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| Valley Castle in utero |
One Carter continues to be the gift that keeps on giving. The only question now being that after almost a decade since this disaster of a development was set in motion by the notoriously faithless 2004 City Council, will something actually get built up there? And if it should be the McMansions (AKA "Valley Castles") that the architect Adele Chang is attempting to peddle so that she can pocket a few bucks, wouldn't that make the debacle even worse?
By now nothing about One Carter should surprise anyone. We are now in about the fifth sequel in the longest running development disaster story in Sierra Madre history.
One quick point before I try and tackle the rest of this. For the first time ever in any of these hearings one solitary person got up to defend proposed McMansion #1. He is a new site owner who paid $750,000 for one of those awful lots up there. This guy advised us all to "don't let emotion wash away fairness." He also stated that he wants to be a part of the community, and "we don't want to cause any kind of disruption."
You should know, I have always been a believer that the buyer should beware. And if that buyer was foolish enough to spend a huge amount of money for something that in reality is worth far less than what was paid, that is no fault of anyone but the buyer. So the argument that someone who paid three quarters of a million dollars for an empty dusty lot worth nowhere near that much money should be allowed to erect some ridiculously oversized Valley Castle - McMansion in full view of our entire town because it would somehow be fair to let him do so is lost on me.
You made a bad purchase, chum. The entire town is not required to suffer the consequences of your foolishness. Nor does overspending on a lot give someone any special legal privileges. There is no "Sucker's Rights" clause in either Sierra Madre's General Plan or the HMZ.
McMansion - Valley Castle architect Adele Chang really is a piece or work. And it isn't just the bad glasses. You can't help but get the impression that there is little she wouldn't do or say to get these barns of hers built. What makes her a truly exceptional case is her obvious impatience with anyone who disagrees with her. Apparently she believes the Planning Commission is made up of people who are neither very bright or strong, and that all she needs to do is sigh loudly and occasionally roll her eyes and the PC will somehow be intimidated and knuckle under.
Adele kicked off the proceedings with this lulu: "We had a feeling that the commission and the general public had the feeling that the house was too big and bulky." Was this because everyone there had said so with every other word they uttered?
She had a feeling. So what did she do to assuage those feelings? She spent practically her entire evening before the Planning Commission pushing a strategy to defend big houses that rivals anything you'd hear on a used car lot generously stocked with lemons.
All that plus the great diversity in housing that is one of Sierra Madre's great strengths was completely ignored. Obviously with a purpose.
These existing big houses are scattered throughout their neighborhoods. What Adele apparently wants for One Carter is to take the biggest houses in Sierra Madre, exclude all the small and middle sized ones, and then pack them cheek to jowl on the hillside. Like packing NFL linemen into a Fiat. And then on the smallest building pads imaginable.
This is a key to understanding the core dishonesty contained in Adele's entire presentation. Adele compared this whole group of houses to her own proposed McMansion, which would be on a lot that is unbuildable. The lots that contain her cherry picked examples of large houses are appropriate to the structures built on them. On the other hand, the building pads at One Carter are awful, small things. So she'd put this big bumping house on a little pad, but then claim that the whole lot justifies it. Legally it might, but aesthetically it is atrocious and is precisely what the community has been fighting against for years.
As one knowledgable resident made very clear when she explained all of this, if the requirements were based on the actual building pad, that lot would not even be buildable. Period. We are not Arcadia or Glendale, nor do we want to be. If that is the kind of house you want, why not build there and just leave us alone?
And again, the absurd sums of money paid for these lots is hardly our problem. Just because Adele's dumb client paid a ridiculous amount of money to obtain one (or more than one) does not give that person special rights. It just means he paid too much for a lot.
Adele repeatedly claimed that her clients were "not trying to squeeze in the house like the tract development the community is so afraid of." Then in the same breathe she claimed the lot prices are so high it is unfair and unrealistic that she would be forced to build a small house.
So why did you buy the lots? Just the dumbest argument ever, and a clear sign that even they know that they do not have a very good case.
Frank Chen is listed as the developer/owner, project manager for CETT investments (Hui Ru Han, for the record, being a lady). Frank Chen must have told Adele to sacrifice 188 square feet in the redo presentation last night, flip the north and south sides, and make some other minor cosmetic improvements.
One troublesome example of this strategy in action. Adele eliminated a fifth bedroom, but then added a "library" with a full bathroom in its place. In other words, she scribbled our "bedroom number 5 with bath 5" and wrote in "library" instead. This the Chen and Change Show wanted the Planning Commission to believe was the elimination of one of the bathrooms.
Which was kind of offensive on their part if you think about it.
One commissioner talked about how much water these houses would use, how many gallons would be needed to operate a 5 bathroom building with a kitchen approaching the size of an average unit at a trailer camp. Pretty irresponsible behavior in a town that is supposed to run out of water in a few months.
Elephants do need to be brought out into the open from time to time.
Adele was not above going into threatening mode, either. Depending on what happened last night, she darkly hinted that the other two house applications could be withdrawn. An empty threat as it turned out. She also didn't explain what the downside to that would be if she'd actually carried her threat out.
It seemed like the Planning Commission was about to approve this sorry mess, then not, and then with conditions. Finally they continued it all to next month, citing the Tree Commission's required verdict on an oak tree as being the cause of the punt. They also advised the architect to try once again to make make this McMansion/Valley Castle smaller, and actually lose a bedroom and bathroom # 5. You know, rather than just calling it all a library. Along with making the fences lower.
A frustrating and difficult evening. Made worse by a developer and an architect openly, and disingenuously, at war with the core values of our community.
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