After months of hard work, a job well done by Westside study

Geoff West

I attended the meeting of the Costa Mesa Redevelopment Agency in

October, during which the Westside Revitalization Oversight Committee

presented the product of more than a year’s labor.

One cannot help but be impressed by the dedication and tenacity of

those members of the committee who stuck it out though the duration

of this assignment and managed to present the agency with a final

report supported unanimously by the membership of the committee.

This is even more impressive when you consider that some members

have been through several different versions of this process over

many years, most recently as members of the now-defunct Community

Redevelopment Action Committee.

Now the city staff must develop an implementation plan for review

by the agency after comment by the oversight committee. At that

point, the agency will decide whether the sledgehammer of eminent

domain will be necessary to implement some of the recommendations.

This decision will fall in the laps of the new Redevelopment Agency

-- the City Council in a fancy dress -- sometime after the first of

the year.

I, personally, found it interesting that the recommendation for a

study of a bridge over the Santa Ana River at 19th Street was, once

again, cast aside. It’s easy to second-guess this decision -- such a

study seems integral to any serious attempt to revitalize the

Westside. I felt sympathy for long time bridge-study advocate Robert

Graham when agency member Libby Cowan, as she presented certificates

of appreciation to the committee members, referred to him as “Robert

‘Bridge’ Graham.” Although he accepted it graciously, I found myself

wondering if she might just have been rubbing his nose in the fact

that consideration of a bridge study was rejected again.

As an aside, by my count there were around 75 people in attendance

at this meeting. Once you sort out the city staff, agency members,

city council candidates and oversight committee members, my guess is

that there were around 10 residents, fewer depending on how you count

representatives of developers salivating at the thought of getting a

piece of the Westside pie. The only Latino faces I saw were those of

oversight committee members, an interesting fact when you consider

that it has been estimated that more than 60% of Westside residents

are Latino. As the meeting unfolded, I found myself wondering if

those approximately 30,000 people have a clue about what might be

happening to their lives if the recommendations of this report are

implemented in full. My guess is probably not.

Congratulations to the oversight committee volunteers for a job

well done on a difficult task. There are those who, when the

committee began their work more than a year ago, would have bet on

failure. Somehow they managed to forge consensus even though they

represented a very diverse group of viewpoints. I suspect this

process was not as painless as some might have you believe. And they

did it without the help of high-priced facilitators. Good for them.

I look forward to seeing what action, if any, will occur in a few

months. This will certainly be among the biggest challenges facing

our new City Council, so we can only hope that the election this

month has given us the right blend skills and personalities on the

City Council to move forward with this issue to the satisfaction of

all parties concerned.

* EDITOR’S NOTE: Geoff West is a Costa Mesa resident.