Barbarians At The Gate: One Carter's Developers Want McMansions Galore

Best stink eye ever.

At Tuesday evening's City Council meeting there will be a showdown between the City of Sierra Madre and the developer that goes by the acronym CETT. This over the first home slated to be built at that sorely afflicted and much abused plot of land we here in Sierra Madre know as One Carter. The developer sadly calls this area "stonegate," a name that is as historically meaningless and culturally ersatz as the architectural designs they have attempted to foist upon us these last few years. But whatever the case, that particular house is something I want to post about tomorrow. For perspective we need to deal with these issues one at a time.

Today I thought we should take a look at a couple of the One Carter revelations to be found in the latest edition of the always perkily written and matter-of-fact City Manager's report. Ostensibly created for the City Council, various transparency laws have turned it into something that we can take some guidance from as well. Posted most Friday's on the City of Sierra Madre website, it gives us straight ahead and unvarnished assessments of what is actually going on in town.

This isn't the goofy stuff you find on the City of Sierra Madre Facebook site, or in the strangely sanitized pages of the Mountain Views News. It is for big people, and as such the report is must reading.

When discussing the demolition atrocity in the works for E. Mira Monte yesterday I used the ancient but eternally relevant phrase, "The barbarians are at the gate." I wasn't kidding, and it isn't just 107 year old Craftsman homes they have their bloodshot eyes on. Rather it is pretty much everything we have. But at this moment the most at risk place in town is One Carter. A direct consequence of a decision made by the 2004 City Council, perhaps the worst we ever had.

Which, if you think about it, is saying a lot. Here is a consequence now:


Nine One Carter applications in a single week can hardly be a coincidence. Nor was this a particularly brilliant move on the part of those wanting to build them. It only serves to make the City Council's One Carter decision on Tuesday evening even more crucial than it already was. I'd call it a politically strategic blunder of the first order, but perhaps I am missing the point. Maybe it was actually due to legal considerations of some sort.

I do have to tell you though, I am a little unsettled by the City Manager's claim that we will need to contract out for additional staff to push these requests through with promptness, no matter who is paying the costs.

I wasn't aware that development here could be enabled on a pay-to-play basis any more, no matter what step they're at in the process. Are "cut in line" privileges for sale in Sierra Madre? I thought we'd moved past that kind of inappropriateness. Personally I'd just let their paperwork sit with the rest of the applications. What's the rush?

Besides, wasn't it only last month that City Hall was closed to people seeking service until the late hour of 11AM? Why the eagerness to rush applications in this particular case? Things like this only help to reinforce the widely held perception that large developers get better service here than actual taxpaying residents and fee paying contractors do.

But I digress. The big revelation in this week's City Manager's Report comes in the form of a chart that includes all of the McMansions the barbarians hope to build at One Carter. Including those nine new ones. Which, by the way, City Hall refers to here by the anti-Sierra Madre moniker of "stonegate." A name no one who cares about this town should ever want to use.

(Click on the chart to enlarge)

I think you can agree with me here that Tuesday evening's City Council meeting now becomes one of the most important in years. A wrong decision on 610 Baldwin Court (if our elected officials should somehow decide they want to go down in history as the City Council that allowed our first true McMansion development to happen), could prove to be the breach allowing the deluge that followed.

We will have more on that one tomorrow.

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