The Nov. 6/7 Breeders’ Cup at Santa Anita Park is the biggest international horse racing event of the year that will get national network TV coverage and bring about $20 million into the local economy.
by Scott Hettrick
Unfortunately, Oak Tree Racing at the track and Santa Anita’s own racing season continue to draw less attendance and wagers each season and the track is in bankruptcy and about to be sold to a buyer unknown with unknown long-term interests.
Meanwhile, state sales tax revenue to Arcadia recently dropped another 15%, meaning Arcadia has to cut an additional hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of City services and personnel after already making stiff cutbacks just a few months ago.
Caruso Affiliated executive Rick Lemmo noted at last week’s Chamber of Commerce board of directors meeting that both Santa Anita and the City would not be in their current difficult financial situation, or at least be in much less dire straits, if the Shops at Santa Anita would have opened by now as planned. The City Council unanimously approved the Shops on the south parking lot of Santa Anita in April 2007. Construction was scheduled to take about two years. The Shops are projected to create several million dollars in direct and indirect revenue to the City and revive crowds to Santa Anita Park as Caruso’s The Grove has done for the adjacent Farmer’s Market. The Shops were also to provide free state-of-the-art administrative office space for the Arcadia School District, which is tearing its offices down to make room for a new performing arts center and other campus improvements.
None of that is happening because Westfield (owner of the mall) and its Arcadia First! citizens support group immediately filed lawsuits in 2007 challenging what the City called its most thorough environmental impact report in history, and have since appealed a mostly favorable ruling in favor of the Shops. Westfield can continue to use the courts to delay the Shops for several years.
It was clearly self-serving for Lemmo to raise this point at the Chamber board last week. And as the founder and head of the independent citizens group supporting the Shops called Arcadia Wins!, any dicussion of this topic on my part is also open to being labeled as biased.
But there is no denying the fact that the financial challenges for the City and Santa Anita, and the results of that ripple impact on Arcadia residents and taxpayers, would be significantly lessened if the Shops were open for business. That will continue to be true going forward. So, the sooner that can happen, the better.
Recent and upcoming developments make it seem that the time is right for Westfield to reconsider its position:
* Caruso dropped its recent retaliatory lawsuit against Westfield.
* Westfield will soon need City approvals for another major change at the mall in the two-story anchor space in the long-abandoned Robinsons-May building, likely creating its own environmental challenges.
* Last week Governor Schwarzenegger waived any further environmental requirements to clear the way for construction to begin on a new $800 mil. NFL stadium and entertainment complex in the City of Industry, which will mean 18,000 new jobs and millions of dollars in revenue for Industry and surrounding communities.
* Last week the MTA finally approved construction to begin as early as June on the Gold Line Foothill Extension light rail line through Arcadia and on to Asuza and hopefully the County border in Montclair/Claremont, and eventually to L.A. Ontrario airport.
It seems that everyone is literally moving mountains to clear the way for major regional projects to finally move forward. They were all good ideas when they were introduced several years ago and they are even better ideas now to stimulate the economy by creating badly needed jobs and new revenue.
It’s time for Westfield and Arcadia First! to follow suit for the good of the City and residents of Arcadia. There were dozens of environmental issues raised in the lawsuits. A judge said only a few of them merit further examination. That seems like the perfect opening for an easy and quick settlement, one that would give Westfield and Arcadia First! victories in more stringent mitigations of some of their most valid environmental concerns.
That is, if Westfield is really interested in allowing the city from which it derives millions of dollars to move forward and is not just using the environmental laws to prevent legitimate competition. And if Arcadia First! is not simply using environmental law to stop a development they do not want under any circumstances and to circumvent a unanimous vote by officials they elected to represent them in such matters.
Many people would prefer that Arcadia never grow any bigger in population, business or traffic. They prefer that it return to the size of their childhood. But to the parents of these people, that Arcadia of the 1950s or 1960s, when the population was 25,000 – 30,000, seemed as if it had grown too big compared to their childhood, when it was only about 5,000 – 10,000 in the 1930s.
Most people are more comfortable keeping things exactly the way they were in their childhood, but Arcadia has constantly grown, about 200% every decade in the first half of the century. It more than doubled from 1950 to 2000 when it stood at 53,000. Growth has slowed significantly since then to only 6% so far in the 2000s to 56,248 in 2008. But we all need to realize that whether we like it or not, the City will continue to grow, and thank goodness or else Arcadia could not keep up with increasing costs of providing services.
Cities are like sharks, they have to move forward or they die. Doing nothing is not a viable option.
The Gold Line and the station and parking garage at First Avenue and Santa Clara, and the new General Plan being finalized bring the best hope in years for sparking a long overdue revitalization of the downtown corridor on First Avenue in the area of Huntington Drive.
Westfield’s Promenade addition this year, its major changes to the Center Court area being unveiled next month, and the upcoming plans for Robinsons-May, combine to make that a much improved mall for the benefit of all.
Now it’s time for Westfield to stop preventing Arcadia from moving forward to control its own future with the Shops at Santa Anita and from preserving its past, present and future in a revived Santa  Anita Park.
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