Grappling With Growth : Council Member Withdraws Support for Hawthorne Project

To keep traffic congestion out of a politically important neighborhood, Hawthorne Councilwoman Ginnie Lambert announced this week that she is prepared to sacrifice the city’s $170-million high-rise office and hotel redevelopment project along the San Diego Freeway.

The first-term councilwoman’s position is crucial because she currently has the power to kill the project. With Councilman Steve Andersen abstaining because of a conflict of interest, Lambert’s announcement means that the five-member council--with three other members in favor--will be unable to muster the four votes needed to condemn property for the project.

Because there are more than 70 properties in the area, city officials say they need the power of eminent domain to take property from resistant landholders.

The status of the project, and the redevelopment area as well, remained uncertain Wednesday. Bud Cormier, the city’s project manager for redevelopment, maintained that the project is still alive until the council votes to abandon it but said that a denser development--with more congestion--could easily result if the plan is killed.

In addition, City Manager Kenneth Jue said that abandoning the project after years of work, instead of enhancing Hawthorne’s stature, would leave the city with “a stigma.”

At the Monday council meeting, Lambert criticized the development, which was on the agenda for discussion, because of its impact on one of her political bases, Holly Glen, a well-to-do neighborhood next to the proposed project site. Traffic congestion, much of it generated by nearby aerospace companies in El Segundo, is a perennial complaint from Holly Glen residents.

The intersection of Rosecrans Avenue and Aviation Boulevard, which is next to the project site, suffers from gridlock every rush hour, according to Caltrans, which rated it one of the worst in the South Bay.

“I cannot, in my conscience, vote for a development that sacrifices the integrity, peace and safety of 1,100 families,” declared Lambert, who once lived in Holly Glen and has many backers in the area.

In a subsequent interview she said: “It is the right project in the wrong place. I am heartsick over this, but I have to think of my constituents. Somewhere, someone has to stop overdevelopment.”

Other council members were aghast.

“All this city has done for the last five years is try to climb out of the hole,” said Councilman David York, who lives in Holly Glen.

“After four to five years of considering this project for its viability, I’m totally disappointed that all the staff time, all the developer’s time, all the time spent by the council is all down the tubes.”

A spokesman for the developer, Watt Investment Properties Inc., said there is still a possibility the project could go ahead.

The city has pushed redevelopment on the site--a triangular 20-acre tract bounded by Aviation Boulevard, Rosecrans Avenue and the freeway--since December, 1984. The lead developer, who worked with the city for a year, walked away when financing fell through. Then the city turned to Watt.

2,100 Jobs

Officials estimate that the project designed by Watt would generate 2,100 permanent jobs, put up to $800,000 each year in sales and bed taxes in city coffers and enhance the image of this largely working-class city. The city has already spent an estimated $800,000 on planning and property appraisals.

The Watt plans include a 10-story hotel, possibly operated by the Marriott chain; a smaller hotel; six office towers ranging from three to 13 stories, with a total of 700,000 square feet of floor space; three parking structures; at least three restaurants, and some retail businesses.

“I’ve concluded,” Lambert said, “that the project is so massive and so high-density (that) the money we’d realize . . . eight years from now, does not warrant our destroying a neighborhood tract in the short run.”

She added that city staff had not included her in the early stages of planning with Watt.

“Only after they had worked with Watt many, many months did they come and tell me what the project looks like,” she said. “If you are going to develop something, you ought to talk to every member of the council.”

Caught off-guard by Lambert’s announcement, officials say they hope to persuade her to reconsider with the argument that unplanned development in the area could easily result in greater density and more traffic than the project designed by Watt.

“It could be more intense than Watt, twice as intense,” said Cormier. “The zoning allows 1.7 million square feet of office space. The Watt development is 700,000.”

Cormier added that, in any event, he would continue working on the project until a vote of the City Council reverses earlier decisions to proceed.

“The only thing we have been given is that one council person is against it. I don’t know that we should just stop in our tracks because of that,” he said.

Watt project manager Mark Phillips added that the site “is a natural place for development. Somebody is going to come in on a piecemeal basis (and) develop the site. By rights, they can develop a larger project than what we were allowed to do.”

$30-Million Estimate

He said that the cost of the land, demolition and relocation--estimated at $30 million--make it impossible for Watt to make a profit with a less intense development.

“We could proceed with a smaller project, (but) we would need some sort of subsidy from the city to write down the cost of the land,” he said, adding that “a minority of the people in Hawthorne are opposed to the size of the project, but it is a very vocal minority.”

Andrex Development Co. of Los Angeles, the first firm to work on the project, designed a less dense project but ultimately had to abandon it because the land costs were too high for profitability, according to Jue. “Theirs was a lower-density project, and they could not afford to pay so much for the land,” the city manager said.

(The conflict of interest cited by Andersen as a reason for abstaining involves Andrex, which the councilman has represented as a real estate attorney; the firm now owns land in the redevelopment site.)

‘Blighted Area’

Mayor Betty Ainsworth added that the site “is a blighted area that needs to be improved. Now I’m concerned what might go in there.”

But Lambert said that any developer who wanted to build in the area would have to seek city approval since the site has been designated as a redevelopment area. “They cannot just come in,” she said.

Cormier, however, said that aborting the Watt deal might spell the end of the city’s effort to redevelop the area because of the city’s responsibilities to the people who own property there. Since December, 1984, when the city declared it a redevelopment area, property owners have been in limbo, waiting for the city to act.

“I’m not sure we can keep the people who have residences or businesses in that site (waiting) much longer. My feeling is that it would probably be the end of that site for quite a while.” He said that the city might have to “let those people have the freedom to do what they want.”

One way to do that would be to dissolve the redevelopment area.

Zoned Commercial

“This property is a prime area for development,” said Councilman Chuck Bookhammer. “It’s situated in the middle of a major freeway on-ramp. And it’s already zoned for commercial use.”

Addressing Lambert’s concerns about traffic, Bookhammer said that “in my opinion, the traffic would have gone to the freeway, not onto Rosecrans or Inglewood or through Holly Glen.”

Watt made extensive modifications to the original proposal based on dissatisfaction from Holly Glen residents, according to Jue.

“For instance, they moved the highest office building further south from Rosecrans, so as not to overwhelm the Holly Glen area,” he said. “And they added more restaurants. They were very responsive.”

The defeat of the Watt Investment Properties development, Jue said, could create “a stigma that will remain with Hawthorne in future developments. We spent almost three years trying to come up with a development on this property, meeting with the developer in good faith because we had reason to believe everything would blossom into a development agreement.”