Eminent domain and other civic arts

"You do not lead by hitting people over the head - that's assault, not leadership."

---Dwight D. Eisenhower, who led the nation on two different fronts



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Mayor Ron Loveridge of Riverside has a dream. Yes he does indeed.

According to the latest edition of the Press Enterprise, he wants this city to be the "City of the Arts".

So the plan is to get those on the dais to decide whether or not the city will use this name as an official "brand" of sorts to perhaps replace the "All-American City" logo of the 1990s and the more recent "Most Livable City". It is actually on the discussion calendar for this Tuesday's meeting where it will be heard. The report on this agenda item is here.

Councilman Dom Betro and Councilwoman Nancy Hart, representatives of the BASS quartet and the female gender respectively have signed onto Loveridge's latest vision. How long until its natural champion, Councilman Frank Schiavone jump on board? His foray into the arts was when he consulted with City Attorney Gregory Priamos back in the days when he was bushy eyed and bright-tailed(or something like that) about whether or not the city could sue the new television show, The O.C. for defamation of character. Priamos' advice must not have been very encouraging and the peanut gallery laughed so Schiavone backed down and the-show-that-could-have-been-a-defendant went on to become a major hit. The publicity about the councilman out in what the show affectionately referred to as the backwards city who wanted to sue the show didn't hurt its popularity.

Here are more sources on one of Riverside's more colorful foray into the arts. Schiavone's quest made him the icon of discussion boards on the issue from coast to coast.


His contemplation of suing Fox Television which aired the show drew the wrath of some of The O.C.'s most devout fans.



One commenter here puts in an opinion on the matter.


(excerpt)


Riverside Politicians irked by The O.C. (Zap2it.com)

LOS ANGELES (Zap2it.com) - If you live in Chino or Riverside this summer, now may be a good time to wonder what important community business is falling by the wayside as local leaders waste their time worrying about a FOX primetime soap opera.

Add Riverside Councilman Frank Schiavone to the list of smalltime politicos anxious to make a big name on the back of FOX's relatively popular new drama "The O.C." According to Riverside's Press-Enterprise, Schiavone is so outraged by the treatment of his constituency in the Tuesday, Aug. 19 episode that he's called for a closed session of the city council to discuss possible legal action.

In the episode, the third for the series, a Newport Beach socialite is outraged when public defender Sandy Cohen (Peter Gallagher) compares her background to that of Chino-raised troublemaker Ryan.

You're from, what, Riverside, which is not that different, really, from where Ryan's from," Cohen tells her.
"You will not believe what Sandy Cohen said to me," She tells her husband. "He basically called me white trash. He said I was from Riverside."

Schiavone seems unaware that since the character in question is being criticized for her superficiality, it could be argued that the show is actually suggesting that people are too quick to make snap judgements about Riverside and its denizens. That, though, would assume that the politico either watched the show, or has any appreciation for irony.

Then again, Schiavone and the good people of Riverside certainly aren't the first people to be offended by "The O.C." Earlier in August, the mayor and city planner of Chino expressed disappointment that the show would depict their community in a negative light.

Come on people. It's a freaking fictional TV show. Don't you have better things to do than complain about something like that?




This site allowed for people to weigh in on the controversy.


(excerpt)



"I know, these people are insane! The writers shouldn't have to limit their character development because of all this stupid criticism. And it's not like the show's purpose is to put down these towns, there's just a random line in one episode, and all of a sudden people want a law suit! Maybe if SNL did a skit on them they'd feel differently... or at least they'd be working on a different law suit."


"OK, so Chino & Riverside where huge tourist draws before this show? Sheesh, the average non-Californian viewer had no idea these cities existed b/f The OC and couldn't care less if they were real towns or pretend TV towns. The politicians need to get a grip."





It even reached the pinnacle of immortality in this article in the New York Times.


(excerpt)


A few years ago, a City Council member in Riverside threatened to sue the producers of the television show "The O.C." for its condescending portrayal of Riverside, which borders Orange County on the east. The city attorney thought better of it. "The people in O.C. can now sympathize," said Frank Schiavone, the Riverside councilman who threatened the suit. "Maybe it's easier for them to understand that nobody likes to be slighted."



Slighted? I would think the decision by the film producers who hired Clint and Angelina would be more of a slight to our fair city. But if there's the inevitable "City of the Arts" task force at some point in time, why not have Schiavone head it? He does have some pizazz on the dais and could bring some flair to the process.

Hopefully, this will be one task force which unlike its two city park counterparts will more accurately depict the ethnic, racial and gender diversity of this city.

O.C.-Gate not withstanding, Loveridge's proposal sounds admirable and certainly interesting even in the wake of news that Clint and Angelina are in that other county filming a movie. What makes me curious is why the discussion calendar is filled with items like these and fewer items involving the huge expenditure of city funding which now are mainly listed on the consent calendar. You know the same one where members of the public are barred from pulling items from. Items that are seldom pulled unless someone on the dais has to recuse himself from hearing and voting on them because he's about to make some serious money off of it.

So what kind of entertainment will be seen downtown?

Well, there's the Adult Book Store which still holds a prominent position in between the building used by Riverside Community College District for some of its offices and White Park. Meanwhile, other businesses including barber shops and beauty salons owned by African-Americans are only a memory once RCC moved in to its new satellite office.



Of course, the film premieres that this city used to have in the early 20th century including the notable if highly racist film, Birth of a Nation(aka The Clansman) in 1915. This time, to enjoy the arts in downtown Riverside, you have to have enough money to purchase live theater tickets. If they introduce live theater to Riverside and can sell enough of it to keep the Fox Theater up and running, then hopefully they will offer discounted tickets to families who could greatly benefit from seeing a musical, play or other live performance but can't afford it. This would certainly do much to stir people away from the idea that the renovation of downtown as the jewel of arts and other things in the Inland Empire isn't just for wealthy White folks, including their kids who appear to be the only people under 21 who can move about downtown without being stopped by police officers and asked if they are on probation or parole.

Two Black teenagers about 18 who had just graduated from high school spent some time recently at the office of the Community Police Review Commission filing complaints and detailing their experiences of being pulled over about a dozen times in two weeks, asked the same questions and receiving out of it, two traffic citations. Their mother decided finally that she would drive them to and from their jobs, rather than let them walk or ride their bicycles in the downtown area.

Latino-owned businesses that don't involve food sales including two in the Fox Theater complex which was taken by eminent domain and others involving car lots and a small market are on their way out of downtown or long gone and most likely, will be replaced by businesses owned by White property owners. The Latino business owners and the sales tax they brought in especially for the Downtown Neighborhood Partnership was good enough for the lean years, but after all, the original renaissance period, which the version put on by Riverside is named after, was a historic period that transpired in Europe.

But gentrification makes it hard to afford to keep and maintain property in the target area and most of the families in the Eastside are poor working-class and immigrants, not exactly the people that projects like Riverside Renaissance and others cater to.

The Eastside residents are also trying to address the issue of Lincoln Park which has become the enclave of late for the homeless that are camping out there due to the latest attempts to oust them from the downtown area. The neighborhood has always been a popular dumping ground for the city in regards to the homeless. What better place to put your "undesirables" than a poor, working class neighborhood which is predominantly Black and Latino?

All of the homeless shelters are either in the Eastside or adjacent to it in the only portion of Ward One where Betro could afford to house them without serious upset from the residents who might take that to the voting polls. Yet when the homeless task force was put together, Eastside residents complained that they were left out of that process.







The Press Enterprise moved on from its coverage of the Operation: "City of the Arts" to tackle the discussion of the issue of eminent domain and its impact in Election 2007 in this article. Since its own editorial board backs two out of the three candidates mentioned in it, this article should be interesting reading as another testimony about how eminent domain is not only a necessary thing for the city but seemingly necessary for its very survival.

You've got to examine what is faced by the property owners who have been subjected to threats of eminent domain via letters from the city's Redevelopment Agency(which is the same people, different hats). You also have got to admire the devotion the fourth estate has to the city which hosts it. After all, the Press Enterprise is now housed in a very nice building in a prime spot downtown.



This article is as interesting for what it doesn't address as it is for what it does. No where does it mention the relationship between the development firms building projects in the different wards who rely on the city through its Redevelopment Agency to serve as their middlemen in these land negotiations and the campaign coffers of various city officials. Mark Rubin, who's developing downtown is plopping money into several campaigns including Betro's and Doug Jacobs who wanted the city to eminent domain a neighborhood of houses close to the Riverside Plaza has ties to both Betro and Ward Three Councilman Art Gage. The fact that those who benefit the most from eminent domain are endorsing and/or financing the campaigns of the council members who seem to be the most supportive of welding it does up the queasy factor associated with it.


The use of eminent domain or the issuance of letters threatening eminent domain has noticeably increased since BASS has become the dominant bloc replacing GASS which seemed to be missing a very key element to pushing the eminent domain agenda forward.



It's interesting that the article brings up the Marketplace, where a Black man who owned property there that the city wanted sued the Redevelopment Agency, alleging that this agency offered him less money for his land than the White property owners around him. The city filed a motion of summary judgment to get the case tossed out, but U.S. District Court Judge Robert Timlin ruled that there was enough evidence of discriminatory practice by the Redevelopment Agency to overturn the summary judgment motion.

Here's the city's record now and then on "authorizing" eminent domain.


(excerpt)


From 1990 through 2003, Riverside city councils voted 12 times to authorize the Redevelopment Agency's use of eminent domain, though the city was unable to say how many lawsuits the agency filed as a result of these votes.

Since 2004, the council has voted 13 times to authorize the agency's use of eminent domain. Sometimes an authorization involved several parcels and multiple owners, and the agency filed more than one lawsuit as a result.

The 18 eminent domain lawsuits filed since 2004 were to acquire a total of 13.33 acres. The city comprises almost 52,000 acres.

Nine of the cases have settled, often for more than the agency appraisal on the property. For example, the agency appraised 2.7 acres at the California Square shopping center at $1.8 million but settled its lawsuit by buying the land for $2.9 million.

The other nine cases are heading to trial on the amount the agency will have to pay the owners.




What the article doesn't tell you is that in many cases where there's no settlements, particularly those involving the liquor stores and motels on University Avenue, it's because if the city used eminent domain against them, it would have to assist these businesses with relocation and it doesn't want any of them to exist within city limits. The most prominent example of this, is Western Liquor Store which is probably the most blighted business in Riverside and it's ironic that it still has one of the best opportunities to negotiate its selling price that many businesses which come no way near to the conditions of this store in terms of their "blight" in their respective areas. Much like in the case of the University Lodge motel that was owned by Menlo Park's slumlords, it's the truly negligent property owners who leave town with the most money in their pockets. Because these businesses really are "blighted" and the city will do anything and pay just about anything to get them out of Riverside.



Welcome Inn of America, another rundown motel was not really a blip on the radar until the fatal officer-involved shooting of Lee Deante Brown on April 3, 2006 appeared to move it closer to the front of the line. It's scheduled for demolition in several weeks.



Due to changes made in neighboring apartment complexes in relation to higher rents and more stringent background examinations including credit checks, the low-cost motels became homes for those who would otherwise be homeless. They are what constitutes, low-income housing in the city of Riverside at this time. The mixed use housing which replaces them will likely cater to upper middle-class professionals or students as part of the gentrification of the Eastside which will take place during the next 10-15 years which might see the neighborhood become predominantly White with a strong increase of Asian-Americans and Asian students, instead of being the predominantly Black and Latino neighborhood it is today. That's what those who are running Riverside Renaissance and the UCR Charrette programs aren't telling people.

It's too bad because there are definitely good improvements in both projects, but like a lot of Riverside Residence for example, they are more geared for people who don't live in Riverside yet than those who do. The problem is, that UCR and the Riverside Unified School District will be buying up a lot of houses and given that both are public, not private entities, eminent domain will probably be a part of that at the same time the city government will still be boasting that it's never seized a owner-occupied residence for eminent domain which technically will be the truth.


Pockets of Latinos will probably inhabit parts of the neighborhood not picked for university-centered development. African-American families will continue their migration out of the Eastside that's been going on for the past 10-15 years.



Some changes and possible reforms were offered up by some of those impacted by eminent domain but the article didn't seem too impressed with them.


(excerpt)


Freeman, the eminent domain foe, said the city never seems to pick local property owners to do major redevelopment projects. It gives the impression the council favors certain developers and cuts secret deals for them, he said.

For that reason, he favors changing the law to make the Redevelopment Agency wait 10 years after it acquires property through eminent domain before it can transfer it to a developer.

"That takes away the whole idea of the backroom deal," Freeman said.

Betro said the agency uses an open, competitive process to find developers for projects. It chooses them based on how closely their proposals fit the agency's guidelines, and it favors developers who ask for little or no agency subsidy, he said.

One of the agency's main eminent domain targets in the past three years has been property owned for dozens of years by the Garner family, including the former Ab Brown garage downtown and three parcels on Merrill Avenue across from Riverside Plaza that held boarded-up buildings, including an old blood bank.

Sarah Garner, a Carlsbad resident who helps manage her family's properties, said she has felt frustrated by the agency's move to acquire the property.

"We wanted to do projects on all those parcels ourselves," Garner said.

Gage said the Garner parcels and some of the motels on University were a clear example of blight. Eminent domain became necessary, he said, when the agency and the Garner family couldn't reach a deal.

"When you've got something really nasty, it's got to go," Gage said.





Interesting comment coming from a candidate who lost the first round of Election 2007 despite the resounding popularity of the Riverside Renaissance. Clearly many of those in his ward believe that he has to go. After all, Gage once wanted a whole batch of houses to go for office space.



Those in Ward Three who vote are in a tough spot, because the only other choice is a political neophyte who was viewed as being a "team player" by BASS quartet members before he even filed his papers with the city clerk's office to run for office. To some, that makes it appear as if he's a puppet and unfortunately, the only way to know for sure is to elect him to office and watch what happens. Is he part of the "new generation" to kick out the "old guard" or is he a puppet who will be skillfully manipulated by BASS?



It's too bad that no one's thought to make a television serial-drama about Riverside. Too bad, indeed. Would it be filmed in Riverside? Did David Lynch film any of his latest exercise in celluloid, Inland Empire, in well, the Inland Empire?



Not unless either county annexed Hungary lately.



The Inland Empire Weekly tackled this same topic several months ago, only it included in its coverage the fact that several major development players downtown including Mark Rubin had dropped off financial contributions in several city council campaigns including that of the councilman representing downtown. Of course, not long after this article was published, this periodical was banished from the downtown public library allegedly on the order of the "man in the blue shirt" as he's often called.





Another man who was in custody in Orange County died after being tased. Tests are pending on what exactly caused his death.