisions over the past 20 years in as far as this city’s development is concerned,” Jones added. “I don’t think if we had had 100 people in our Planning Department that it would have had an effect on the laissez faire attitude in the community,” he said.

Councilman Carl Jacobson, elected in 1984, said lax zoning “allowed a lot of development to take place totally out of control.”

City figures show that between 1981 and 1985, more than 6.3 million square feet of new office buildings went up in El Segundo, over three times the amount built in the previous five years. Almost one-third of the growth came in the construction of a Hughes Aircraft Co. complex, one of several Hughes facilities in El Segundo.

With the buildings have come the explosion in the number of people employed in the city, even though its permanent population--currently estimated at 15,403--has remained relatively stable. The figure of approximately 100,000 people now working in El Segundo is up from an estimated 50,000 in 1970. Of those employees, an estimated 57,000 worked for just 10 firms, according to a 1986 city survey. Hughes, with more than 32,000, led the list.

Officials, reacting to residents’ concerns, did impose commercial construction moratoriums on some parts of the east side in 1982 and 1983 while it downzoned the areas. In theory at least, permissible density levels were cut by 80%.

But GURR members contend that zoning regulations are still too permissive and that city officials grant too many variances to developers.

The developments, in turn, have clogged the streets with commuters and drained the city’s treasury by increasing demand on city services such as fire and police protection, the group argues.

That is why it opposed the utility users tax. Its leaders said they would have supported the measure, which most council members said was needed to balance the city budget, if it were levied only on businesses.

Council members concede that new development has strained services. But they maintain that El Segundo’s fiscal problems stem largely from the decrease in sales-tax revenues that had been collected from the Chevron refinery until the company lost a major contract.

Unlike GURR supporters, those council members say they believe that business is paying its fair share in taxes. In the last three years, the city has imposed two new taxes on businesses, including a $60 head tax on employees. Together, the taxes account for an estimated $4 million annually in a general-fund budget that is currently about $16.9 million.

William Bue, interim manager of the El Segundo Chamber of Commerce, said many chamber members, including the large aerospace companies, have taken note of GURR’s activities, believing that the group’s attitude that only industry should pay a particular tax is unfair.

“The Hugheses, the TRWs, the Rockwells, the Chevrons--you bet they are worried,” said Bue, who served on the City Council from 1976 until 1984. Officials of the aerospace companies declined to comment on the group and referred questions to Bue.

Jim Biondi, a senior marketing consultant for Grubb & Ellis, a commercial real estate brokerage company, said developers also are aware of the growth-control movement in El Segundo.

“Two, three, four years ago, (developers) thought differently about El Segundo because it was very pro-employer and there weren’t many restraints on growth in the city,” Biondi said.

“I think developers are feeling about El Segundo as they do about other municipalities (with growth-control movements) in that you have to very, very careful about what you do. Your future is unpredictable.”

At Continental Development, spokeswoman Pat Stitzenberger said builders, who once were welcomed “with open arms” by the city, now find themselves “smack dab in the middle as the city thrashes out a new planning agenda.”

“I think Continental has been painted as a villain,” Stitzenberger said. “I don’t think we are. It’s just that we are in an environment that says all development is going to be painted with the same brush and it is all bad.”

City Manager Jones declined to comment on the density-reducing initiative that GURR has put on the April ballot. Council members have not taken a public stance on it. However, the council is contemplating putting its own initiative on the ballot to address the density issue. Such an initiative would presumably be less restrictive.

Whether or not voters approve GURR’s initiative, Jones said he fears that the development issues now confronting the city may usher in a political climate that centers on “retribution and revenge.”

That climate could surface as early as next spring, when three council seats will be on the ballot. Erdely said he is considering running for a council seat, and both Nestor and Le Synadinos said they might consider doing likewise if they do not like any of the candidates. They say, however, that GURR is not a front for their possible campaigns.

“I think people have to stop pointing fingers at each other,” Jones said. “People are going to have sit down together. Otherwise, we are just going to go downhill.”

Councilman Keith Schuldt said he believes that GURR could make it difficult for the city’s professional planners to do their work. “All at once, you have these things that are going to control development, and it is being done by people who are not trained.”