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The five members of the Alhambra city council voted Thursday night against the 790 units Villages of the Alhambra housing project.
Following a special meeting that lasted nearly six hours, Mayor Katherine Lee, Deputy Mayor Jeff Maloney and council members Sasha Renee Perez, Ross Maza and Adele Andrade-Stadler voted against the proposed complex for the 1000 block of Fremont Avenue.
Council will return to the October 25 city council meeting with documents prepared to formalize the denial.
The land is a Superfund site, an area designated by the federal government for the clean-up and / or eradication of environmentally hazardous toxic substances. Builder The Ratkovich Co. agreed to install barriers under each building that would mitigate vapors entering the units that could cause serious health problems.
Residents raised environmental concerns as well as many others, email after email, which were read in the case. Almost all were against the project because of the additional traffic it would bring to an already congested area, the pollution the traffic would create, the lack of affordable units and a lack of character compared to the rest of the city.
They also complained that, as proposed, the resort is too big and too high. Other residents wondered where the water for these units would come from in these times of scarcity.
Many emails featured greetings to council members, saying that if they voted in favor of the project, they would not be re-elected.
Perhaps the biggest problem was the potential for toxic fumes to infiltrate. Renee Purdy, general manager of the Los Angeles Regional Water Control Board, said residents would be protected as it stands.
“We would say at this point, the use of institutional controls – which means an act restriction, which we know already exists for parts of this site – a soil management plan as well as a program of Vapor monitoring as well as the properly implemented engineering controls that we discussed, such as the floor vapor barrier and passive ventilation, will provide public protection for future land use at this site ”, she declared.
However, this was not enough to move the project forward.
Maloney and Mazza, in particular, spoke of the continued need to meet this the state considers the city’s fair share of new housing units that need to be approved, which for the Alhambra is 6,825 in the eight-year period that began this year.
Yet they voted against the project.
Although some public speakers favored the project, they were in the large minority compared to emails. Council member Andrade-Stadler took note of this.
“I would like to thank all the residents who expressed their opinion on the Villages project, for and against,” she said before the vote. “As board members, we know our role is to hear from both sides, and there was a resounding, resounding (no). … If you haven’t heard it, it has been said several times tonight by our residents.
In a statement, Brian Saenger, President and CEO of The Ratkovich Company, expressed his dismay at the move.
“After four years of working with the community and the Alhambra City Council to create affordable low and moderate income housing that will be built by unions, we are deeply disappointed with the City Council’s preliminary vote to deny the project. The Villages. ” he wrote. “We appreciate the strong community support The Villages has received and will continue our efforts to build The Villages. “
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