Developers Help 2 Cities End Dispute Over Projects

The developers of two major projects in Hawthorne have tentatively agreed to pay $147,000 for road improvements in Lawndale to help settle a feud between the two cities that threatened to stall the projects, a Hawthorne official said Thursday.

The developers have already committed to spend $2 million for traffic improvements as part of their redevelopment deals with Hawthorne. The additional money targeted for Lawndale is to pay for painting new lines and installing new traffic lights along three of the city’s main thoroughfares, said Bud Cormier, Hawthorne’s assistant director of redevelopment.

In exchange for those improvements, Lawndale will drop a pair of lawsuits it filed last year against Hawthorne alleging that it’s city officials had approved the redevelopment projects without assessing all of their environmental effects, he said.

Lawyers for the two developers declined to comment on the agreement until it is signed next week.

But Lawndale Assistant City Atty. Robert Owen said Thursday of the agreement, “I think it’s good for both sides. It gets rid of the lawsuit, lets (the developers) go on with their (projects) and gives us improvements we really think need to be made as a result of the (projects).”

The tentative agreement came more than a month after a Superior Court judge said in a court memo that he was inclined to rule in Lawndale’s favor on the two lawsuits. The judge delayed his final ruling pending further arguments.

Hawthorne City Atty. Michael Adamson said the judge’s memo had nothing to do with the city’s decision to settle the two cases. “The developers are riding in on their white horse trying to settle these cases, but the city is not acquiescing or admitting it did anything wrong, because we don’t feel we did,” he said.

In one lawsuit filed in August, Lawndale claimed that Hawthorne officials had approved a 36-acre office-retail redevelopment project near the San Diego (405) Freeway and Rosecrans Avenue without adequately addressing how it would affect traffic in neighboring Lawndale. That project is being developed for about $250 million by Mission-Comstock, Crosser & Hickey partnership.

In a second lawsuit filed in September, Lawndale accused Hawthorne officials of approving a zoning change along the San Diego Freeway and Century Freeway corridor without performing proper environmental reports. The zone change allowed the so-called Cloverleaf redevelopment project to proceed in an area previously designated for light-industrial uses. The $250-million project by Cloverleaf South Bay Ltd. will combine condominiums, offices and retail stores.

Last month, the two developers proposed negotiating a settlement with Lawndale to prevent the lawsuits from delaying their projects, Cormier said.

With Hawthorne’s approval, they initially offered Lawndale about $120,000 in traffic improvements, Cormier said. But when Lawndale came back with a counter offer of $147,000, the developers agreed, and the proposed settlement was accepted by the Hawthorne City Council in a closed session on Monday, he said.

The settlement, expected to be evenly split between the two developers, is to pay for the repainting of lines along Hawthorne Boulevard and Rosecrans Avenue and the installing of a new traffic signal system at the intersection of Hawthorne Boulevard and Inglewood Avenue, Cormier said.