ROAD TO THE MALL: THE BIG BOOK OF RED FLAGS

November 27, 2022December 28, 2022 Jeff Elliott Leave a comment

Had City Council members actually read and understood their own report, they might have discovered their pet project was probably going to ruin downtown Santa Rosa.

The document was the Environmental Impact Report (EIR) related to the downtown shopping mall proposed by Los Angeles developer Ernest W. Hahn. State law requires a study be prepared before construction begins on a major project like that and it mostly addresses the sort of issues you might expect – will the project create air pollution, harm water quality, overload power lines, etc. etc. etc. A 321-page draft version written by a San Mateo company was delivered to Santa Rosa a few days before Christmas 1973.

In the following thirty days anyone could comment on what was found (or not found) in the draft. Questions were directed to city staff, the project architect or others involved. Their replies appeared in the final EIR, which was released Oct. 1974. In any EIR that last volume is worth a close read because it almost always has more of the real lowdown about what’s going on.

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QUESTIONS RAISED, RARELY ANSWERED

Remarks from over two dozen individuals, companies and firms can be found in the final EIR but many were technical in nature. For reference sake, these six people contributed most to topics discussed here:

Donna Born Planning Commission Chairperson

Dolores Clayton League of Women Voters President

Dan Peterson Santa Rosa architect

William (Bill) Smith Codding Enterprises attorney who attended every public hearing regarding the mall and redevelopment of the project area

Peter Bolles Shopping mall architect (also son and partner of John Savage Bolles, who designed Candlestick Park)

James K. Burns Executive Director of the Urban Renewal Agency (URA)

(Here’s also a reminder that this is part of a broader series on Santa Rosa redevelopment: “YESTERDAY IS JUST AROUND THE CORNER,” which includes an index covering everything on the topic going back to the 1960s. This is chapter eight of the series just about the downtown mall)

Critics jumped on the uneven quality of the EIR, but I’ll preface that discussion by noting the consultants didn’t make much of an effort to learn about Santa Rosa or the history of the project. Not one of the well-informed commenters listed in the sidebar were interviewed. Instead, the people they spoke to included a pharmacist best known for collecting old bottles; a driver’s ed teacher; the two women who researched Carrillo family history and the guy who ran the Robert Ripley museum. As far as I can tell, none of the interviewees contributed information or expressed a public opinion about the mall and redevelopment project, either pro or con.

Some of the official replies make you wonder if these experts even visited town. Donna Born asked why it needed to be a sealed-up fortress and cited the “energy crisis,” which was the top news story of early 1974.¹ She commented, “I think it is a little silly today to be espousing that large of an air conditioned area in a city like Santa Rosa that really doesn’t need air conditioning.” Architect Bolles’ answer suggested he thought the city was somewhere in the tropics and beset with monsoons:

The climate of Santa Rosa is well known for wet winters and hot, dry summers. Because of the inconvenience and hardship in either climactic extreme, an enclosed mall was considered a must…one only has to carry a shopping bag a block or so in driving rain to recognize the desirable aspects of an enclosed “shopper’s street.”

It’s a lesser quib, but even their logo on the EIR report reflects out-of-town cluelessness. It’s a drawing of a sculpture erected in 1971 near City Hall (a photo can be seen at the end of this article). From what I can gather from the Press Democrat’s coverage at the time, the Arts Council had a grant to commission a work of civic art and that was the only viable submission. The work was never mentioned by the paper again and was otherwise ignored; choosing it to symbolize a project expected to redefine the city into the next century was simply bizarre.²

Odd choices and/or naiveté aside, it seemed Santa Rosa really didn’t want the public to know what was in the EIR. Dolores Clayton remarked, “We would hope that the Urban Renewal Agency would make much greater efforts than it has in the past to get citizen input into the Project. For instance, the Environmental Impact Report is costly to purchase and there is only one non-circulating copy in the Library.”

URA director Burns countered, “The Environmental Impact Report is costly to purchase because it is costly to prepare. Our Agency is always conscious of trying to keep down the cost of governmental services to taxpayers.” He added there were “two copies in the City Clerk’s office, and three copies in our office for public use at no cost.” Please enjoy reading those 300+ pages while standing at a service desk.

Then there was the February Planning Commission meeting where they discussed the EIR. Only four members of the public attended (three of them from Codding Enterprises) because, gosh darn it, nobody from the city thought to put a meeting notice in the paper, although this would be the only time the Commission would discuss the report.

Architect Dan Peterson sent a letter to the Commission saying he would have been there if he had known it was on the agenda:

Over the past month I have discussed the shopping center layout with several persons and discovered they were not aware of the present proposals which to my knowledge have never been published in any public document other than the EIR…the Agency is not making it possible for the public to review and comment upon the project which is the intention of the Environmental Impact Review process.

It rankled all of the critics that the Planning Commission had no say about the EIR or anything else concerning the mall project, per City Council dictum. All they could do was make comments – and as noted earlier, commissioners were attacked when they even dared to raise questions.

Codding attorney Bill Smith pointed out this was unprecedented:

The Urban Renewal Agency is apparently proceeding on the basis that it will act as judge and jury of the EIR which it has caused to be prepared for its own project… [Normally] the EIR procedure would involve a review by the Planning Commission with right of appeal to the City Council. The Hahn proposal will be subject to no such review by the Planning Commission or the City Council; it will be handled internally by the Urban Renewal Agency… It is apparent that the Urban Renewal Agency will not review the draft EIR as intensively as would the Planning Commission if this were any other project.

A major shortfall in the EIR mentioned at the Commission meeting was that it contained nothing about what impact the mall might have on highway traffic – which was particularly surprising considering the mega-mall was supposed to suck up all retail trade between Marin and the redwood netherlands. CalTrans wrote two letters to James Burns complaining the issue should have been considered, although he did say the mall would probably only increase traffic volume by ten percent, so there shouldn’t be problems. Gentle Reader can guess what happened next: By the time the mall was fully opened in 1983, it appears traffic on that section of Highway 101 increased 30-40 percent – far above maximum capacity. Perhaps you remember sitting on the freeway in some of those epic backups; I sure as hell do.³

The Draft EIR also provided the first glimpse of what the future mall might look like. All freeway traffic would come and go through Third Street. Parking lots and a huge, two-story garage along B Street would effectively cut the mall off from downtown. At a February meeting with the Planning Commission, the URA said the drawing – which they had submitted only a few weeks before – was already out of date and B Street parking had been scrapped. Now there was to be underground parking and garages surrounding the mall’s other three sides.

Preliminary layout of proposed shopping center, looking east. Source: 1973 Draft EIR pg. II-3

Look closely at the layout and note there is an east/west open space through the middle – a direct passageway between B Street and Railroad Square. But was that to be inside the mall (and thus only available when the mall is open) or was it an outdoors corridor? The final EIR made it known the city and the developer were trying to have it both ways:

URA Director Burns promised “The City design staff is working on several other elements that will make the center more a part of downtown. One of the most important elements is the pedestrian link from Courthouse Square to and through the shopping complex to Railroad Square.” Elsewhere, architect Bolles wrote there would be landscape planters “on either side of the Fourth Street pedestrian walk which leads across the site on grade, from Morgan to B Street. The treelined Fourth Street pedestrian walk will be an important landscape feature connecting downtown with Railroad Square.”

Above all else, what everyone wanted most was for the mall to be integrated with the rest of downtown. In the EIR there was found a two page discussion revealing the developer had other ideas.⁴ The authors of the EIR waved the biggest and reddest of flags trying to draw our attention to the fate that would otherwise befall our town:

…the schematic project design does carry some significant, potentially adverse implications for the aesthetic character and urban design quality of downtown Santa Rosa. The progress of the design development of the project deserves the continued attention of the public and reviewing officials…one of the potential problems of the shopping center design is that it must recognize the center is not an isolated community in itself, accessible only to motorists, but should become a member of a larger commercial and social community accesible also to pedestrians…if the shopping center design were to treat the downtown area essentially as another major tenant of the center – which in effect it is – the design of these pedestrian links would undoubtedly be more heavily emphasized.

Although the City Council apparently didn’t take notice, the mall critics did. Planning Commissioner Frances Dias wanted to redefine the project: “I take great exception to anyone that calls this a ‘shopping center.’ It is downtown. It is not a shopping center, And I think it is very important to the health of the community, again, as I say, that the integrity of downtown be maintained.”

Dan Peterson gazed into his crystal ball and saw shoppers wouldn’t venture outside the mall into downtown: “I am not opposed to the commercial land use providing that aesthetics and scale relate to Santa Rosa and not San Jose. The enclosed single structure concept would not encourage shoppers to extend themselves into the downtown area because of the total air conditioned environment – including malls. The planning consideration obviously has not been extended beyond the project property lines.”

And Dolores Clayton accurately predicted the mall would lead to the decay of the downtown business sector:

The Environmental Impact report indicates inadequate provision for pedestrian access to the Project. There is also, we note, no reference to provision of links with public transportation…This lack of integration, this forbidding encapsulation, would seem to be counter productive from the stand point of enhancing the entire Downtown area. Might not the affect of such a selfcontained Project rather be that of a vortex drawing all the vitality to itself at the expense of weakening the rest of the Downtown area?

The URA’s James Burns responded to Clayton (hers was the only letter he answered). “The Urban Renewal Agency is using the Central District Development Plan as a guide in developing downtown,” he replied. “The main difference between the Redevelopment Plan and the Central District Development Plan is that, by necessity, the Redevelopment Plan has more flexibility.”

Well, no. The 1968 Central District Development Plan was the result of hundreds of hours of public meetings; crucial decisions in the Redevelopment Plan were made by seven unelected URA appointees and the Agency staff. The plan from 1968 focused on remodeling and restoring existing buildings, creating a convention/arts center, a tourist center, a transit center and a hotel/motel complex. It had a four stage schedule to beautify downtown with fountains, greenspace, outdoor cafés, arcades to house cute small shops and a plaza meeting place. It wanted to make downtown ultra-friendly for pedestrians and aimed to fix traffic problems, not make them worse. It said nothing about bulldozing a third of the downtown core to build a colossal shopping center. Comparing the 1968 Plan to what Burns and his crew were planning was like comparing fluffy kittens to ATM machines.

The EIR was officially accepted at a marathon public hearing that lasted seven hours (!) and is covered in the following chapter. But before leaving this topic I yield the floor to Commission Chairperson Donna Born, whose observations perfectly summed up the train wreck that awaited us:

I have been in several centers, like I’m sure everybody has. They [are] all alike, They [are] 2-3 stories, and they have got a 2-story mall with the tile floor and piped-in music and buildings around. And they’re sometimes attractive, but they’re always worlds unto themselves. They’re completely isolated. There is no feeling of identity with anything else, And I think that, unless it has a special relationship with the rest of the downtown, then we are just setting the stage for our next Urban Renewal project. Also, I think that the design as I see it, has no human scale, and I think that is essential to what Santa Rosa is all about. And I am certainly, obviously, no designer, but I think I have hunches about what makes a human scale and I don’t see it in this kind of self-contained 3-story thing.

NEXT: THE WAR COUNCIL

¹ The “energy crisis” lasted approximately between Oct. 1973 and March 1974. Caused by an OPEC embargo on oil sales to the U.S. it created gasoline shortages nationwide. The Press Democrat ran front page stories describing cars lining up several blocks long, starting at dawn, as drivers waited at one of the few gas stations that remained open. Police struggled to keep intersections clear and the Highway Patrol found traffic stopped because off-ramps near stations were backing up onto the freeway. The price for premium gas at the time was about 55 cents a gallon.

² The City Hall sculpture was created by Shirley Wastell, a Sonoma Valley artist known as something of a character. According to a Gaye LeBaron column, she drove a station wagon festooned with her sculptures of frogs, birds, dragons, and “six cats on the roof reclining in various cat positions.”

³ There was no traffic measurement given directly at the Third Street exit. Between 1974-1983 there was an increase of 32% at the College Ave. exit, so it does not include traffic from the south. The closest exit from that direction was at Todd Road, which increased 64 percent. The average between the two was 48 percent. “The flow on 101”, Press Democrat, March 10 1985, page 1B

⁴ Draft Environmental Impact Report Vol. II, pg. 98-99

Civic art created by Shirley Wastell, unveiled next to Santa Rosa City Hall June 19, 1971. Somewhat in the style of postmodern artist Joan Miró, the sculpture was supposed to represent "man surrounded by world involvement." The artist was paid $3,500. Photo from a 1974 URA pamphlet. — Civic art created by Shirley Wastell, unveiled next to Santa Rosa City Hall June 19, 1971. Somewhat in the style of postmodern artist Joan Miró, the sculpture was supposed to represent “man surrounded by world involvement.” The artist was paid $3,500. Photo from a 1974 URA pamphlet.

ROAD TO THE MALL: MR. CODDING HAS SOME OBJECTIONS

September 9, 2022December 12, 2022 Jeff Elliott Leave a comment

There were good reasons to feel optimistic in the spring of 1973. The last American soldiers left Vietnam. The Watergate hearings started and people began taking the scandal seriously, with public opinion swinging from it being “just politics” to “very serious.”

In Santa Rosa, the Press Democrat published its “Outlook 73” supplement which painted a very rosy picture of things to come. We would soon have a wonderful downtown shopping center with three major department stores and up to 85 stores. And soon after that a renewal project for Railroad Square will include a community center with a 2,500 seat performing arts theater and a 50,000 sq. ft. convention hall.

The photo accompanying that cheery item portrayed a scarred landscape that looked like a war zone, with several roughly cleared acres half filled with pools of rainwater. Not long before, the area was home to mom ‘n’ pop stores, repair shops, apartment buildings and more. In the name of urban renewal, that business and residential district was turned into this scene of desolation – which is how it would remain for the next seven years. It’s tough to stay optimistic for that long, particularly when a growing number of people would start to question whether the shopping center was such a good idea in the first place.

(ABOVE: Hugh Codding holding the “key to the city” while dressed in 19th century costume during the March 16, 1968 Santa Rosa centennial. Photo courtesy Sonoma County Museum)

As introduced here in earlier chapters of the “ROAD TO THE MALL” series, this phase of urban renewal started in March 1970 when the City Council passed an ordinance ruling that pretty much everything between B Street and the highway was a “blighted area.” Hardly anyone made comments or raised questions at the public hearing; likely most expected a replay of what happened in the 1960s, when all the blocks surrounding Courthouse Square were similarly deemed unfit but only a few building locations east and south of the Square were affected. They couldn’t forsee that this time, however, the city would be demolishing everything in the area.

Nor was there much fuss when the first bulldozers arrived in 1972 and started bulldozing. A short-lived lawsuit on behalf of the 200+ low income residents still living in the area was quashed by the city’s promise to make good on its original promise to find them other places to live.

The same week that suit was filed, the Press Democrat said Santa Rosa approved “exclusive negotiations with a Hawthorne development firm for a renewal-area shopping center.” A shopping center was a radical new direction from what had been considered when the blight ordinance passed in 1970; at the time there were only fuzzy plans for a department store, motel and a convention center. Even though this major decision was made by a non-elected city staffer without any sort of public hearing, there seemed to be little concern – although normally this sort of undemocratic schenanigan was what you’d expect to set city hall watchdogs barking in alarm.

No group opposed to the redevelopment project appeared until the autumn of 1974 (the topic of a following chapter) but there was one Cassandra who warned from the beginning the situation was fraught: Hugh B. Codding.

In 1970 Codding was a member of the City Council. At that March blight-ordinance meeting he remarked the city’s Planning Director Ken Blackman and the Vice Mayor had tried to strong arm the Montgomery Ward department store chain.¹ Codding – who had offered Wards space at Coddingtown – said he was told the city officials had warned a company executive they would have to commit to building a new store in the project area or the company wouldn’t be welcome in Santa Rosa. Other council members pressed him for details and Codding provided the name of the Wards executive, yet the Vice Mayor still insinuated Codding was a liar.

That set the tone for much of what would happen over the next dozen years. It would be Codding fighting the city – specifically, its Urban Renewal Agency (URA) – charging that most everything leading up to opening day at the mall was shifty, if not flat-out illegal. In turn, city officials sniped back over his motives and embarrassed themselves with foolish remarks; in 1974 some council members suggested a boycott of Coddingtown and Montgomery Village. Yeah, causing the city to lose a large chunk of its sales tax revenue would really show Codding who’s the boss, you bet.

But don’t mistake Hugh Codding for a valiant knight wanting to protect his hometown from death by redevelopment. While he believed a mall at that location would force existing downtown stores out of business, he wanted to build on the site as well. Codding told the PD it would “resemble the old central business district plan and would include two department stores and shops, a conventional hotel center, exhibition hall and entertainment center.” He vowed not to touch the Cal Theater and said he would turn the old Post Office into a museum right where it was.

Codding’s main argument was the project area, dubbed “Phase II,” should be sold outright to a private developer (him) at fair-market value – as opposed to making a complicated deal that would be funded through the URA using public funds, including raising money via bonds.

And you can bet Codding was pissed because he wasn’t given a chance to even discuss those ideas with the URA, which rushed into exclusive negotiations with Los Angeles developer Ernest W. Hahn. This was more or less what had happened back in 1964, when he was blocked from making bids on the earlier redevelopment project because the agency made a sweetheart deal with local developer Henry Trione’s group.

Codding was on the City Council back then, so he confined his protests to snarky comments about unfairness. But now that he was no longer a councilman he unleashed Codding Enterprises’ attorney, William J. Smith, who would keep busy filing lawsuits intended to monkeywrench Hahn’s mall project. The Press Democrat was unabashedly a cheerleader for mall construction and had long disliked Hugh Codding but Bill was a great lawyer, if only because he kept Codding’s anti-mall viewpoints in the paper. Reporters knew he was the go-to guy for a dramatic quote: The mall project was not only a “land grab” but “the biggest ripoff in the history of Santa Rosa.” Without his colorful quips much of this important history might have slipped by unnoticed.

(RIGHT: Richard Codding and Bill Smith looking at plans of Coddingland Shopping Center in 1971. Photo courtesy Sonoma County Library)

Codding was further motivated to stop or slow down the Hahn project because he didn’t want competition. Besides Coddingtown and Montgomery Village, since the mid-1960s he planned to build “Coddingland” (!) – a large regional shopping center on the west side of Rohnert Park. As explained in the intro to this history of the mall, a commonly-held notion at the time was that a shopping center was vital to a community’s economic survival; failing to have the best one within driving distance of most people in the area and the local Chamber of Commerce might just as well start handing out STORE FOR RENT signs.

Before continuing, I want to repeat an earlier point that cities and counties all over the nation were making similar stupid, irreversible decisions in those days. I don’t find a whiff that anything actually illegal was going on here in Santa Rosa – it was good intentions, not greed or corruption, which led to the dismantling of “The City Designed for Living.” (Here’s also a reminder this chapter is part of a broader series on Santa Rosa redevelopment: “YESTERDAY IS JUST AROUND THE CORNER,” which includes an index covering everything on the topic going back to the 1960s.)

But a year before Smith’s first lawsuit was filed, it seemed like Codding’s proposal might get a hearing at the agency after all – although URA Executive Director James K. Burns originally told the Press Democrat he hadn’t even considered speaking to Codding because Hahn’s company had far more regional experience. Lordy, that must have stung.

The exclusive deal with Hahn was for a 120 day feasibility study. “Mr. Codding went away with the understanding that if Mr. Hahn’s firm doesn’t come up with a workable proposal in four months, his firm would be one offered a chance for a new proposal,” the PD reported.

Come July of 1972 and the study period was up. Hahn asked for a nine month extension, which was immediately granted by the URA. Replying to a question from Codding Enterprises, Burns said they were welcome to look at any area plans or studies that didn’t belong to Hahn’s company. What the PD actually printed, however, was they couldn’t see anything that was the property of the Burns Company. It was interesting no one at the paper caught this howling typo – but considering what happened next, it proved surprisingly prophetic.

Time fleweth by and it was now March 1973 – Hahn had had a full year to consider whether he wanted to build a mall or no. He could still cancel the deal without consequences, as his company had not purchased an option on any of the property and those months of study were really the sort of due diligence that his staff surely needed to do on every major project.

Attorney Smith appeared at the next URA meeting and accused the agency and their lawyers of stonewalling requests for basic information about the planned scope of the Hahn project and how it would be paid for. After a month of failed efforts to simply get someone to answer the phone, Smith said their behavior was “suggestive of governmental secrecy and closed-door dealings.”

The agency chairman demurred, saying they first needed to consult lawyers and have Burns write a report. That response only further raised red flags, as just a few days earlier Hahn was the speaker at a Downtown Development Association (DDA) dinner where he blabbed at some length about the size and layout of the future mall. As far as funding, he boasted it would “pay for itself.”

A few days later Burns gave Smith a copy of a memo which he said was soon going to be shared with the City Council anyway. It sketched out how much the URA intended to raise with bond money, which was in addition to the HUD grants. The scheme was either savvy (the project would “pay for itself” if everything went perfectly to plan) or reckless (Santa Rosa could end up bankrupt if it didn’t). The Big Ask would be for $13 million and include funding for “development of Railroad Square” and construction of a community center – both of which were to be quickly dropped from actual consideration, though they continued to appear in PR pamphlets touting redevelopment. ²

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…AND HOW WOULD YOU LIKE TO PAY FOR THAT?

In March 1973 the URA told Hahn it would propose Santa Rosa use two kinds of bonds that didn’t have to be approved by voters. Neither type of bond was controversial in its own right, but Santa Rosa wanted to use them in a way more beneficial to the developer than the city.

A Lease Revenue Bond (LRB) is issued by government (state, county or city) to pay for a public building that wouldn’t be used to generate income, such as a firehouse, school, or a prison. This is how Sonoma County funded construction of the present courthouse after voters refused to approve a bond (five times, no less!) between 1960 and 1963. The government then rents the building from the bondholders.³

A Tax Increment Financing Bond (TIF, also called a “tax allocation bond”) has less specific purposes, but is usually to fund redeveloping an entire “blighted” district. Presumably such improvements would result in higher property taxes and more local sales tax income.

Both are long-term municipal bonds which would typically extend over decades. But Santa Rosa officials believed at the time the mall would be opened by 1975 and the city treasury would be instantly awash with tax money, which would pay off any bonds in 8-10 years.

The $13M TIF bond was dropped, but the city later sold $6.5 million in bonds for Phase II redevelopment. Another $1.8M TIF was not sold, but was a “tool” used to obtain a matching federal grant from HUD, according to a URA lawyer.

It was because of the proposed TIF bonds that the county sued the URA in late 1974. Because all new tax income generated by the mall was earmarked for paying off the bond, special districts for schools, fire departments and hospitals (etc.) would not enjoy any benefits.

Worse, the assessed property values in an active redevelopment area were frozen at whatever they were when the blight removal project began. To speed up HUD approval of the 1970s project area, the URA had used a loophole. They claimed this wasn’t a new project, but rather an extension of the earlier project near Courthouse Square. This meant property taxes for the new mall were to be set not according to the current year, but instead the “base year” when redevelopment was first approved – which in this case was 1961.

(This sidebar has been edited to correct details about the TIF bonds.)

This was in addition to the big tranche of HUD urban renewal money, and the URA intended to raise this other pot o’ gold via bonds – which led to lawsuits against the URA by the county as well as Codding. See sidebar.

Once Bill Smith obtained this “secret memo” between Hahn and the URA he unleashed his silver tongue: “The implications of this material are staggering. It is perhaps the most incredible document we have ever studied.” He objected to the absence of voter approval and that taxpayers would be “subsidizing land developers and large department stores.”

All true that, but left unsaid was those bonds represented a Point of No Return. After they were issued, Santa Rosa would be completely at the mercy of Hahn making good on his promises. Should he proclaim that, oh, the mall just might need another year of studies – or goddesses forfend, he might be thinking about walking away from the project – the city would still have to make bond payments on today’s equivalent of $84 million dollars. We were giving away all bargaining power on what impact the mall would have on the future of Santa Rosa.

Yet at every URA or City Council meeting concerning redevelopment, attorney Smith was there, reminding the officials that Codding Enterprises was ready to immediately present a $1M deposit to buy the property outright, with no bond funding required at all. So great was the animosity toward Codding they never had the courtesy to allow him to make a pitch. Maybe they were concerned his proposal would prove so popular it would put the brakes on the mad rush to hand over keys to the kingdom to a Los Angeles developer.⁴

A few weeks after the “secret memo” episode, Hahn was back in town for a URA meeting where he requested (wait for it, wait for it!)…another extension. This time it was for ninety days, and the agency approved it unanimously. Bill Smith was at the meeting, and I’ll bet his eyes rolled so far back in his head they made an audible clunk.

Hahn was also there to deliver a cashier’s check for $500,000 as “good faith” money – but should the deal fall through, Hahn expected all of it back, and with interest. Smith argued this amounted to giving him a risk-free option, and said Hahn had dragged out studies for a Richmond shopping center for two years before it was dropped. In response the URA chairman chided Smith for not being “affirmative.”

The new extension was because Hahn said he needed time to prepare a “predisposition agreement” required for HUD approval and review by bond underwriters. Said Smith: That means it’s a public document and I want to see it. He was told it was off-limits because it part of their exclusive negotiations with Hahn.

Thus Codding Enterprises immediately filed its very first lawsuit in the redevelopment saga, seeking disclosure of the agreement under California’s version of the Freedom of Information Act. He complained to the PD about the URA throwing out obstacles on “this charade, this costly proceeding to get a lousy letter.” When it was released shortly afterwards it was shown one department store was committed to the mall, another considering it, and a third straddling the fence.

In an imperfect (yet better!) universe this would be nearly the end of the story. Codding surrenders and Hahn’s mall is built in the mid-1970s. Yeah, it may be obnoxious but it doesn’t completely dominate downtown. It ends at Fifth street so it’s still easy to get to Railroad Square. The beloved Cal Theater remains in place, as does the Old Post Office and Masonic Scottish Rite Temple, with its precious Kurlander Collection of Santa Rosa’s historical artifacts.

But Gentle Reader knows this is not what happened. Bill Smith continued to protest. Codding continued to sue. In the following years others decided Codding shouldn’t have all the judicial fun and they filed lawsuits as well. In the compressed viewpoint of hindsight, that period looked like everyone was slugging it out with everyone else all the time.

We can pinpoint our unhappy turn of fate to May 22, 1973, which was when the City Council approved expanding the urban renewal study area to Seventh street at the request of the URA. Besides the aforementioned heritage buildings, this area included the Bishop-Hansel Ford dealership and the 75,000 sq. ft. Sears department store, which was less than 25 years old.

Smith argued those twelve acres were not blighted and thus would not qualify for HUD redevelopment funding. Burns countered it was the Council who determined where urban renewal was needed. The PD noted the underlying reason was to expand the mall’s footprint.

So here’s the executive summary of where things stand as we enter the summer of 1973:

Our coy developer, Hahn, is still not sure Santa Rosa is up to muster and is having trouble signing up anchor stores for the future mall. But maybe if we could see fit to supersize the amount of land we’re giving him, he will decide he likes us in spite of our failings.

URA Executive Director James K. Burns has taken to fear-mongering the city is “losing $100,000 in taxes monthly” until the mall opens. He and other URA members appear so worried Hahn might delay or take flight they attempt suppressing all disclosure of their “exclusive negotiations,” skirting the law and giving their discussions the shady appearance of backroom dealmaking.

Codding Enterprises attorney William Smith is haunting public meetings and writing letters that warn the city is being hoodwinked.

There is still no organized public opposition to the mall project. It may be because Codding is leading the fight and some people really don’t like him. Since no architectural drawings appear in the paper most don’t understand Railroad Square might be blocked off. Or perhaps people just aren’t paying attention because it’s all so confusing. (“Tax increment systems?” Wha?)

Bottom line: Judge them not, because few, if any, can see what’s in store for poor, damned Santa Rosa.

¹ The Montgomery Ward building in Santa Rosa was demolished following the 1969 earthquakes, but they quickly reopened as a catalog store near the current location of the Mendocino Av. Safeway. In 1972 they moved next to the Flamingo Hotel.

² A full breakdown of Phase II and III financials by URA Executive Director James K. Burns can be found in the September 2, 1973 Press Democrat

³ No Lease Revenue bond was issued for the mall project (as far as I can tell) although it was described several times in the paper, including in a March 9, 1973 Press Democrat interview with Burns. It was probably just being used as a talking point in order to mention a community center which the URA kept dangling as a possibility in PR materials.

⁴ Since Codding Enterprises never had the chance to make a redevelopment presentation we don’t exactly what they would have proposed. The few times it was mentioned in the newspapers a department store, motel and convention center were frequently cited. Objections to the Hahn plans from William Smith sometimes mentioned the city’s Housing Element in the General Plan, and at least one letter from him stated “replacement and construction of housing for low and moderate income families and the elderly should be part of the downtown plan.” April 26, 1973 Press Democrat

NEXT: GREATEST EXPECTATIONS

ROAD TO THE MALL: THE CHOSEN ONE

August 20, 2022September 9, 2022 Jeff Elliott Leave a comment

There were two Santa Rosas in the early 1970s but unfortunately, the Press Democrat opted to only write about one of them.

The newspaper loved to showcase news about their reborn city. Ever since the 1906 earthquake, editors had touted Santa Rosa as a true (but unappreciated!) Bay Area metropolis which would someday bloom into greatness. Now work was wrapping up on the urban renewal projects directly south and east of Courthouse Square. Contractor vans and pickups still crowded parking spots but the tall office buildings with banks on the ground floor showed how much progress had been made in the 1960s. Our city hall complex, with its elaborate water feature in the courtyard and unadorned concrete walls so pure white you had to squint in bright sun, boldly said this was as modern a city as could be found anywhere. Why, if you didn’t know any better it would be easy to imagine all this wonderfulness was in Topeka or Schenectady or any of a hundred other cities.

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SELF-DESTRUCTION WAS ALL THE RAGE

Future historians will look back at post-WWII America and want to know: Why did we destroy our cities?

During those years there was no shortage of experts praising the gospel of urban renewal at Kiwanis Club luncheons and business roundtables, singing to the famous tune from The Music Man: “Oh, ya got trouble right here in [your] city with a capital ‘T’ and that rhymes with ‘B’ and that stands for Blight…” Around 1960, Santa Rosa was visited by two or three of these blightarian preachers every year.

The message was always that too much of the place was old and rundown, either a slum or on the brink of becoming same – plus there were warehouses and auto repair shops and lumber yards which didn’t need to be anywhere near downtown. A commonly heard metaphor was that these low-income residential and light industrial areas were like a disease threatening the health of the city whole. Surgery was urgently needed.

Replacing all the old stuff with new stuff certainly sounded swell, but what ended up happening was anything but surgical. Those who lived there were the usual poverty suspects – people of color, the elderly and downtrodden – and told to get out because their buildings were about to be torn down. The properties were then purchased by the city using federal and state grant money; after bulldozers scraped everything down to the topsoil, multiple parcels would be bundled together and sold for pennies on the dollar to developers. Where once stood historic buildings and unique neighborhoods there were now gleaming steel commercial districts and/or high rise apartments.

Not every redevelopment project was a complete nightmare, of course; some cities made sure those who were displaced found decent places, even building subsidized housing. Strict architectural design guidelines can be found that ensured new construction would blend better into the existing area, or at least not follow cookie-cutter blueprints.

But more commonly heard are horror stories – politicians using redevelopment as a tool to isolate or smother minority communities, or how the local government oversight was so lax or corrupt the developers were allowed to run amok. Often cited in books and studies among the worst cases was the Bunker Hill Redevelopment Project in Los Angeles, the largest makeover of a city’s downtown core in our nation’s history.

Starting in the 1890s, Bunker Hill was the swanky part of LA. There were Victorian mansions that rivaled Newport’s finest and there was the picturesque Angels Flight tram to carry residents between their exclusive neighborhood and the downtown shopping district. When the rich began migrating to Beverly Hills and elsewhere in the westside “Platinum Triangle” the grand homes were broken up into apartments and boarding houses. During WWII those rooms were filled with aircraft industry and transient workers; afterward it was mostly elderly pensioners (watch a short heartbreaking documentary). By the time demolition began in 1961, there were up to 8,500 awaiting eviction.

The building program was beset by lawsuits and political meddling. Promised affordable housing never materialized. A 1966 audit found the city agency had done little except for acting like an inept real estate broker, spending top dollar to acquire large amounts of land while selling only a small portion of it – and that at cut-rate prices. The public was told construction would be completed by 1975, 1977, or 1979, tops. Today the area still isn’t built out, as Los Angeles recently gave the green light to a 64 story tower on one of the remaining vacant lots.

What the PD avoided writing about was the west side of downtown. Everything between B street and the highway was slated to be demolished, as detailed in the previous chapter. And starting in 1972, the wrecking crews came in and began to wreck.

Other cities had likewise dismantled whole sections of their downtown in the name of urban renewal, particularly Los Angeles (see sidebar). Newspapers in those cities took notice and ran articles describing what would be slipping away. Human interest stories of elderly residents who had lived in the area for years and were afraid what would happen to them; shopkeepers worried about losing their livelihood.

Not so the PD. Except for a single story about George and Tillie Cross, who had operated a breakfast and lunch counter on lower Fifth St. since 1929, little in the local paper personalized the upcoming demolition of so much of our community. There was no downside at all to throwing away about a third of the downtown in their editorial eyes.

Also ignored by the PD was that demolition began at a time when the city still had no plans on what to do with the land, except for vague notions that a convention center and department store would be nice. (Sorry, the city government is using eminent domain to force the sale of your home because a developer might want to build something there someday.)

In this Santa Rosa was following the script of Los Angeles’ ultra-controversial Bunker Hill Redevelopment Project from a few years earlier, where an audit had concluded that such a pre-emptive purchase of land – which might not be redeveloped in the foreseeable future – was wasteful and only proved LA’s urban renewal was a colossal flop.

Also like LA, our Urban Renewal Agency (URA) was directed by a five member board of non-salaried political appointees. They were stolid, civic-minded gentlemen but none had any apparent background in land development or urban planning; as identified in the photo below, there was a banker, an insurance agent, a civil engineer and two who worked in stores.

The Press Democrat didn’t criticize the board or city leaders for stumbling forward without a plan, which really shouldn’t come as a surprise – more important was they had already accomplished their initial objective, which was snagging millions of dollars from Washington for the new urban renewal project. A month after Santa Rosa was hit by the 1969 earthquakes, the mayor and the Planning Director were at the Capitol making a pitch for fast approval of federal grant money.

(A reminder that this article and others concerning the redevelopment saga are all part of the series, “YESTERDAY IS JUST AROUND THE CORNER” which offers an index covering everything on the topic going back to the 1960s.)

That Planning Director was Ken Blackman who would be appointed City Manager in mid-1970, a position he would hold for thirty years. Whatever you love or hate about this town can probably be traced back to Blackman in some way – and that includes the mall. The PD was absolutely smitten with him; a 1983 puff piece told readers he was the “true mayor of Santa Rosa…Council members know they are often considered little more than pawns, or a rubber stamp for Blackman and his staff.”

Blackman was first hired by the city in 1965 and within a year was named Planning Director (he had a degree in economics and a Masters’ in Urban Planning). Besides that job, when crucial decisions were being made following the ’69 quakes he was also Community Development Director and Urban Renewal Agency Director. Since these were all fulltime staff positions, the joke going around City Hall was that he was gonna be the richest guy in town.

Even Blackman’s adversaries agreed he was a very successful City Manager. He kept the gears of Santa Rosa’s (surprisingly large) bureaucracy running smoothly and held sway over the City Council so it would do exactly what he wanted. He spoke fluent politics and a campaign manager told the Press Democrat in that 1983 profile he had “the ability to sense which groups have political power and he takes care of them.” While he didn’t cause people to fear him he was described as aloof and something of a tyrant; the PD’s stock photo of him in the early 1970s had a phone pressed to his ear with a “stern dad” scowl. But make no mistake: Ken Blackman was the bossman in the City of Roses. L’état ç’est lui.

He was the earliest and loudest advocate for razing the entire west side of downtown but was largely responsible for blunders that hampered his goal. The city had made no plans about what to do with rubble from the few buildings needing to be demolished because of earthquake damage, much less the 89 structures in the area Blackman wanted to bulldoze (the county dump near Guerneville only accepted household waste). As explained previously, the city’s solution was to allow any vacant lot to be used as a construction material dump as long as paperwork was filed for a special permit which would waive zoning laws. (There were even appeals asking property owners to come forward as a civic duty.) It would be an interesting research project to see if there is a map of these sites and whether there were any subsequent soil tests for asbestos, lead, arsenic or other toxins.

Another urgent problem was what to do with the 200+ people living in the redevelopment area who were about to be displaced by the demolition. A San Francisco developer tried to build a 226 unit residential hotel at Second and D Streets but found the URA impossible to work with. One of the partners expressed frustration to the PD and said pressure from the Agency staff was making the project “much too complicated.” Comments from city representatives in that article strongly imply Santa Rosa was throwing obstacles in front of the developer because the real hope was to make a deal with the government to buy it (today it’s the location of the state’s Rattigan office building).

After the residential hotel project died in the summer of 1971, there were three very different templates for Santa Rosa’s future I can imagine:

BUNKER HILL DÉJÀ VU Santa Rosa could continue following the blueprint of LA’s Bunker Hill, albeit writ smaller. Let the impoverished residents fend for themselves, scrape the land down to a blasted heath then let it sit idle for years as the city tries to haggle jackpot real estate deals. Meanwhile, Santa Rosa collects millions in ongoing federal redevelopment grants because so much public money has already been dumped into the boondoggle project it’s become too big to fail.

REDEVELOPMENT LITE The 1960s redevelopment near Courthouse Square mainly resulted in those blocks being dominated by banks and office buildings. Santa Rosa could raze the east side of B Street between Fourth and Second for more of the same (which is how it’s now used, with CitiBank, Wells Fargo and Luther Burbank Savings there). The city also could build the convention center at Third and A which had been on wishlists for years. Everything else could be left undisturbed. As this plan would wipe out the Santa Rosa Hotel and a few small apartment buildings, Santa Rosa would probably get a couple of million dollars for relocation money. Funding would be available to buy the property for the convention center but Santa Rosa would have to pass a bond to construct it, as happened with the City Hall complex. In sum, this plan wouldn’t deliver those big federal bux.

BUILD BACK BETTER The existing area west of B street had been mixed residential/commercial since before the 1906 earthquake. Santa Rosa could let it stay that way, making available grants and other incentives for property owners to bring buildings up to code while doing any repairs. Gone would be any debate about what to do with the Old Post Office and Cal Theater because they remain where they always were. The downsides: Santa Rosa already had declared the entire area blighted and received a HUD grant aimed at completely taking down this “slum.” Oh, to be a fly on the wall should Blackman have needed to call Washington and explain we lied on the application because the area is really more of a fixer-upper and, um, could we still keep the money, please?

All signs pointed to Santa Rosa’s project becoming a replay of the Bunker Hill screwup. At this junction Ken Blackman did something that steered us on the path to our world today – he hired a professional who was a bulldog for getting projects done. His name was James Burns.

Kenneth R. Blackman and James K. Burns (from a 1972 Urban Renewal Agency brochure)

Burns was hired in late 1971 and weeks later was named Executive Director of the Urban Renewal Agency after his predecessor quit, saying he was “an advocate of responsible quality development” and wasn’t comfortable with the direction Santa Rosa was heading. The Phase II redevelopment project might not have been his top concern, however; at that moment there was intense pressure to rush approval for annexation and development of the Fountain Grove Ranch to satisfy a deadline set by Hewett-Packard (another long, sordid story).

Santa Rosa was the fourth stop in Burns’ career, having most recently held the number-two position in the Rochester, NY renewal agency. It appears he was all that held that office together; not long after he left four others resigned because of “unbelievable feuds” with his successor, according to the local paper. One of them followed Burns to Santa Rosa where he would work under Blackman.

Before that he was project manager for Bunker Hill. There was a shakeup following that damning 1966 audit and Burns came in after a new administrator took charge. The wholesale demolition and evictions happened before his tenure; he managed street tunnel extensions, grading 35 feet off the top of hill, and labor-intensive landscaping where flowers were continually replanted in a high visibility area to make the overall mess seem slightly less like a hellscape.

Most Santa Rosans in 1972 probably couldn’t name the fellow who previously had the URA Executive Director job (it was Donald Laidlaw, for those playing Trivial Pursuit at home) but James K. Burns quickly left his mark, starting with the ad shown at right; whether it appeared in any newspaper other than the Press Democrat or trade journal is unknown. As far as I can tell, this was the first time anyone from the city proposed a full-blown shopping center in the downtown core.

When the PD asked about the ad Burns replied, “Why have a costly study to determine the proposal when potential developers – the ones who might actually be involved in the project – can indicate the feasibility much easier?” (Of course they could trust developers to honestly report on the projected costs and impact their project would have on infrastructure, safety and the public weal. Nay, sir, why should there be any government oversight at all, including building inspectors?)

Nor did Burns expect to see an actual proposal. According to the PD, “The director said the revitalized agency will want to know the developer’s track record, source of funds, members of his development team, and their interest and motives. At that point, the agency will select the most competent development team and enter into a period of exclusive negotiations.”

While his criteria for picking a developer for such a bellwether project could scarcely be fuzzier, Burns was quite specific per the money he expected to come in: The shopping center not only would be built in record time but construction would bring in $18 million over 18 months. Compare that to the piddling million/year boost from the 1960s redevelopment project and it’s no wonder why Burns’ vision was causing everyone around Ken Blackman’s city hall to purr and mew.

A few days after the close of interviews, the winner of this beauty contest was announced: It was Ernest W. Hahn Inc. of Hawthorne (Los Angeles). Only two other developers had applied.^*

The Hahn Company was a seemingly uncontroversial pick; it was among the largest commercial developers in the West, having constructed about a dozen shopping centers to that date. Prior to that in the 1960s the company built pharmacies, supermarkets and department stores and frequently bid on contracts in the North Bay, including Santa Rosa. They had satellite offices in Hayward and Sacramento, where in 1968 alone the company did over $9 million in construction. Also in the state capitol in the mid-1960s was James K. Burns, whose first job was working at the Sacramento Redevelopment Agency, rising from trainee to project manager.

Still, given the short time window of three weeks to apply, it’s valid to ask whether the URA had a chance to interview all viable candidates. For example, it’s just possible Gentle Reader might recall Santa Rosa had its very own shopping center developer, someone who had built a couple of places called Coddingtown and Montgomery Village.

According to the Press Democrat, Codding Enterprises contacted Burns and asked if the Agency could “defer definite action on the developer selection until three weeks or so.” Company president Hugh Codding was on the City Council but his term would expire April 11. After that he would have no conflict of interest, so perhaps they “could then explore the developer proposal for a downtown shopping center to see if there are any areas of mutual benefit.” The PD article continued:

Asked later to comment on Mr. Codding’s delay request, Mr. Burns said the agency often is criticized for delays. He said the agency’s desire to hear from interested developers was given public notice locally as well as in the Bay Area. “If Codding Enterprises was interested, it should have come forward and explained the situation at that time,” the director said. Mr. Burns said he felt he would still recommend the Hahn firm even if Codding Enterprises had been interviewed because of the nature of far more regional experience.

Having lost the opportunity to negotiate for the largest project in his hometown’s history simply because of an arbitrary deadline, Hugh B. Codding accepted that decision and did everything he could to support the project in order to ensure the completion of the downtown mall just went swell.

Ha, ha, just kidding. By the end of that decade Codding had filed eighteen lawsuits (22, by another count) directly related to the Hahn project – and that was just the tip of the iceberg of court proceedings.

NEXT: MR. CODDING HAS SOME OBJECTIONS

^* The other shopping center developers were Desmond McTavish of San Francisco and the Hapsmith Co. of Beverly Hills.

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