Foes of Business Park Plan Storm City Hall and Win

Barbara Silinsky and her neighbors did their homework this week and taught the City Council a lesson out of Politics 101.

When the financial planner heard that the council was considering a proposal to build the city’s first business park on a 33-acre former oil storage yard near her home, she jumped to her word processor and whipped up a 17-page document detailing her objections.

She also whipped up the enthusiasm of residents, who in 3 weeks gathered enough opposition to defeat a proposal by the Huntington Beach Co. to open the Lakewood Business Park at 5501 Downey Ave., the largest undeveloped property in Lakewood.

Reacting to what officials called one of the largest crowds to ever gather for a City Council meeting--nearly 700 people--council members unanimously rejected the company’s bid for a 26-building light-industrial complex of warehouses, offices and retail space.

The tract--vacant since 1982, when Huntington, a Chevron Oil Corp. subsidiary, demolished its holding tanks--is hemmed in on three sides by single-family homes. Residents feared the complex would create unbearable traffic and noise.

In defeating the $50-million project, the council also ordered the city Planning Commission to study building single-family homes on the lot.

The council decision came despite a city staff recommendation to approve the complex. City officials, after a 2-year study, had concluded that the business park would have provided jobs and tax revenue to the city.

The residents who packed Tuesday night’s meeting hailed the decision as proof that city government will respond to the will of the people if pressured.

“You had this great unanimity of the people,” resident Harold Judson said as members of the audience cheered and gave a standing ovation to the council for denying the company’s permit application. “This shows that people can express themselves and watch city government respond.”

Several council members also noted that the well-organized opposition was a major influence in the council’s rejection.

“This type of a turnout is very gratifying to me,” Councilman Marc Titel said before the council vote. Titel was one of three council members who had supported the business park proposal. “It shows what kind of city Lakewood can be . . . (and) that people care.”

Forming the “Save Lakewood” residents group and using Silinsky’s home as the command center, residents recruited more than a hundred volunteers citywide to pass out flyers, mail press releases and design yellow T-shirts that bore the organization’s name.

One real estate office offered the use of telephones for the campaign. A local printer helped typeset flyers and releases. Others set up tables at local supermarkets to collect signatures.

Among other things, residents presented a well-documented case for their opposition. In collecting signatures, foes took along Silinsky’s 17-page booklet to show potential petitioners.

“This has been a very difficult decision for the council,” said Mayor Jacqueline Rynerson--another business park proponent--to a round of shouting and clapping from the audience.

“I found that people want to come home to a haven,” she said, not an industrialized environment choked with traffic.

Later, Rynerson said she had changed her mind after wrestling with the issue for a week and fielding calls from angry constituents.

“I’ve been living with it for a while,” she said.

Councilman Wayne Piercy had also indicated support for the business park plan.

Opponents complained that the park would create varied problems for neighbors, including a traffic increase that would pose a hazard to children, flooding problems and an eyesore in the residential neighborhoods along Downey Avenue from South to Candlewood streets.

According to an environmental impact report released early this month, the complex would have added 4,457 trucks and cars a day to Downey Avenue; generated 100,000 gallons of waste water daily, and created industrial buildings rising 10 to 15 feet above nearby homes.

At the Nov. 8 council meeting, when the project was introduced publicly, nearly 300 residents objected to the proposal.

“We don’t like it, we don’t want it,” John Hunter told the council during Tuesday night’s 2-hour hearing. “We will stand together to keep it out of Lakewood.”

Silinsky, after handing 2,900 signatures to the council, called the plan “ludicrous” and “insulting.”

“You’ve done a great job so far,” Silinsky, 47, told council members, “don’t deny us now.”

City officials said the business park would have added $177,000 in tax revenue to the city’s general fund and provided 1,016 jobs.

Community Service Director Charles Ebner, who has been directing the city’s involvement in the project, said the proposal was the best use for the property: “There have been no other formal proposals for the site, it was that good.”

Best Use for Property

Huntington Beach Co. had applied for permits last year after city staff members determined that the business park was the best use of the property, said James Johnson, assistant project director for the Orange County company.

“Well, sure I’m disappointed,” Johnson said after the council vote. “But I congratulate these people. It shows that the process works.”

Johnson said the company has yet to consider other alternatives.

“One thing I know we won’t do is convert it to open space,” he said in response to a suggestion by residents that the company build a park or golf course. “We’ll sell before that.”

Project Director Dennis O’Connor declined to comment on whether the company would appeal the council decision.

He said the Huntington Beach Co. has spent “in excess of a quarter-million dollars” designing the complex.

No Public Ambition

Silinsky said that despite the project’s projected contribution of tax revenue and jobs to the city, the residential neighborhood should not have been subjected to industrial development.

As she stood in the foyer of the Civic Center auditorium, where the council meeting was held, several fellow residents urged her to seek city office, but she said she has no public ambition.

“My top priority was to defeat the business park,” Silinsky said before leaving for a victory party in a nearby restaurant. “We did. And we can all be proud of ourselves for making (city government) work.”