Saturday, February 9, 2008
Developer John Saca is nothing if not a paragon for the "if at first you don't succeed" mantra.When his ambitious Towers project fell spectacularly concave, he vowed to push ahead with a scaled-back, 39-story project called the Metropolitan, a 320-unit piece of high-rise heaven on 10th and J.
But if he wants to get that bad boy past the City Council, he'd better start seeing things from their point of view.
For real
Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/101/story/699588.html
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Basically, the story is that two city councilmember’s and the mayor want the proposed Metropolitan project to be scaled back because it will block their view of the Capitol Dome from their City Hall offices. For the last year this project has gained all the cities needed entitlements to build and doe's not sit on any blocks that are within the Capitol View Corridor, but now a few councilmember’s (Hammond, Cohn) and the Mayor are causing a stink at this last approval stage because it will block "their view" of the Capitol from their office.
It's hard to believe that our City Council wants housing downtown when at the same time they are changing the rules for developers after a project has gathered needed entitlements to build
The Metropolitan is planned for where the red box sits on the corner or J Street and 10th across from Caesar Chavez Park. It's clearly planned where no height restriction are in place for a building.
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7 comments:
How selfish!!!!! AHHHHH! Im beyond frustrated! I cant beleive these three are stopping the future growth of our city just so they can be happy with their "veiw". I mean, Im pretty sure this building will be up longer than the length of time these morons spend in office...but they need to have things their way i suppose. grrrr
simply unbelievable , yet at the same time completely believable .
my point of view is they should be voted out . Its this shortsightedness ( pun intended ) that has been hampering the city for too long !
Serna must be turning over in his grave !
Thanks for posting this here, Mike.
This is simply the most selfish thing that I've heard of in a long time. It's time for these hypocrites to move on. Their actions sure do speak volumes of who they really are.
I asked Councilman Cohn about this, and it seems the article was, at the very least, exaggerated. His concern is that the tall part of the building has enough step-back from the corner, so there are still views from Caesar Chavez Park - not from his office. He also noted that the city does own the site, so they do have more say than other projects that they might just be reviewing.
Anyway, I think it's pretty likely that the Sac Bee article is just trying to ruffle some feathers.
Thanks Daniel, I think I can accept that. Esp since he was not at the actual meeting, I have to give him a pass since the words did not come out of his mouth.
Hammond on the other hand, you hear right from her mouth she didn't want her view blocked. I'm pretty sure those words came out of Fargo as well, but I'm going to go back and listen to that part again.
With regard to the project site. I thought he owned the whole site, but it sounds like there must be a portion of it that belongs to the city that he is looking to buy. I know he and his father bought property on that block a couple years ago (via Business Journal Article), but there must be something else.
Also, if someone does want to listen to the council meeting and judge for yourself, you can view achieve meetings from the city website.
City Council Meetings
Click the Jan 8, 2008 meeting "View Video" You can then choose the Metropolitan portion.
On my lunch today I walked over to the park to take a look at the Cathedral view that would be hidden if the Metropolitan were built. I noticed that the tall steeple was visible with or without the Metropolitan being built... it sits right out there when in the plaza. The lower portion of of Cathedral (the big dome) would be hidden if the Metropolitan were built... but then I noticed that I could barley make it out right now anyway because of the trees in the way blocking the view.
So Mr. Cohn's argument that the Metropolitan would block the Cathedral view is flawed because there are already trees blocking the view... trees in the park. Unless he proposes cutting down the trees, it seems odd to ask for a building to be changed for a view that would still be blocked by trees.
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