- stopbchd
BCHD Still Can't Tell the Truth - Response to Bakaly
Dear ER:
Recently, BCHD CEO Bakaly made the claim that BCHD doesn’t understand what the surrounding community wants with regard to the planned commercial real estate project by BCHD. That statement is flatly false. BCHD is fully aware that the neighbors want development shorter, smaller, and further away from homes. Pretty simple.
Unlike BCHD which has a $2M annual executive payroll, a $10K monthly PR consultant, and a $16M budget for commercial development, StopBCHD.com and the other neighborhood quality-of-life groups are volunteers without budgets. We have families, jobs, commitments, and a quite literally a looming project on the horizon. BCHD’s proposal is larger than every home in Beryl Heights added together. We don’t have time to sit around and drink coffee with BCHD while they spend millions in the background against our neighborhoods.
And several of us volunteered for nearly 4 years and were ignored to the point we had to author memos to BCHD. BCHD wanted us for window dressing - nothing more.
Our yard signs call out the damages of BCHD’s commercial project to neighborhood safety, character, and property values. BCHD proposes five years of construction trucks, cut through traffic, toxic emissions, noise, demolition, and other non-family friendly activities. BCHD proposes a 108’-8” tall concrete compound that’s 800,000 sf (per BCHD filings at the City of Redondo Beach). Our neighborhood character is doomed by BCHD’s desire to lease our public land to a commercial Developer/Owner/Operator (D/O/O is BCHD’s phrase).
Don’t forget about property values. The City’s Municipal Code calls for the protection of surrounding property values. According to statistical real estate models, homes within one-half mile of BCHD are worth over $50M less than they would be if BCHD were not there. Over 99% of current BCHD buildings are 52-feet tall or shorter and total 300,000 sqft.
How much more will families lose in home value when the campus height is doubled to 110-feet and the size nearly tripled to 800,000 sf?
No CEO Bakaly, the neighbors aren’t interested in any more BCHD chit chat. BCHD hasn’t listened and has increased the project height from 60-feet to 76-feet to 103-feet. BCHD removed the underground parking and replaced it with an 8-10 story parking ramp. BCHD eliminated the quality-of-life buffer around the project and instead destroyed neighborhood character, privacy and value.
The Cities of Torrance and Redondo Beach need to enforce their municipal codes and BCHD needs to develop a compatible, consistent proposal such as The Kensington’s project that is on leased land from RBUSD.
BCHD’s proposal is just another commercial development, except that it’s on our publicly owned and zoned land. Surrounding neighborhoods refuse to be further damaged for another 50-100 years by BCHD.
Mark Nelson
for StopBCHD.com
For Examples of BCHD’s Actions Against Neighbors, see:
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