Owner wonders why council keeps singling out her project
By Kara Chalmers
The Azule Crossing project, approved by the Saratoga City Council one year ago, should have been over and done with by now. But the project has come back to haunt its owner, its developer and the city council.
The project, a mixture of businesses and homes, recently reappeared as an agenda item, in part because of the complaints of a single neighbor, Jeffrey Walker. But by the time the city council considered the agenda item at its Feb. 7 meeting, Walker's concerns had been addressed by Azule Crossing developer Dennis Griffin. Still, some council members expressed frustration with the project.
"The developer spent a lot of money getting this thing going, but we spent a lot of our valuable time dealing with situations that should have been resolved," said Councilman Stan Bogosian
Azule Crossing is located on the corner of Saratoga-Sunnyvale Road and Seagull Way. The council approved it in February 2000 after a long appeals process. The business component of the project is half completed--the space has been renovated but not expanded. Construction on the residential part has not yet begun.
The council denied the project in its original form, which proposed more residences and less business space.
Interim Community Development Director Irwin Kaplan said that a letter Walker had written to the council instigated the Feb. 7 hearing. According to Griffin, the council placed a lot of emphasis on the complaints of one neighbor. Griffin questioned the fairness of the council, some members of which were opposed to the development when it was presented to the council in its original form.
"I don't know what the problem is," said Griffin. "The city council is making a lot of noise, in my opinion. For some reason, they're down on us."
Among the neighbor's concerns were the intensity of the lighting on the commercial building's signs and the use of the lighted signs in place of security lighting.
By Feb. 7, Griffin had decreased the lighting intensity by 50 percent in the signs, and had installed temporary security lighting. In addition, he moved the fence back to reestablish more parking spaces on-site and had privacy louvers reinstalled on the building next door, which were both additional complaints by Walker.
But when Walker talked about the development, he was upbeat.
"There's no problem with the project at all," Walker said. He said he had brought his issues to the council because they had been festering in his mind for a long time. He also said his real problem is with the city's sign-permit process. He thought he would have had a chance to challenge the sign permit that the city issued to Azule, but he did not.
"I just wanted to say that the progress that's been made so far has been phenomenal," Walker said Feb. 7. "I really appreciate all your help and I really hated to bring it forth to you to help me resolve it, but I'm glad that it's getting the attention, so thank you."
Zorka Ficovich, 76, one of four siblings who owns the Azule Crossing property, said she thinks the council is singling her, and her family, out, but she doesn't know why.
Ficovich's father bought the land on which Azule Crossing sits, in 1937. Originally, it was a prune and apricot orchard.
According to Ficovich, there is no reason for the council not to trust that she will comply with the conditions imposed on the project by the city.
"We didn't come in and build and run," she said. "We're here."
According to Bogosian, Azule Crossing epitomizes a challenge that faces council members all the time--whether to make developers commit to strict conditions at the outset of a project or to give them flexibility.
"In retrospect, perhaps we might have been better off nailing down a few more conditions when we approved the proposal," Bogosian said. "We might have put a little bit more in up front to assure compliance."
He added that he plans to bring this up as a general policy issue at the council's May retreat.
In response to concerns that the council was catering to one resident, Bogosian said, that if complaints are verifiable, the council has a responsibility to its citizens to respond to them.
"If one neighbor has been adversely affected by this, and it's been documented--it's not just imagined, it's a real problem--then, if we, as a city ignore one neighbor, we have established a tone--that we don't concern ourselves with individuals in the community," he said. "In this particular case, nothing Mr. Walker brought up was unreasonable by any stretch of the imagination."
Another Seagull Way resident, Don Johnson, showed up at the meeting to ask the city council for permanent signage restricting large construction trucks on neighborhood streets. He said there had been large trucks going to and from the Azule Crossing development.
He brought a petition signed by 30 of his neighbors, living on or adjacent to Seagull Way. The council referred the matter to the Public Safety Commission, but council members made it very clear they were concerned about the trucks.
|
Saratoga, California Since 1955
