Pomona Upholds Plan to Sell Freeway Land

The City Council is sticking with its plan to sell five acres of freeway frontage for $805,000, even though a local developer says he has offered to pay more than $1 million for the property.

The council on April 16 approved the sale of land at the junction of the San Bernardino Freeway and the Corona Expressway to San Dimas Mayor Terry Dipple and his partner, Brian Barbuto, without soliciting other offers.

Mayor Donna Smith asked the council Monday night to rescind the sale after John Kasperowicz, a Pomona architect and developer, said in a letter to her that he had approached the city a year and a half ago with an offer to buy the land for $5 a square foot. “It came as a complete surprise” when the city sold the property to Dipple and Barbuto for $3.70 a square foot, Kasperowicz wrote.

When Kasperowicz made his offer, the city was considering the site for development as a waste-transfer station, where municipal trash would be loaded onto large trucks to be hauled to disposal sites. Kasperowicz said city officials told him the property was unavailable.

Kasperowicz said he has remained interested in the property and would have submitted a bid if given a chance.

After Smith raised the issue, Councilman Tomas Ursua made a motion to rescind the sale. It failed on a 3-2 vote.

Smith said the council not only failed to solicit other offers before accepting the bid from Dipple and Barbuto, but also sold the land for a price that is well below the appraised value. An appraiser hired by the city estimated the value of the land at $6 a square foot.

Ursua said he thinks the property, which is now being used as a community garden, is worth even more, perhaps $8 or $9 a square foot. Even if the city sold the land at its appraised value, he said, it would net $500,000 more than it will realize from the deal with Dipple and Barbuto. “That’s a significant amount of money,” Ursua said.

Council members C. L. (Clay) Bryant, Nell Soto and Mark A. T. Nymeyer insisted that the city made a good deal, and voted against canceling it.

Bryant pointed out that the city acquired the property from the state Department of Transportation in 1974 for $24,000. “This is not a desirable property,” Bryant said. “We have not had a rush of people wanting it.”

Douglas B. Dunlap, deputy executive director of the city redevelopment agency, said he could find no record in the city files of any expression of interest by Kasperowicz in the property. Kasperowicz said he never submitted a written proposal, but instead spoke to then-Public Works Director Ben Minamide. Minamide, now employed by the city of Carson, was ill and could not be reached for comment.

Dipple and Barbuto plan to build a series of industrial buildings that will employ more than 100 workers. They also have agreed to contribute $155,000 to neighborhood improvements.

Soto said she doubts the property would bring a higher price if the city reopened the sale. She noted: “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.”

Smith, who two weeks ago voted with Ursua against the sale, repeated her argument that selling the land below its appraised value constitutes “a gift of taxpayer dollars” to the developers.

Despite the objections raised by Smith and Ursua, City Attorney Arnold M. Glasman has found no legal violations in the deal. Glasman has written an opinion saying neither the City Charter nor state law requires a bidding process for the sale of city-owned land.

Nymeyer said that even if he had been aware of Kasperowicz’s higher offer when the sale was approved, he would have been unwilling to sell the property to him. He said Kasperowicz has dawdled in developing other surplus land purchased from the city. Kasperowicz said problems in the savings and loan industry disrupted his financing for a group of Victorian-style homes on property purchased from the city, but he is now restoring two homes that were moved to the site and will build or restore two others.

Kasperowicz said the property the city is selling to Dipple and Barbuto “is a great piece of land” that has several potential uses, ranging from restaurants to offices to housing for students at nearby Cal Poly. He said that although he has long been interested in the property, he did not mean to interfere with the sale to Dipple and Barbuto.

“I’m happy the developer got a good deal,” he said. But, he added: “As I told one council member, if you’re having a sale on land, I’d like to hear about it.”