Page 8 - the NOISE August 2014

Razing The STandaRd:
how a developeR faced down flagSTaff and loST
SToRy by kendall peRkinSon phoTo by omaR vicToR
The war is over, for now. The Mayor and several City Council- Zoning out: the First Fight
The meeting had gone on more than six hours when the commission finally decided to continue it and vote the fol- lowing night.
In the end, the Planning & Zoning Commission rejected Landmark’s rezoning request unanimously, citing many of the reasons detailed by the public in their decision. Though the fight had been taxing for everyone involved, Landmark had lost the first round badly. City Council would be the final staging ground for an attempted comeback.
The 48 hours leading up that City Council meeting turned out to be some of the strangest in recent political history. In less than two days, Landmark and its few vocal supporters fired a volley of personal and public relations attacks into the public consciousness that would change the political land- scape of the coming vote.
shots Fired, PArt i: robots & ghosts
I first heard about the robocalls while I was researching open meeting laws. As a journalist and citizen working on the Arrowhead issue, I had filed a public records request for all email communication between city officials about the rezon- ing of Arrowhead Village. I found a few noteworthy tidbits of information, but most interesting were two particular emails. The first was from a Landmark contractor thanking Mayor Jerry nabours for their private meeting, and the second was a reply from the City Attorney herself to the contractor (blind carbon copied to Mr. Nabours) that reads as follows:
I received a copy of your e-mail today to Mayor Nabours thanking him for the meeting to discuss Arrowhead Village ...
I am concerned about these meetings because of our open- meeting law. A quorum of the Flagstaff City Council is not able to discuss public business outside of an open meeting. Our Attor- ney General has made it very clear that a series of meetings with council members that end up constituting a quorum violates the open-meeting law if the council members make proposals, dis- cuss issues, or deliberate. It does not apply only to voting.
Please keep this in mind as you proceed.
Public records revealed that Landmark did indeed meet with four members of council (Mr. Nabours, Jeff oravits, Kar- la brewster, and Celia barotz), which constitutes a quorum. Unsure whether I had stumbled upon a serious legal violation, I was consulting some online resources when my news feed popped up a headline from the Daily Sun: “Student group sends 14,000 robocalls backing The Standard.”
The article named tom bilsten, an NAU alumni, as the
members say it has been the most contentious issue ever seen in the city, but the dust is settling now. The proposed luxury student housing project that would have displaced 200 people from the Arrowhead Village mobile home park has been withdrawn by the developer, Landmark Proper- ties, in the face of continued resistance from the community and a whirlwind of controversy.
Since October of last year, public outcry has reverberated concerning Landmark’s proposed massive student housing complex called “The Standard,” not only planted near what is arguably the busiest intersection in the city, but displacing 56 families in Flagstaff’s La Plaza Vieja neighborhood.
When I interviewed the Georgia-based developer for this publication, it claimed to be working closely with the neigh- borhood association and suggested I give them a call to confirm it. I did so. The neighborhood association not only denied supporting the project, but produced a two-page denouncement they had been distributing throughout the neighborhood, urging residents to speak out against it.
Meanwhile, residents of the mobile home park itself had been showing up for weeks at City Council meetings, trying to raise awareness of the situation that could very quickly leave their families on the street. Landmark, after a series of public relations blunders, eventually put together a “reloca- tion package” for the residents that offered each household between $8,000 and $14,000.
The residents didn’t bite. They made it clear that even though the owner of the park might sell it to someone else who would offer nothing, they were willing to decline all of the money on the merest chance that their community could remain intact.
Landmark didn’t need residents’ permission to purchase and raze the most affordable housing in the city. They did, however, need the permission of City Council to rezone the mobile home park to a “highway commercial” designation. This set the stage for two political battles. Landmark would first have to appear before the Planning & Zoning Commis- sion, where the public would have an opportunity to voice their opinion. The commission would take a vote, which would act as an official recommendation to City Council. Then City Council would make the final decision, based on this vote and another round of public input. Landmark and its opponents prepared for a showdown.
I had been pacing the back galley of Council chambers for nearly four hours when I started to wonder how much longer I could stand being there. There were still about 75 people packed into the Planning & Zoning meeting waiting to speak against Landmark’s project, but this was considerably less than the number of people who had shown up at 4PM, when the meeting was supposed to begin.
Every available seat had been occupied, and the crowd had overflowed to stand and sit uncomfortably against the walls. Child care was being provided by volunteers in the lobby. The assembly had represented a surprisingly diverse cross section of Flagstaff citizens: Arrowhead residents, concerned neighbors, council hopefuls, community activists, health pro- fessionals, city government representatives, the media and curious onlookers.
Many of these people were gone now. The meeting had started 20 minutes late, at which time the city immediately went into “executive session” with Landmark. After another half hour, they emerged to begin a series of presentations that lasted for another astounding — and unprecedented — four hours. One attendee would later refer to the meeting as a “five hour filibuster.”
I had personally awakened at 4:30AM that morning to go to work, then headed straight to the meeting afterward. Hav- ing forgone dinner and sitting in the sweltering body heat built up over the course of the anxious night, I started to won- der if I would have to leave for my own physical and mental well being.
By the time the public was finally able to begin comments, the mood had become dark, but determined. One by one, people stood before the commission and expressed their op- position for a litany of reasons: the intersection of Milton & Route 66 was already the busiest in Flagstaff, currently rated
“F” by the Department of Transportation, and could not han- dle the influx of vehicle traffic — thousands of trips per day — and pedestrians. Students could not safely cross the busy,
four-lane highway to campus.
The five-story complex did not belong in the two-story his-
toric neighborhood. The neighbors did not want to live next to 650 students. The rezoning would violate the principles of the Regional Plan by eliminating affordable housing. The project conflicted with the neighborhood plan. A health im- pact assessment was cited to note the detrimental effects this would have on the residents being displaced. The residents themselves pleaded for their community. And so on.
8 • AUGUST 2014 • the NOISE arts & news • thenoise.us