News of the Arroyo
Title: | Desiderio site: a lost opportunity |
Subtitle: | |
Date: | 2007-05-01 |
Summary: | May 1, 2007 - Opinion writer Michele Zack decries Pasadena's decision on the Desiderio site. |
Author: | Michele Zack |
Publication: | Pasadena Star News |
Content: | THE Pasadena City Council\'s lack of vision and leadership during the public decision-making process on the Desiderio site was disappointing and perplexing. For some reason, council members chose to ignore at least 50percent of public comment heard on the subject. Public benefit was trumped on this last piece of the Arroyo Seco land available for city use in favor of nine families whose land tenure will be unclear. Will they own, lease, or be able to sell at market rate their \"gift homes from the city\" in 10 or 20 years? The council also ignored the Green Cities Initiative, to which it recently signed on (specifically endorsing adaptive reuse), and turned its back on crucially needed environmental education for the public. The council lost a unique opportunity to create a new art-and-environmental center expressing a vision of the best of everything traditionally associated with Pasadena. The so-called compromise reached by the council tasks two long-standing, highly regarded local nonprofits with coming up with $15million to build on land they do not own instead of letting them more wisely use resources to give the gift of art and education to the public. The -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Advertisement -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- adopted plan is a giveaway of this beautiful site to nine families who aren\'t even poor, and to some residents in a privileged neighborhood who do not wish to have a public use there. It should be noted that many nearby residents supported the Arroyo Center, but their voices didn\'t garner as much attention as the naysayers. Habitat for Humanity\'s own architects came up with a better plan that nestled homes along a higher part of the site looking over the Arroyo; had this been adopted we could have boosted both affordable housing and public education. Now that\'s what I would call a compromise. Instead, the Arroyo Center folks kept offering to take less and less space, and the affordable housing folks gave up nothing. I am a big proponent of bungalow courts, having lived in Reinway Court near Los Robles and Villa for 10 years. But consider the site! At Reinway it was great to have the sociability of facing my neighbors; this inward orientation made me feel protected from the somewhat rough neighborhood, and the land was completely flat. Desiderio is on a slope offering amazing views - a huge advantage. The current plan has nothing to do with the site, and wastes the opportunities it offers with little houses facing each other instead of the Arroyo Seco. This orientation isolates \"low rent\" residents from neighbors. The City Council should think more broadly about the opportunities the site offers and to consider the flaws in its plan. For starters, how will the city pretend it has met the Army\'s No.1 criteria - consensus - when its decision ignores input from literally thousands of people who signed petitions, wrote letters and turned up for public comment at 10 meetings? The historic nature of the building. and the hero it is named for, are other obstacles to the wasteful plan of tearing it down at great public expense. Why would the council turn its back on the amazing gift offered to all its citizens of a center for art and the environment? A whole school of art was founded on the Arroyo Seco, yet this style - celebrating our history and environment - has no home of its own. As for the environment, we\'ve had an offer from a foundation headed by the city\'s own 20-year representative to the Metropolitan Water District, now the chairman of its board. Tim Brick is acknowledged on the national level as a leader in rethinking how to conserve, and make best use of, the resource that keeps us all alive. His organization wants to share knowledge and education with us all; yet in this time of global warming and serious water shortages across the planet and our own region, all we hear from the City Council are big yawns and a few snores. That\'s the lack of vision to which I am really referring. info@altadenawatershed.org Michele Zack is the author of \"Altadena: Between Wilderness and City\" and the story in the film \"Eaton\'s Water\" that dramatizes how Pasadena was made possible by developing Arroyo Seco water sources. |
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