The 7/18/07 City Council meeting demonstrated once again how the City Council is completely pro-builder, and anti-resident. The area in question is a small portion of Howard Street, which has a cul-de-sac at one end, and an impossible exit on to Monterey Road. Developer Vahe Panossian (an MD from USC who practices in LA and Pasadena but who claims that property development is his family business) bought 3 single family homes on Howard over the last couple of years, and now wants to tear them down and build a 3-story 26-unit condominium project, adding another 50 or so cars going in and out of this short dead-end block each day.

Local residents are not in favor of this, and submitted a petition signed by several hundred people to downzone their area to make a transition zone of R-2250 between the R-1 area on one side of their neighborhood and the R-1250 on the other side.

The issue is that there is not enough parking on that street already, more traffic cannot be tolerated and the area is already overdeveloped. Neighborhood residents want the density lowered. It's too high now, and adding more residences to an already overcrowded area would make life worse for area residents and make an already wealthy surgeon even wealthier.

Councilman Quintero, who always seems to understand the community and his constituents, tried to introduce the motion to downzone the area, but he couldn't even get a second. Yousefian, and Najarian both ignored the input from the community, and from their questions and comments it was obvious they had their mind made up before they even came into the meeting - they weren't about to listen to the public. Yousefian said he was against "spot-zoning", so he obviously wasn't listening when both the City Attorney and the Planning Director said that downzoning this area wouldn't be "spot zoning"..

Yousefian was reported in the Glendale News Press on (I believe) 7/17/06 to have likened the 250-petitioners to a "lynch mob", and a speaker said he confirmed that quote by speaking to the GNP reporter about it after the article came out. Talk about arrogant lack of respect for the public.

Yousefian also had the nerve to start the hearing off by advising people not to elaborate on their reasons why they wanted downzoning, but to just come to the podium and make the simple statement that they support downzoning! Imagine a judge telling the defense not to present arguments to the jury, just to stand there and say "Your Honor, my client is not guilty!"

That's exactly what Yousefian these poor citizens to do, and in the end they all just wasted an evening trying to get through to 3 councilmen who already had their minds made up.

As usual, there was a lot of red herring action - much discussion about whether or not the Design Review Board liked the project.

Hello?? The DRB passes judgement on the DESIGN of a project, NOT whether or not it belongs in a certain location.

The DRB doesn't look at traffic, they don't take the neighbor's worries about congestion and overdevelopment into account - they are a bunch of architects who nitpick about  stucco color, window sizes and architectural style. Whether or not they like the project or not has absolutely NO bearing on whether or not it belongs on Howard Street.

An interesting point was made by one speaker - when asked by Yousefian if anyone from the neighborhood appealed the DRB decision, he said no, because no one knew you COULD appeal DRB decisions. Glendale Alliance has some voter education to do I think!

Once again the citizens of Glendale have been swindled by Yousefian, Manoukian and Najarian (Weaver was absent), while Frank Quintero tried to stand up for the residents.

The motion that WAS passed instead ordered the Traffic Department to do a traffic study of the traffic on Monterey Road, and maybe put in a signal or two - probably a good idea, but it will do nothing to protect the integrity and character of the Howard neighborhood or protect the neighbors from the extra 50 cars on a single dead-end city block.

The City Council is NOT listening to the residents, and will bend over backwards to cater to developers. Howard Street and residents of that area should remember that next April - and Glendale Watch will be around to remind them come election season!

 

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