Marina del Rey Leaseholders
I am a leaseholder in Marina del Rey--and proud of it! The recent stories in The Times (April 12-14) have categorized the leaseholders in Marina del Rey as greedy developers who feed at the public trough, aided and abetted by a corrupt collection of elected officials on the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. Your articles may have fed the public’s appetite for scandal, but the allegations are simply not true.
Your series on Marina del Rey has provided me with a painful lesson in the power of the media. One front-page story, inaccurate and misleading though it was, has nearly destroyed a reputation for integrity and fairness I have earned over the course of a 40-year career. Interested readers needed a magnifying glass to find the one-paragraph clarification, published two days later, which admitted that neither Elie Ring nor I were partners of former state Sen. Alan Robbins, a self-confessed felon I have never even met, as was erroneously stated in the first article. The Times reporting on the Marina has damaged irreparably the public’s confidence in the vitality of the Marina and in the civic-mindedness of many of my fellow leaseholders and me.
Thirty years ago, Marina del Rey was a dream, an idea promoted by the late Supervisor Burton Chace. His tenacity led to the creation of a unique concept--the construction of a small-craft harbor and residential community through a partnership of the public and private sectors.
The people of L.A. County have enjoyed the unprecedented opportunity to live, to work and to recreate in an affordable ocean-oriented community. The county derives millions of dollars of revenue from our activities each and every year.
The total revenue generated by the Marina to the county treasury is more than twice the $15 million figure cited over and over again in The Times. Nor were readers informed that the county’s income from the anchorage and apartment leases in the Marina has increased by as much as 75% since 1985. Further, you assert that the value of the Marina is $1.4 billion. My 30 years of experience in the Marina suggests that this figure is wildly inflated.
Certainly, those of us who have built and continue to operate businesses in Marina del Rey have benefited from our investment in it.
The Times has left the mistaken impression that the Marina is deteriorating rapidly. Because of provisions in the 1962 leases, the county inspects properties several times a year--and requires we leaseholders to make all necessary repairs. I am especially proud of the maintenance record at Del Rey Shores, which would reveal few, if any, consumer complaints.
Still, now that the issue of management of the Marina has been raised, I hope there will be public debate about the basic question: Does it make sense any longer for the county to continue to own the land of Marina del Rey?
What makes such a discussion especially timely is the proposed deal between the county and Maguire Thomas Partners and the Summa Corp. regarding Parcel A of the behemoth Playa Vista project. After all, the proposed memorandum-of-understanding, which awaits Board of Supervisors approval, stipulates the outright sale of a parcel of county-owned Marina del Rey to expedite the construction of a private marina and an additional public marina (to be owned by the county but leased to Playa Vista under longer and more favorable terms than the present anchorage leases in the Marina itself!) even though these marinas will gain access to the Pacific Ocean through the main channel of Marina del Rey. Moreover, the county pledges to assist the developers of Playa Vista in the construction of condominiums, some to be priced as high as $2 million, when present county policy precludes the construction or conversion of similar condominiums in the Marina next door. Perhaps a thorough study of the double standard in county treatment of the Marina leaseholders and the Playa Vista project will prompt a prudent and fair re-examination of the county’s and the public’s goals for both entities.
JERRY B. EPSTEIN
Marina del Rey
