Redevelopment

City Council Quietly Negotiates Sale of Albertson’s Property

City Council Quietly Negotiates Sale of Albertson’s Property City Hall, Featured, Legal, Transparency No Responses »

Feb 012012

David Irmer

According to the latest agenda, the San Leandro City Council will meet on Feb. 6th to discuss the price and terms of payment for the former Albertson’s property to developer David Irmer (president of Innisfree Co.), who plans to turn it into a strip mall. Apparently, the City Council has already quietly agreed to sell the property to him.

The City bought the property for $6M in April 2009 and then immediately turned it over to Irmer to develop. Three years later, it is selling it to Irmer for about $2.5M*, 60% less than it paid for it and a $3.5M loss to taxpayers.

The City has offered no explanation as to why Irmer didn’t directly buy the property in 2009, though it was to Irmer’s advantage to wait until the commercial property market reached rock bottom before buying it. Had the property’s price gone up, Irmer was under no obligation to buy it. It is also unclear whether the city overpaid for the property in 2009 or whether it is selling it to Irmer for less than its market price. While commercial property prices have gone down since 2009, the price decline has not been anywhere near 60%. In either case the City, presumably following the advise from the lawfirm Meyers Nave, would have violated the law.

The City bought the Albertson’s property in 2009 to settle a lawsuit by Norcal, the former owners of the property. Norcal sued when the City refused to allow Grocery Outlet to move into the Albertson’s property. At the time, the City Council said that a supermarket was inconsistent with the City’s Transit Oriented Development plan (though apparently the City Council has changed its mind as another supermarket, Fresh & Easy, will anchor the new strip mall). It is thus possible that the City willingly overpaid for the Albertson’s property at that time. Doing so, however, would be illegal.

It is of course legal for cities to settle lawsuits, but they can only do so with their own. The Albertson’s site was actually bought by the City’s Redevelopment Agency, an independent legal entity. The recently eliminated redevelopment agencies were obligated to pay “market price” for any property they acquired – thus overpaying for a property to settle a lawsuit against a different party, is illegal.

If the City did not break the law in 2009 and did not overpay for the property then, then it must be undercharging for it now (as, again, property values have not gone down by 60%). The California Constitution prohibits local government from making gifts of public money to private individual, allowing a private party to buy a public property for less than its worth constitutes a “gift”. It is, therefore, illegal.

The sale of the Albertson’s property to David Irmer has been done totally behind closed doors. Not only did the City now allow any other party to bid on the property, but it conducted the sale without any notice to the public. It gave the community no opportunity to be heard on this issue. While the developer conducted a few community fora to inform the community about his plans, none of the concerns presented by San Leandrans have been addressed.

There isn’t very much we, as San Leandrans, can do about this now, though I’d urge you e-mail the City Council to at least put your objections on the record. It is also something worth remembering come November 2012, when Ursula Reed and Jim Prola run for re-election.

* While City staff have indicated that they will sell the property for $3M, Irmer has said he expects to pay only $2.5M for it.

City Staff Lobby to Keep High Salaries

City Staff Lobby to Keep High Salaries Short Notes No Responses »

Jan 272012

Apparently, several positions at City Hall are being paid in part by Redevelopment money, which is going away (or at least will be cut down) as the Redevelopment agencies are disbanded. At the Jan. 23rd meeting, Luke Sims, the city’s Community Development Director, mentioned that 40% of his $200K+ salary comes from Redevelopment money, and if the city wants to keep him, the City Council will have to find the money to make up the difference.

Now, this seems to me like a perfect opportunity to get rid of the “community” development director, which has done little to improve San Leandro and much to harm it (his battle against the Bal, pushing chain stores instead of local stores that keep money in the community, keeping hard restrictions on businesses opening in SL, pushing for the San Leandro Crossings affordable housing project in opposition to the community’s wishes, etc.). Of course, I bet he’d stay even at 60% of his current salary, as all other California’s cities are facing the same issue and they won’t be able to offer the high salaries they were offering before. Cities outside California don’t offer such outrageous salaries.

That said, our City Council has bent to the will of City Managers and Department Heads for a long time. Even though their compensation often top the $200K mark, they have declined to ask them to pay for /their own portion/ of pension contributions. Last week, they gave them free i-pads. When City Manager Hollister couldn’t handle his job, they funded a deputy city manager AND an assistant city manager.

So I’d say expect more cuts to public services in order to continue paying the high salaries of people like Luke Sims.

Is Wal-Mart coming to Downtown San Leandro?

Is Wal-Mart coming to Downtown San Leandro? Businesses, City Hall, Featured 3 Responses »

Jan 062012

Despite community opposition, the San Leandro City Council is set to approve the development of the old-Albertson’s property downtown into yet another strip mall, euphemistically dubbed “Village Marketplace“. The anchor of the mall, occupying slightly less than half the total space, is supposed to be a branch of the “Fresh & Easy” grocery stores – but it’s just as likely that it will actually be a Wal-Mart, San Leandro’s third.

Fresh & Easy is a chain of small grocery stores, mostly located in California. It was started in 2007 by British supermarket giant Tesco as a daring attempt to break into the American grocery market. They modeled it after their own successful grocery stores back in England, offering assorted dry goods, packaged fresh vegetables and meats while emphasizing frozen and refrigerated prepared meals and private labels. They save costs by only using self-checkouts and running bare-bone stores.

So far, Fresh & Easy is not doing well. In the four years since it opened it has lost $1.1 billion, while sucking up $1.5 billion in capital. Fresh & Easy now recognizes it failed by attempting to impose the UK model onto the US market and it’s starting to revamp its stores to make them more appealing to American tastes. It’s putting homey touches on the clinical decor, adding bakeries and loose produce and introducing loyalty cards. But all of this ads cost while providing uncertain results and Fresh & Easy is running out of time. Tesco’s brand-new CEO has suggested that Fresh & Easy must break even by the the beginnings 0f 2013, analysts believe if it doesn’t, Tesco will cut their losses. It won’t be the first time; in August Tesco pulled out of Japan, closing its 129 stores.

So what happens if Fresh & Easy closes? The Financial Time suggests that Walmart may pick up its crumbs. Indeed, Walmart has been posing to compete with Fresh & Easy for a while. Currently, it is pushing its Neighborhood Store concept in the Bay Area, but it’s also starting a new chain of even smaller stores dubbed Wal-Mart Express. This stores are set to copy and provide competition to the very profitable dollar stores that have popped out throughout the country. Walmart plans to open hundreds of these stores in the coming years, acquiring existing retailers to speed up the process. While Wamart’s fortunes have also been declining, it has the knowledge of the US market and the buying power to succeed where Tesco has failed. Village Marketplace’s developer, David Irmer, has previously spoken on the difficulties of finding tenants for the development, so it’s unlikely that Walmart will have much in the way of competition if it decides to move to that space.

It’s also unlikely there would be anything City Hall could do. Once the city sells the property to Irmer (for half of what it paid for it in 2009), it will be up to Irmer to decide who he rents it to. In the past, the City was able to use the Transit Oriented Development plan to keep Grocery Outlet out of the location, but once it permits Fresh & Easy to operate a grocery store on that property, it will need to allow any other company to do the same. This is exactly what happened when Wal-Mart decided to open a second San Leandro store at the former Target property on Hesperian Blvd.

I can only hope that City Council members will take the issue of whether this is how they want Downtown San Leandro to develop.

Will San Leandro say Goodbye to Redevelopment?

Will San Leandro say Goodbye to Redevelopment? City Hall 1 Response »

Jul 062011

Last month, Gov. Brown signed into law two trailer bills, ABX1 26 and ABX1 27, which will eliminate all redevelopment agencies in the state unless cities agree to transfer a large amount of money from these agencies to school and other local services. As of now, San Leandro’s redevelopment agency cannot enter into any new contract or start any new project. The city must decide by October 1st whether it will dissolve the agency or pay the fee. If it decides to pay, it must pass an ordinance committing itself to do so. While the City’s analysis is preliminary, the expected payment will be somewhere north of $5M for 2012, and over $1M a year thereafter. As the state has been taking about $1M a year from the city’s redevelopment agency for the last decade, that annual payment should not make much difference in the working of the redevelopment agency long term, though some projects may have to be postponed. The $5M payment, however, would come out mostly from the city’s funds for affordable housing and it’s unlikely that it would be repleted.

Before this law was passed, the City’s Redevelopment Agency transferred most of its assets to the City and had the City assume its obligations. The new laws invalidates these transfers, however.

At this point, the City has several choices:

– Dissolve the Redevelopment Agency and get out of the business of doing redevelopment.

– Dissolve the Redevelopment Agency and have the city be in charge of redevelopment directly, while fighting the state in court to keep the former redevelopment agency’s assets/tax revenues.

– Pass the ordinance in question and be prepared to make a partial payment of the $5M fee in January 2012.

The League of California Cities, meanwhile, is suing the state at the California Supreme Court level to halt the enforcement of these laws. It argues that the laws violate several constitutional restrictions on the state’s power to allocate property taxes as well as the recently passed Prop 22, which specifically prohibits the state from taking money away from redevelopment agencies. The state’s argument is that it’s not taking money away – it’s allowing redevelopment agencies to stay open in exchange for a voluntary payment. A basic principle of law is that the state is not allowed to do indirectly what it cannot do directly, so there is a good chance the League will ultimately prevail – whether it would do so soon enough to halt this process is another matter altogether.

The most likely scenario for San Leandro is to pay the $5M fee and go on its merry way. It will continue to have funds to do redevelopment, and citizens will have fewer fights with the city about unwanted affordable housing projects.

San Leandro sues to keep redevelopment money

San Leandro sues to keep redevelopment money City Hall, Legal No Responses »

Apr 162011

The city of San Leandro is joining 5 other cities, all represented by the Meyers Nave lawfirm, in a lawsuit that asks the court to validate their redevelopment activities. The city has not yet disclosed the particulars of the case, but this article discusses the type of lawsuits cities like San Leandro are filing. It’s unclear whether this lawsuit has legal merit or is necessary, but it’s sure to generate lots of attorney fees for Meyers Nave.