LA area. Read the article, here.
Interesting p.2 excerpts:
The developers said they had a safe design, and concerned residents couldn't get traction. "They just steamrolled it through," Nancy Parker said.
"The whole project went dead," said Bob Arranaga, the Neighborhood Council's land use co-chairman and a 26-year Eagle Rock resident.
Everyone is worried about property values. The questions are only beginning. "What was the city thinking?" Nancy Parker asked. "Who is responsible?" Cobb wondered.
None of that is clear.
Seven Los Angeles City Hall officials, most from the Department of Building and Safety, either declined to comment or did not return phone calls. An e-mail from the department sent to local officials this week said: "Without an owner to hold responsible, enforcement is close to impossible."
The trustee is listed as San Mateo-based E&F Financial Services Inc. There, a representative who would give his name only as Bill said the developer's loan is in foreclosure. Asked about the future, Bill said: "Your guess is as good as mine."
Arranaga said he hopes the city might agree to clear the site, which could then be turned into a satellite parking lot.
"But the sad truth is that everybody is going to try to dodge the bullet," he said. "You now have something that basically is, economically, not feasible. And we are stuck with it."
[emphasis added] It looks unsightly; no better than having a glaring local high-priced weed patch, (but some might call the latter "native prairie").
Whatever Ramsey's best and brightest call it, the aim seems to be to let it grow high enough to give Natalie Haas Steffen, the Kuraks, the Coalition for Ramsey's Future (headquartered early-on at E-Street Makers*), John Feges, James Norman, and possibly other "Dream Team" cheerleader-booster-mover-shakers weeds to hide in. To very, very, very quietly hide in. Hardly a peep is heard, and then it's birds in the weeds, not boosters.
The residents of Eagle Rock apparently had a community with an existing character, and some few were allowed to mess with it to allow profiteering aimed to push in out-of-character high-density housing.
It happens.
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* E-Street Makers
Asked before, what does "developing city" mean?