Nowhere Man

 

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He’s a real nowhere man,
Sitting in his Nowhere Land,
Making all his nowhere plans
for nobody…

~~

No On A Victory!

 

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Final Results
OVERWHELMING LANDSLIDE
62% No – 38% Yes

Wahoo!!!!!

Measure H. Measure A. Millions of dollars turned away.

Dead Dino Rest In Perpetuity.

~~

This is dedicated to the DDR Carpet Baggers for their plane ride home to Ohio and Texas

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buh-bye…
~~

Doin’ the Dead Dino Stomp – No On A Letters (Updated)

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[FLASH!! DDR will spend over a million dollars to kill our downtown! They have spent $800,000 so far according to the Press Democrat. That's 10 to 1 spending against our local citizens and local democracy. Vote NO on A. -DS]

Letters to the UDJ

From BARRY VOGEL
Ukiah

Running up the score

If you haven’t voted “No” on Measure A yet, Here’s why you should, now:

1. If Measure A passes, no environmental local regulation or control will be necessary for anything that is built on the old Masonite property by the current or any future owner.

2. If Measure A passes, the old Masonite property will be sold. “Everything is for sale,” Jeff Adams, the project director for DDR said at the October 8, 2009 debate on the merits of Measure A. Scott Wolstein, DDR’s top boss may be seen on www.reit.com stating that due to its economic condition, “DDR will not build any new projects.” DDR stock had a value of $74 per share in 2006 which dropped to $1.50 in March 2009 and was then declared ”junk” by respected organizations that value stock.

3. If Measure A passes, the so called “mixed-use” zoning would give the owner unlimited and uncontrolled choice and discretion on what is built or done there. DDR rendered its so called “specific plan” meaningless when it repeats, over 80 times, that the “plan is conceptual only and subject to change according to regional and market conditions.” Further no owner, present or future will have any responsibility to pay any consequences of what is built there.

4. If Measure A passes, all surrounding road work and public safety costs would be paid with county money leaving no funds for our already neglected roads and public safety needs everywhere else in Mendocino County.

5. DDR and Mendocino County Tomorrow, the local group it supports report they spend $514,871.89 as of September 19, 2009, on their campaign. All the money came from DDR; no local money.

6. There are no “yes” yard signs. No one wants one. All DDR can do is send glossy mailers and make meaningless promises on radio and TV.

7. DDR doesn’t give a rodent’s posterior about Mendocino County or we who live here.

Flogging (and Blogging) a Dead Dino

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More Letters to the Editor UDJ

No Property Rights
Clear Democratic Opposition

From DAVID SMITH-FERRI
Ukiah

For months now, proponents of Measure A, most especially Jeff Adams of DDR, have been complaining about how poorly they’ve been treated by the County Board of Supervisors and by the planning process as a whole, which they suggest has been hostile, dilatory, and incompetent. Because of this, they say, they were forced to fall back on the only democratic process left to them: the initiative process.

I’ve heard this sad story told in the Ukiah City Council Chambers and in County BOS meetings. I’ve read it in this newspaper when proponents of Measure A have been quoted. I’ve heard it so often I’m afraid that voters may view it as true instead of seeing it as a political strategy intended to cast DDR as the good guy just trying to exercise its private property rights and move its progressive project along. In this fairy tale, local government staff and officials, of course, are the bad guys getting in the way of progress.

I want to remind everyone who cares about this ballot initiative of a few simple facts that seem to have been forgotten. First, when DDR purchased the land, it was zoned industrial (as it is now). Presumably, they knew this. They have never had a private property right to build a retail mall on the land nor does County government have to bow to their desire to change the zoning.

Second, as we all know, the current BOS is opposed to rezoning the former Masonite property precisely because John McCowen and Carre Brown replaced two supervisors who favored it. Let’s not forget that Mr. McCowen and Ms. Brown campaigned strongly against the rezoning. Their large electoral victories were not only democratic but a clear statement of opposition to the DDR project. It was not a hostile local government nor an incompetent planning process that forced DDR to bring in a guerrilla team of signature gatherers to put Measure A on the ballot. It was desperation. And all the whining to the contrary can’t change it.
~

Monster Mall Unnecessary

From JANNA OSTOYA
Ukiah

DDR Thrashes – Last Gasps – Death Throes – Celebratory Cheesecake Anyone?

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More campaign disputes on Measure A as election nears

The Daily Journal, October 25, 2009

More battling about campaign advertising is afoot this week over statements by an economics professor, statements by DDR’s CEO and statements by a former Greenpeace activist.

Mendocino County Tomorrow (the proponents of Measure A to rezone the old Masonite property and build a shopping mall) Thursday accused the No on A campaign known as SOLE (Save Our Local Economy) of misleading voters on a mailer which includes a quote from Robert Eyler, chairman of the economics department at Sonoma State University.

The quote comes from a story in the Ukiah Daily Journal about a November, 2008 meeting sponsored by MCT which paid Eyler to give a talk about the future of the economy of this area. The quote – excerpted accurately from the Daily Journal story – reads: “You could make the same mistakes Sonoma County made. That creates congestion and that drives good businesses away.” MCT executive director Robin Collier issued a press release Thursday outraged that SOLE would “misquote and misrepresent” Eyler’s comments. “No on A clearly misrepresents Professor Eyler’s position on Measure A,” Collier wrote. “His name and the quote attributed to him are displayed on the mail piece in a clear attempt to fool and confuse Mendocino County voters. The quote used by No on A is nearly a year old and does not concern Measure A at all, nor the Mendocino Crossings project. Professor Eyler’s quote instead was addressing ‘untempered growth.’ Further, Professor Eyler does not believe Measure A or the Mendocino Crossings project are examples of ‘untempered growth,’ and believes No on A representatives have misrepresented his position on Measure A.” [Yeah, right. You'll be even more outraged with the No On A Landslide - 60 - 40 No On A. -DS]

In fact, Eyler has no position on Measure A. In an interview Friday, Eyler said he knows nothing about Measure A or Mendocino Crossings and has made no evaluation of either one pro or con. He said he was surprised when MCT contacted him to let him know he was being used in some way and was disturbed by it, although he hadn’t seen it and MCT hadn’t told him what the nature of the context of his quote was.

Dead Dino Rest In Perpetuity – No on A Letters To The UDJ Editor

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From SUSAN SHER
Ukiah

It has become apparent that locally-owned businesses remain the life blood of our community. CEOs and boards of directors of the large chain stores with which DDR promises to populate its mega-mall simply do not have the interest or commitment to sustain our community.

Recently, as a member of a board of directors for a local non-profit organization with an upcoming benefit event, I had the task of requesting raffle prizes from local businesses. Virtually all of the local merchants who were approached generously donated to the cause despite the fact that many were facing challenging financial times themselves. In response to the same request made to some of the chain stores which have all ready infiltrated Ukiah, I was told that the management of the local store did not have the discretion to make a donation; I should submit a written request to out-of-town corporate headquarters. No doubt, staff in these corporate headquarters would not have heard of this Ukiah non-profit agency, the corporate executives would not be attending the event and having no familiarity with the community in which one of its many chain stores was located, would have no concern for the wellbeing of local folks relying on the services provided by this local non-profit.

Throughout this campaign, Ohio-based corporate giant, DDR has argued that changing the zoning of the Masonite site from industrial to commercial/retail use and the resulting construction of its mega-mall would be an economic boon for our community, a way to put substantial amounts of cash into our dwindling local coffers.

While DDR has made many illusory promises of future benefits, it has thus far, provided one concrete example of the hypocrisy of its purported concern for the economic vitality of our community. Last month, the UDJ compared the campaign spending of both DDR, the only contributor to the Yes on Measure A campaign with that of Save Our Local Economy (”SOLE”), the grass-roots community group opposed to Measure A.

As of September 19, 2009, DDR had contributed over $500,000 to its own campaign. During this past filing period, large amounts of campaign funds were not spent locally; rather, DDR patronized a Marin County law firm, political and marketing consultants from San Francisco and Santa Rosa, and out-of-town printers and graphic designers.

Fresh Batch of Dead Monster Mall Community Outrage – Letters to the Editor

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Letters to the Editor
Ukiah Daily Journal

From Stephanie T. Hoppe
Ukiah

What exactly is in the proposed Measure A? For all we can tell, if it passes, it could authorize the slaughterhouse discussed some months ago, and no one in the county would have any say about it.
~

From Ron Lippert
Willits

Thanks for publishing all the various opinions on Measure A. I support No On A. Vote, have an opinion. We must come together and unite to create the future which we all will and do want.
~

From John Arteaga
Ukiah

I hope that a lot of folks planning to cast ballots in the upcoming election had the opportunity to hear the debate between the opposing sides of the Measure A issue, which was simulcast on KZYX, and also to listen to Barry Vogel’s Radio Curious program today on KZYX 91.5 fm, where he detailed a great many of the less savory facts about DDR’s proposed development.

My wife’s reaction to the debate was something like, “sounds like they’re coming to town to swindle the country bumpkins; do they think that we all just fell off the turnip truck yesterday?”

While today’s bleak jobs picture may prompt some to vote for jobs, any kind of jobs, if one takes a longer view, the passage of Measure A will surely be selling out our birthright and that of our children for a mess of pottage today. If we allow its 68 acres to pass from industrial to ‘mixed-use’ (i.e. what ever any developer wants to do with it, forever exempt from the normal planning and zoning constrains everyone else has to abide by) it will close off forever the possibility of good, well paid, productive, industrial jobs locating any kind of sizable plant in Ukiah Valley.

As the American dollar continues to weaken against the currencies of all those countries which produce goods to trade with other countries around the world, eventually this country will have to rebuild its manufacturing base, which was so rashly shut down and sent off to China or some such cheap labor destination, during the Bush-Clinton ‘free-trade’ era.

Think of how unique and irreplaceable the Masonite site is; strategically situated on a rail siding which may, sometime in the future, come back into operation, with copious water sources and easy access to the freeway, with a great many well-educated potential employees willing to work for far less than the wages demanded in the Bay Area or LA.

Dead Monster Mall: DDR CEO “Mothballs” New Development (video)

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[Belly up, sucker. It's all over but the shoutin'. -DS]

From DDR
Somewhere in Ohio

Diversified Developers Realty CEO Scott Wolstein “Mothballs” New Development for Better Investments.

“Development is a problem… Access to capital to finance development is very problematic. But even if the capital were available, the yields today are not sufficient to justify investment.

“So we’re finishing up what we are committed to and everything else we’ve mothballed for now. It isn’t worth it to us to devote new capital to build a project that might return 7 or 8 percent…”

Measure A organizers and supporters fooled and betrayed…

Thank you for voting NO ON MEASURE A MONSTER MALL, and for preserving our unique, locally-owned businesses, neighborly small town values, and livable human-scale communities.

Go to video here→
~~

Press Democrat Editorial: No On Monster Mall

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From The Press Democrat

[You can smell it in the air, can't you? It's a dead Dino in the middle of the road stinkin' to high heaven. -DS]

The heated debate surrounding Measure A in Mendocino County hits on some familiar themes of our time:

• Attracting big box stores vs. protecting locally owned mom-and-pop retailers.

• Creating low-paying retail jobs now vs. the hope of creating higher-paying industrial-type jobs later.

• The urgent need for economic development vs. the glacial pace of local planning.

But the central issue in the Ukiah Valley is this: How does Mendocino County want to decide on its major developments, through the traditional county planning process or through the ballot box?

We strongly believe in the importance of a local review process and, for that reason, encourage voters to reject Measure A on the Nov. 3 ballot.

This initiative seeks direct voter approval of the Mendocino Crossroads project, a massive mixed-used development targeted for the site of the former Masonite wood-processing plant just north of Ukiah. The project could include up to 800,000 square feet of retail space and 150 residential units.

We use words like “could” and “up to” because there are so many unknowns about what voters would be approving. The wording of the ballot measure and specific plan are fuzzy, and there are no real guarantees, other than the fact that the project, if approved, would be exempt from the California Environmental Quality Act.

The petitioner, Ohio-based Developers Diversified Realty, never had its project officially rejected by the county.

Jeff Adams, the project manager, says DDR had no choice but to go directly to the voters because the project was getting bogged down in process, including having to wait for completion of the Ukiah Valley Area Plan, still a work in progress.

“It’s a process with no end,” Adams told The Press Democrat Editorial Board. “There is no process.”

It’s true that local governments, including Mendocino County’s, need to do a better job of reviewing development proposals in a consistent and timely fashion.

No on Measure A – Way More Letters to the Editor

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To the Editor -  Ukiah Daily Journal

Legacy of Deceit

From KUMAR PLOCHER
Hopland

As a manufacturer of local goods, and a Ukiah provider of 15 good-paying jobs, I worry about the effects a mega-mall nearby would have on my business, Yokayo Biofuels. Our biodiesel production plant is located on Orr Springs Road. We send out and receive truck deliveries (including 18-wheelers) throughout each business day, and each of these routes must pass through the corridor between Orr Springs Road and the onramps to Highway 101- the exact area threatened with massive congestion if Measure A passes and a bunch of stoplights are installed. I have tried to quantify the negative impact of these potential developments for my company in dollars and cents, but it’s very difficult. Frankly, I fear the unknown in this case.

I’ve been worried for the last several months that Measure A may indeed pass. It seems that many well-intentioned, intelligent people are very impressed with the promise of more shopping choices here in Mendocino County. That notion might appeal to me too, but it seems to be a very superficial promise. DDR, the company behind Measure A, has always attached disclaimers to every vision they put forth for the future of the Masonite property, and it seems the only thing that they are 100 percent committed to is changing the zoning. As a businessperson with some experience in commercial and industrial realty in this county, I can understand why. Once they’ve got the zoning switched from Industrial, they should be able to sell the property for a much higher price. This is the thought that keeps me up at night: if Measure A passes, we really don’t know what will end up at Masonite. DDR will have enabled a situation, through a corruption of the democratic process, by which they can sell a property free of many important regulatory hurdles to the highest bidder. That highest bidder could be a very bad neighbor, but we would have already lost a lot of the rights to contest their entrance into our community. Again, I’m not an “ignorance is bliss” kind of guy, but in this case, I fear the unknown.

Back when the petition that resulted in Measure A being on the ballot was being circulated, I recall hearing about the petition-hawkers’ claims regarding the nature of the petition. Many were saying that it was about “cleaning up Masonite.” By that time, I had been able to take a close look at the details, and the petition was obviously

You keep a-knockin’ but you can’t come in! No way! No on A!

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The letters keep arriving at the Journal…

From LAWRENCE AMES
Ukiah

Stop the Sprawl Right Here, Right Now

It seems that DDR has tipped their hand a bit and revealed some of their corporate vision for the city of Ukiah. At the recent town hall meeting in Willits, DDR senior development director Jeff Adams admitted that DDR intends to widen North State Street to five lanes, and add five additional traffic lights between Ford Street and Orr Springs Road, timed at 60 second intervals.

This is sounding more and more like the Santa Rosa-Rohnert Park-Windsor urban sprawl megalopolis. When I moved my family to Ukiah 20 years ago, it was to get away from five lane boulevards and high density traffic lights, with their resulting gridlock. This is not the vision that I have for Ukiah’s future! If you envision something better for Ukiah than uncontrollable urban sprawl, curb the corporate madness. Vote no on Measure A.
~

From Chas E. Moser
Ukiah

Make Masonite Meaningful To The People

In all the ads for approval of Measure A I have never seen anything about making jobs available for the people of Ukiah in a field that they would be proud to work in. We are big on verbal support of something we believe in but we are slight on physical support.

If they are going to develop that piece of land why not do it with an industry that would help the people of Ukiah and not just add more people to the mix, dumping into our water treatment plant and using what we consider a dwindling resource, water.

If construction is to be done, why do we have to depend on strangers to come in and do it? If development takes place why not use local people to do it?

Vote No On A Now!

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From CLIFF PAULIN
SOLE@pacific.net
(707) 462-1900
NoOnA.com

This message is of the utmost importance, please take the time to read it and pass it along to everyone you know in Mendocino County.

It’s time to get out and vote No On Measure A. This ballot initiative is arguably the most important local initiative in years. Mail in ballots have arrived or will arrive shortly. Save Our Local Economy (SOLE) will be conducting Get Out The Vote efforts to ensure a No Vote. We will be targeting our calls to those mail in voters who have not yet returned their ballots, so it is critical to get your ballot in early to help us maximize our efforts.

Everyone registered to vote should have received a card from the elections office several weeks ago stating that you are either a mail in voter or identifying your polling place. If you did not receive that postcard please call the election office at (707) 463-4371 ASAP to ensure you are registered. The last day to register is October 19, 2009. Be aware that many polling places have been closed or consolidated over the past few years, and 70% of the voters in Mendocino County are voting by mail in ballot. Make sure you know your status before the 19th.

This election is crucial to our ability to shape the direction of our county, so make sure you vote and remind friends, family, and associates to do the same. It is even more vital that we motive those around us because many will not vote due to the lack of national and statewide elections.

Vote, Tell Your Friends, and Get Involved. Below are ways to contact SOLE to help. Thank you for doing your part to ensure victory for NO ON A!
~~

NO! CostCo Does NOT Endorse Measure A and Demands That Its Name Not Be Used On Any Future Yes On A Material

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From Save Our Local Economy – No on Measure A

[We keep hearing Measure A proponants "personally offended" by the SOLE group's so-called "hyprocrisy" because the DDR folks can't seem to understand that No on Measure A is supported by those with different views of Big Box Retail. It's not that hard! But here's a big dose of hyprocrisy AND dishonesty for you! Dead Dino in the middle of the road→ -DS]

PRESS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

DATE:            October 12, 2009

COSTCO DOES NOT ENDORSE MEASURE A AND DEMANDS THAT ITS NAME NOT BE USED ON ANY FUTURE YES ON A MATERIAL

Costco does not endorse Measure A, and has not authorized the use of their logo on Developers Diversified Realty’s (DDR’s) “Yes On A” mailers.  Members of Save Our Local Economy (SOLE) have investigated the use of the Costco, Target, TJ Maxx, and Petco logos on the Yes On A county-wide mailer of October 6.

Colin Olin, the General Council for Costco, informed SOLE today that DDR used the Costco logo without their permission and that the company does not endorse Measure A.  Mr. Olin also reported that Paul G. Moulton, Executive Vice President of Real Estate for Costco, had contacted the Measure A proponents to express Costco’s extreme displeasure with their use of the company logo and demanded that no future material use the Costco logo.

Target, TJ Maxx, and Petco are also listed on the October 6 mailer, and were contacted regarding this issue.  None of these stores have authorized the use of their company logos, and all are considering sending cease and desist letters to the Measure A proponents.

DDR, the company behind Measure A, has consistently misrepresented that these stores are ready to move in should voters approve Measure A in November.

No On Monster Mall Measure A – More Letters to the Editor

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Editorial Opinion of the Ukiah Daily Journal

The Ukiah Valley has a lot at stake in the Nov. 3 election as the entire county votes on Measure A.

As mail-in ballots arrive at homes and as our readers think about what they will do at the polls, we urge a No vote on Measure A.

There is big money at stake here for the developers, and big changes at stake for this valley. Passions are high and we hope that means citizens are engaged and thinking carefully about their decision.

There are lots of things to discuss about whether to rezone the Masonite property for a mall of as much as 800,000 square feet.

But for us it comes down to one overriding issue: the local businesses that have worked hard and supported our community, businesses which would undoubtedly be harmed, if not destroyed, by a big new mall to the north.

Developers Diversified Realty, the mall developer, has promised Costco, Petco, TJ Maxx and Target right away. None of these stores has actually said they’ll come, but what if they do?

What will that mean to dfm Car Stereo? Mendocino Book Company? Schat’s Bakery? Poma TV? Rainbow Agricultural Services? Mendocino Barkery? Little Brown Bear? The Coffee Critic? The Crow’s Nest? Rod’s Shoes? Pardini Appliances? D. Wm. Jewelers? Lustre Jewelry? Jitterbox Music? Mendo-Lake Office Supplies? Thompson Party Rentals? and others like them?

These local businesses are successful because they have worked hard and contribute to the community. We have seen these businesses on Little League uniforms, scholarship awards, donations to local non-profits and in school programs.

Think about the ripple effect outside the valley in Willits and Fort Bragg where other small businesses will be crushed by the weight of competition with these four large mega-stores carrying everything from appliances and TVs to clothing and shoes, to pet supplies, books, gifts and music CDs. Not to mention all the other stores, kiosks and food outlets also in the plans.

Is this what we heard in the Monster Mall debate?

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From TOM DAVENPORT
Redwood Valley

It is vital that voters inform themselves, register & vote in the coming election.

You can also help by passing this blog post link on to local friends and acquaintances.

A fairly painless way to inform ourselves on Measure A is to listen to any of the following audio recordings of radio broadcasts featuring the official spokespersons for both sides as well as questions from members of the public.

This morning’s (Friday) Access Show, presented by multi-term former Supervisor Norman DeVall, hosted another round of the Measure A debate and can be listened to online  here – one hour play time – Guests were former Supervisor Richard Shoemaker and Organic beef rancher Guiness McFadden representing SOLE/No on A and Mendocino County Tomorrow Executive Director Robin Collier, representing the Yes on A campaign committee.

The excellent half hour broadcast of Barry Vogel’s Radio Curious on KZYX, featured Mendocino County Tomorrow Executive Director Robin “Cheezecake Lady” Collier as guest. The number of times she responded with either “I don’t know” or “I can’t answer that” to questions from the host was staggering. Listen to an MP3 of the broadcast here.

Yesterday evening’s event at the Ukiah City Hall can be listened to here.
~

From RICHARD SHOEMAKER
S.O.L.E. No on A Campaign

At tonight’s debate Jeff Adams of DDR revealed that he had secret meetings with at least two supervisors in which they “begged him” to not proceed with DDR’s application to re-zone the Masonite property before the November Supervisor’s election.

Mr. Adams also stated he had spoken with three supervisors. If this is in fact true then he and those supervisors violated the State of California’s Open Meeting laws otherwise known as the Brown Act. Brown Act violations may be prosecuted as felonies with steep fines or jail time.

Ukiah Police Chief Concerned About Monster Mall and Measure A Ads

From CHRIS DEWEY
Director of Public Safety
Ukiah Police and Fire Departments

[DDR is clearly being irresponsible and misleading in their deluge of slickster mailing pieces. I had a gentleman walk into my store this morning asking where he could get a No On A sign for his house. He said that he was very upset with all the Yes On A mail he was receiving and said: "I'm not a whore! I cannot be bought off!" -DS]

To the Editor:
Ukiah Daily Journal

Recently, a Yes on Measure A flyer was sent to the residents of Ukiah and the County of Mendocino, with a picture of a blue Police Officer’s uniform with a “Police Officer” badge, and a Firefighter on the cover.

The flyer suggests public safety funding would be improved as a result of this measure.

I do not want voters to be confused by the “Police Officer” badge which is clearly shown on the ad. As Director of Public Safety, responsible for police and fire services within the City of Ukiah, I feel it is important that I clarify public safety funding. Currently, there is no distribution system in place that would provide property and sales tax revenues in the support of City police and fire services from this proposed project.

Ordinarily, when projects such as this are proposed, a public development review process is used to mitigate potential problems. The Ukiah Police and Fire Departments worked extensively over the last two years with the County Planning Department as they worked on the Ukiah Valley Area Plan to comment on proposed changes to the plan which would have authorized uses for the Masonite property now being proposed by Measure A.

Since Measure A bypasses the normal public development review process, the Ukiah Police and Fire Department can not clearly understand the impacts this project will have to public safety in our community and no agreement or other mechanism is in place to provide additional revenue to the Ukiah Police and Fire Departments for any increased costs resulting from the Measure A development.

Santa Rosa Rejects Big Box and Goes Local

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From New Rules Project

[This puts the lie to the recent DDR Monster Mall mailing that Sonoma County loves Mendocino County residents coming down to shop in the National chain stores. They're trying to save their own locally-owned stores like Friedman Brothers FROM the National chains like we are. Don't Californicate Ukiah! VOTE NO ON A! -DS]

Two weeks ago, in a public hearing room crowded with more than 100 people, including dozens of local business owners standing alongside environmentalists, affordable housing advocates, and labor leaders, the city council in Santa Rosa, California, soundly defeated a proposed Lowe’s store on a 5-2 vote.

For a city facing a sizable budget shortfall, it was a remarkable decision. The conventional wisdom, especially in California’s sales tax-dependent and financially strapped cities, is that big-box retailers are cash-cows and those cities that do not welcome them with open arms will be left behind in the regional competition for revenue.

Lowe’s pushed the sales tax angle hard as it lobbied city officials. But, in the end, most councilors did not buy it, thanks largely to information and testimony submitted by local business owners, who argued that Lowe’s would not bring in new money, but only siphon revenue away from existing businesses, eliminating jobs and shifting wealth out of the community.

“It was our collective action that demonstrated to the city council that this was not a good project,”

Letter to the Editor: Measure A is not what it appears to be

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From INGO WAGNER
Ukiah

To the Editor: Ukiah Daily Journal

What’s the big deal about rezoning a piece of land and maybe building a shopping center (and I do mean maybe)? The big deal is that by placing the rezoning issue on the ballot in the form of Measure A, the proponents of this charade are bypassing urban planning rationale. DDR, with its large campaign fund, is buying its way past the same planning and zoning process that you and I must conform to. Measure A, if passed, will set a precedent that we will all regret. Measure A is not about whether or not you or I like shopping centers. We have an abundance of vacant land zoned for commercial and retail use. Measure A is about letting DDR buy its way past the same procedures that you and I must go through. If Measure A passes, we will not be guaranteed more shopping choices. All that is guaranteed is that the Masonite land will become more valuable. At that point, the developer can either flip the property for a profit, or maybe some day build something on it, but who knows what.

All it takes is a few bucks to put an issue on the ballot, and I know a lot of people who may lend me a few million, unsecured of course, so that I can tear down my house in an R-1 zoned area and convert my land use to a pig farm.

The Monster Mall Plot is a Local and National Job Killer – Vote No On A (video)

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Save Our Jobs – No On A (video)→

From DAVE SMITH
Ukiah

Allowing a Monster Mall into Mendocino County will only make unemployment worse here, as it has across the country. Fact: Independent studies show for every job the Monster Mall Big Boxes bring, 1.4 are lost. That means the 700 slave-wage jobs advertised by the Monster Mall will destroy almost 1,000 current, better-paying jobs. The reason is simple: the job losses are larger than the gains because Big Boxes accomplish the same volume of sales with fewer employees, and pay poverty-level wages. The money circulating locally from those lost jobs go somewhere else. Not only that, they have killed millions of non-retail jobs nationally by pushing our manufacturing jobs overseas.

Thank you for voting NO ON THE MEASURE A MONSTER MALL PLOT, and for preserving our unique, locally-owned businesses, neighborly small town values, and livable human-scale communities.
~

See also The Wal-Mart Dilemma→

… and listen to a Monster Mall plotter’s evasive and unconvincing defense of Measure A on Radio Curious→
~~

Mash The Monster Mall – Letter To The Editor

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From TOM DAVENPORT
Redwood Valley

Proponents of any initiative always want some sort of special treatment and if it takes 300 pages written by mercenaries in the legal profession to express that, how could it possibly be trustworthy?

My frequent sparring partner John McCowen, is quoted in the UDJ as sharing the simple, safe view of initiative referendums we both learned from our parents:  If in doubt, vote “NO”.

DDR is literally betting the farm on this one.

It’s their last chance at shooting the moon in high-roller real estate speculation, unless kept on artificial life support by sucking transfusions of stimulus money out of the District of Criminals in Washington.

Expect to see them out of business entirely in less than two years if they are unable to seduce our county’s voters.  Their nationwide string of shopping malls are untenanted to a fatal extent.

DDR’s indebtedness is a lot bigger than their income, and due dates are approaching.

This situation is not unnoticed by Wall Street investors, whose lack of confidence in DDR is reflected in abysmal DDR stock prices.

Why should voters believe DDR would actually be able to carry out any of the things they claim they might do?  Have we forgotten how ephemeral election campaign promises always are?
~~

No On Measure A – Calendar of Important Events

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From Save Our Local Economy (S.O.L.E)
Now through October 9th

October 5, Monday, 6:00 P.M. S.O.L.E. Town Hall Meeting, Saturday Afternoon Club, 107 N. Oak St, Ukiah

Guest commentators for Monday’s SOLE Town Hall Meeting include John Schaeffer of Real Goods,  Tim Owen Kennedy of Vital Systems and Tim Thornhill of Mendocino Wine Company with others to be announced.

This event is sponsored by the Ukiah Main Street Program, Real Goods Solar, the Solar Living Institute and Vital Systems.  The program will include a discussion  on Measure A as well as a period of audience questions.

The highlight of the evening will be the unveiling of a locally produced proposal of an alternative industrial use of the Masonite Site.

The proposal is based on successful similar developments around the country.  These developments range from basic industrial complexes to full blown “Green Technology Centers.”

Monday nights visual presentation will be followed by a panel discussion of the proposal its community benefits and as well as other uses of this valued industrial site.

For those who have questioned, “what can we do at the Masonite Site?”.  This proposal may be the first step in securing the future of our local economy.

Another No on Monster Mall Sprawl

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From SANDY TURNER
Redwood Valley

As a refugee of Southern California who moved steadily northward, I have seen dozens of small California cities turn into Anycity, CA over the last 50 years.

One of the great things about our county is that it has retained its rural qualities into the 21st Century. And our small cities here in our low population county have elected representatives who are easily approachable by the other citizens. Our cities are so small that it’s pretty likely that if you live in one of our county’s four cities, you know at least one of your City Council members. That’s because they go to your church, or you went to high school with them, or they coached your kid in soccer, or they live just down the block from you.

Don’t be Hornswoggled by Measure A

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From MICHAEL LAYBOURN
Hopland

In an answer to those who believe that DDR will not use our tax money for the stress on our infrastructure (street and highway rebuilding, water, sewage, traffic lights, fire and police protection), you are being conned. They are lining up for a bailout with our taxes already. DDR is already using our tax money with a bailout of $600 million in TALF funds. Most sources say they get the money in early October. That will certainly give them some cash to sell a zone change. Our tax money may well pay for DDR’s election campaign.

Michelle Jarboe
Plain Dealer Reporter:
August 2009

…Developers Diversified Realty Corp. could be one of the first participants in a Federal Reserve program aimed at bolstering the battered commercial real estate market… from a government-subsidized bailout fund. Developers Diversified Realty Corp. (DDR), a retail REIT, could be one of the first REITs to reliquify assets through TALF.

“Who but DDR, do you suppose, was very first in line for a TALF handout ($600 million) from the New York Federal Reserve Bank?” -Tom Anderson

Letter To The Editor: DDR’s Claims Are Leaky

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From SCOTT CRATTY
Ukiah

If you plan to vote in favor of Measure A I hope that you will not do so because you believe DDR’s economic claims or its propaganda about how Measure A will help the local economy.  DDR’s economic “facts” are half-truths at best, when they are not simply misleading.

From the start DDR has repeatedly asserted that its new mall would save “$169 million dollars in retail sales …currently ‘leaking’ from Mendocino County”.  Not even the (DDR funded) Applied Development Economics study they rely on for so many claims supports that assertion.

For example, $35 million of the $169 million figure (about 21%) is for automotive sales.  As DDR is not proposing to build car lots on the old Masonite site, its proposal cannot possibly stop that “leakage.”  Another $58.5 million (nearly 35%) of the total is in the categories of grocery and convenience stores … again, not what DDR claims it will be building.  $41 million of the $169 million figure is “General Merchandise Group” leakage, but DDR ignores the next column in its study that shows a $34 million surplus of spending here in the same category.  By subtotaling plusses or minuses carefully, one can create impressive, but meaningless, totals.

Letters (2) to the Editor: Don’t Be Fooled

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From SHANNON RILEY
Ukiah

Mark Oswell recently professed his support for measure A in a very clear, straightforward letter. Unfortunately, nothing about Measure A is clear.

Mr. Oswell says the Mendocino Crossings project ”will provide much-needed road and traffic signal improvements on North State Street.” Yes — much work will need to be done if that project gets built. But read the fine print in DDR’s own document – the developers are not required to perform or pay for that work themselves. The taxpayers of Mendocino County will foot the bill.

Mr. Oswell says the project will provide “high-paying construction jobs.” Yes, it will. Temporary jobs, some of which may come from out of the area — which will then be replaced with mostly lowwage, dead end jobs and a retail development that will suck the life out of the surrounding communities. Instead, let’s think about utilizing this industrial-zoned land in a way that adds value to our county.

Increased tax revenues? Any additional revenue the County receives as a result of this project will come at the expense of the other jurisdictions in Mendocino County; plus, a giant chunk of it will continue to go toward addressing all the stresses (traffic, roads, public safety, water, etc.) this development would place on our county.

And that’s the problem with Measure A and all of DDR’s glossy propaganda — it looks like a great deal on the surface. Don’t be fooled.

Letter to the Editor: Think you’re getting a mall?

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From HAL VOEGE
Redwood Valley

Think again!

And while you are thinking, ask yourself these questions:

Does an international corporate giant, based in Ohio, really have Mendocino County’s best interests at heart?

By now, most of us know about the financial difficulties of the nation’s largest mall builder, DDR – the large, short-term loans coming due, the big dip in their stock ratings, and the Federal bailout that kept them from bankruptcy. They need money now. But money to build malls is declining. As Paul Maidman noted in Forbes 9/24/09, “There are already too many stores and malls, and consumers don’t have the wherewithal to shop in the ones we do have. Around a third of every new square foot of retail space is vacant in the wake of a wave of retail bankruptcies and store shuttering.” Why would they take on more debt to build the pretty pictures they presented to us?

Doesn’t Measure A say they will create a mall?

Absolutely not! All Measure A says is that it is ‘designed’ to build a mall, not that they will do it. DDR is not constrained to do anything. It does force a change in the zoning of Masonite to commercial whether they do anything or not, and relieves DDR of any oversight by the people of Mendocino County or the State. They don’t have to build a mall, don’t have to make the property multiuse,

We Won’t Be Fooled Again

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From DAVE SMITH
Ukiah

Letter to the Editor:

The latest mass mailing from the DDR Monster Mall Developers located in Ohio brings us greetings and thanks from the folks down in Sonoma County for the millions of dollars we trundle down in our SUV’s to spend there.

If Sonoma County is so fond of all the money we take there, why have they just rejected another Big Box store? According to the Press Democrat 9/3/09, “the Santa Rosa City Council voted late Tuesday to stop Lowe’s from building a big-box home improvement store on Santa Rosa Avenue, heeding the concerns of local business leaders who warned the chain store would hurt the community… Council members also worried that Lowe’s success would come at the expense of local businesses and their employees…”

Oh, now I get it. DDR wants to make us feel like fools for turning down their Monster Mall initiative, so they just make stuff up and pretend they’re somebody else.

I say it’s better to learn from others who have already made the mistakes and regret them, than believe those who will make  big bucks off us making those same mistakes ourselves. Santa Rosa is confirming what we have been saying.

Thank you for voting NO ON MEASURE A to preserve our unique, locally-owned businesses, neighborly small town values, and livable human-scale communities.
~~

Monster Malls Are The Cause Of, Not The Solution For, Youth Unemployment

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From DAVE SMITH
Ukiah

A student at Mendocino Junior College writes (Letter to the Editor UDJ 9/24/09 – see it below) in support of Monster Mall Measure A: “…we, as young people, have no options for employment in Mendocino County. I have been trying very hard and just can not find work, it is not out there. Please do not risk the youth of this County’s one opportunity for employment and experience before we enter the fast paced job market after graduation.”

A letter like this is heartbreaking. The youth of our county and our country are some of the hardest hit from this recession. It is a tragedy that is not going away soon. Both entry-level and fast-paced jobs after graduation have ground to a screeching halt.

But allowing a Monster Mall into Mendocino County will only make unemployment worse here, as it has across the country.

Fact: Independent studies show for every job the Monster Mall Big Boxes bring, 1.4 are lost. That means the 700 slave-wage jobs advertised by the Monster Mall will destroy almost 1,000 current, better-paying jobs. The reason is simple: the job losses are larger than the gains because Big Boxes accomplish the same volume of sales with fewer employees, and pay poverty-level wages. The money circulating locally from those lost jobs go somewhere else. Not only that, they have killed millions of non-retail jobs by pushing our manufacturing jobs overseas.

For the sake of our local future, and the youth growing up in our county, please Vote No On Measure A.
~

Letter to the Editor (UDJ)

I am a student at Mendocino Junior College. In addition to my academic responsibilities, I also participate in athletics for the college. If anyone goes to the college and walks around you will see that we, as young people, have no options for employment in Mendocino County. I have been trying very hard and just can not find work, it is not out there. This is why the young people of Mendocino County need Measure A to pass. Having a job and maintaining employment allows for us as young people to learn the real ways of the world. Without any type of job experience we are seriously hindered once we enter the open job market. Now is not the time to be selfish in our actions. I have asked many people why they oppose Measure A and the prevailing answer is that they want Ukiah to remain closed off to the rest of the world. Frankly, that position is one of selfishness.

How Do You Spell Bailout?

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From TOM ANDERSON
Ukiah

So, Developers Diversified Realty’s latest election glossy says Mendocino County has a bad case of the financial flu.

Look who’s talking.

Who but DDR, do you suppose, was very first in line for a TALF handout ($600 million) from the New York Federal Reserve Bank?

This weasel is pulling our collective leg, folks, if I may demean you with the term. Its ongoing, inevitable collapse is almost daily news if you’d care to Google it.

With 60 percent of its loans due by 2011, and 15 percent more in 2012, with an operating loss instead of profit, and no income except from assets it can sell at half price and whatever it can beg, Developers Diversified is about 23 months away from oblivion.

Although with $600 million from the feds in October, it can pay creditors now and throw the best election money can buy before it kicks off.

And the Masonite site will be a choice item at the corporate farewell sale, especially rezoned commercial/residential instead of drab old industrial. You get the point.

Can you believe these guys?

. . . Do you?
~~

Big Box Bloodsuckers: Inside The Slave-Wage Beast (video)

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From How Wal-Mart is Destroying America
By Bill Quinn

[Wal-Mart not only sucks the financial life-blood from our community by nightly transferring our money to Arkansas billionaires rather than having it circulate in our community, but they also feed on the life-blood of their employees and their families. Other Big Boxes are forced to compete with Wal-Mart by adopting their draconian businesses practices, or be forced out of business. The Masonite Monster Mall will foist Big Box World on our small community changing it forever, raise the poverty level in our county, while their 700 slave-wage jobs will add immeasurable misery to our workforce. VOTE NO ON MEASURE A!-DS]

[See also I used to be proud to be a Wal-Mart employee video below...]

An interview with a former Wal-Mart manager of over 15 years…

Q: Joe, your wife tells me your hours as a manager were so long you barely knew your children?
Joe: Long hours were demanded—rarely less than seventy a week, most weeks eighty or more. Days off were rare. And I have gone as long as three years without a vacation. My wife literally raised our children by herself.
Q: Hourly workers, I’ve been told, are held to a minimum?
Joe: You won’t believed how they are treated. Managers try to keep employees’ hours under twenty-eight a week so they won’t be eligible for benefits. If business slows on any day, managers are instructed to send workers home anytime after they have four hours on the clock. Even department heads who are supposed to be regulars can be sent home, often working less than the eight hours they are entitled to…
Q: When you moved, did Wal-Mart pay your expenses?
Joe: No. Actually, the “system” was to ask store personnel to do you a favor by working off the clock to come out to your place and help you pack. You were moved to your next assignment, always, in a Wal-Mart truck.

Professional Analysis: Nine Reasons Why The Monster Mall Will Not Happen

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From TOM ANDERSON
Ukiah

[Please VOTE NO ON MEASURE A because a yes vote puts the property up for grabs, under the initiative's unlimited use, to any buyer. That, in my opinion, is what DDR is hoping for and what its initiative is all about. The property is worth a lot more money as a slice of the old Wild West than as constrained by the general plan's industrial use restrictions. -TA]

Analysis: Nine Reasons Why Mendocino Crossings Could Not Happen Even If Local Residents Approved It.

1.  FUNDING IS MORE COSTLY NOW THAN IN THE RECENT PAST

Relative to return on an investment, funding for commercial development is far more costly now than two years ago. Funding exceeds residential income, and is just starting to exceed commercial income.

Example: In mid-April 2009, Frank Lembi, the largest owner of apartment buildings in San Francisco, with 300 apartments comprising 8,000 residential units, deeded back 50 apartments, totaling 1,500 units, to his institutional lender, UBS. The bank now owns the units and will take a major loss because interest payments are about twice current rental income.

While, residential rents have already declined, rents for commercial properties don’t start declining in a recession for a year or two after the downturn. That years-long commercial decline has just begun.

2. MALL OWNER’S BANKRUPTCY WEIGHS ON DECLINING VALUES

With commercial property values just starting their slide, debacles like the recent bankruptcy of General Growth Properties, the nation’s second largest shop­ping mall owner, will only reinforce the substantial decline of commercial real estate values. The bankruptcy especially relates to malls as an investment.

3. COMMERCIAL/INDUSTRIAL LAND VALUES HAVE FALLEN 60%

Commercial and industrial land values in California are now at about 60 percent of their value two years ago. Funding a major commercial devel­op­ment must be based on today’s depreciated values.

Letter to the Editor Response

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From DAVE SMITH
Ukiah

To the Editors:

A letter writer in Lower Lake continues to conflate our opposition to the Monster Mall with hating corporations and capitalism (Ukiah’s an armpit, UDJ 9/20/09). Again, not so.

I, and others, want good, green, well-paying manufacturing jobs by locally-owned, cooperatives, community-friendly corporations, and companies that keep our money circulating locally… not 700 slave-wage, poverty-level jobs by Big Box Bullies who suck the financial life-blood from our communities and send it to Arkansas, exploit their workers, keep their good high-paying white collar jobs at their headquarters, send manufacturing jobs to overseas sweatshops, and bring higher levels of poverty to our county. Before we know it there will be no stores left except one gigantic Wal-Mart per community.

Not only that, but they also cheat local vendors. According to a former Wal-Mart manager quoted in the book How Wal-Mart Is Destroying America, when local vendors bill for products and services rendered, they instruct the local Wal-Mart manager to always deduct 10% from the invoice, and dare the vendor to not accept it.

Thank you for voting NO ON MEASURE A to preserve our unique, locally-owned businesses, neighborly small town values, and livable human-scale communities.
~~

Big Box Bully: Walmart Is Out To Kill Every Other Store In Town

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From Time Magazine

[While most retailers are shutting down stores, Walmart has opened 52 Supercenters since Feb. 1. Thank you for voting NO ON MEASURE A to preserve our unique, locally-owned businesses, neighborly small town values, and livable human-scale communities. -DS]

Walmart loves to shock and awe. City-size stores, absurdly low prices ($8 jeans!) and everything from milk to Matchbox toys on its shelves. And with the recession forcing legions of stores into bankruptcy, the world’s largest retailer now apparently wants to take out the remaining survivors.

Thus, the company is in the beginning stages of a massive store and strategy remodeling effort, which it has dubbed Project Impact. One goal of Project Impact is cleaner, less cluttered stores that will improve the shopping experience. Another is friendlier customer service. A third: home in on categories where the competition can be killed. “They’ve got Kmart ready to take a standing eight-count next year,” says retail consultant Burt Flickinger III, managing director for Strategic Resources Group and a veteran Walmart watcher. “Same with Rite Aid. They’ve knocked out four of the top five toy retailers, and are now going after the last one standing, Toys “R” Us. Project Impact will be the catalyst to wipe out a second round of national and regional retailers.”

Though that’s bad news for many smaller businesses that can’t compete, Walmart investors have clamored for this push. Despite the company’s consistently strong financial performance, Wall Street hasn’t cheered Walmart’s growth rates… “Walmart is under excruciating pressure from employees and frustrated institutional investors to get the stock up,” says Flickinger.

Read it and weep→

Watch the bully metastasize before your very eyes→
~~

Ukiah Mendocino: Monster Mall Offers 700 Slave-Wage Jobs

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From DAVE SMITH
Ukiah

Letter to the Editors

Time was, retail jobs were called “entry level.” Jenny would have a summer job running the cash register at the mom-and-pop so owner Mrs. Simpson could work on the bookkeeping in back. Johnny would get a job after school stocking shelves at the department store. These were healthy, local, low-wage jobs where you joked with your neighbors and learned how the world works. And then you moved on to college and a profession or learned a trade skill in manufacturing. Or if you liked retail, you stayed around, learned some small-business skills… maybe saved some money and opened a store of your own.

Not any more. Retail has evolved into dead-end, exit-level, dumb jobs in Big Box chain stores where all the well-paid smart jobs — information processing, accounting, advertising, logistics — are at a distant headquarters, and the community’s money is swept up nightly and sent there too. Your slave-wage, mind-numbing, soul-killing job is to do what the computer has programmed and spit-out on screens and work sheets. Endless lines at the cash register, move ‘em in, head ‘em out. Endless numbers of trucks to unload, stock the shelves, clean up the mess, take a break.

The people at the top are raking in millions and living in castles. You on the bottom are living a boring nightmare, and thankful for barely making it because the manufacturing jobs are now on the other side of the world, and even the good paying, white collar jobs are heading out.

DDR is touting 700 slave-wage dumb jobs at their Monster Mall. Google “New Rules Project” and you’ll find documented research that for every retail job a Big Box brings, 1.4 current jobs are lost; that as more Big Boxes come to a community, the county-wide poverty level rises; that California taxpayers were spending $86 million a year in 2004 providing healthcare and other public assistance to the state’s 44,000 Wal-Mart employees… and there are many more of those employees now.

We have one good place left for future entrepreneurial green jobs as the consumer economy gasps its last breath, and changing the zoning of the Masonite site now will kill that opportunity.

Thank you for voting NO ON MEASURE A to preserve our unique, locally-owned businesses, neighborly small town values, and livable human-scale communities.
~
This post dedicated in memory of John Milder, who worked hard, with Phyllis Curtis and others, to stop the first Wal-Mart big box store in Ukiah, but failed by one vote of the Ukiah City Council. Thanks, John. You knew. We remember.
~~

Ukiah Mendocino: Slave Wage Mall Jobs Get DDR CEO His Castle

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From Cleveland Magazine (August 2008)
A Tour of DDR CEO Scott Wolstein’s Castle RAVENCREST

[There's an old Ry Cooder song "The Very Thing That Makes You Rich Makes Me Poor." As Chinese slave-wage  sweatshop labor turns out more cheap crap for our storage lockers and landfill, Mendocino County is being offered 700 slave-wage, soul-killing dumb jobs here at home to dispose of it all from our very own Monster Mall, while they keep the high-paying smart jobs in Ohio. Meanwhile, the recently-resigned Monster Mall CEO enjoys this 36,000-square-feet castle. Before the hoardes of Ohio homeless and unemployed start coming over the hill for food and shelter, he best get the servants out digging the moat. Let's take a tour, shall we? -DS]

When it’s time to get cleaned up, he hops in an 11-foot-long, custom-tiled porcelain shower. Afterward, he’ll relax and catch a show or two on the plasma TV that hangs just in front of the plush cushions he rests on.

Only we’re not referring to the man of the house. We’re talking about his dog.

What makes Wolstein’s house so special isn’t any one thing. It’s that it has everything: an infinity pool, indoor basketball court, indoor climbing wall, indoor pool with grotto-style hot tub, steam room, sauna and massage room.

Ukiah Mendocino: No on Measure A – Letter from Laytonville

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From ROBIN THOMPSON
Laytonville

[Hey DDR Slicksters! C'mon down from your castles and let's get on with the debates! -DS]

To the Editor:
Ukiah Daily Journal

I recently received the Mendocino County Tomorrow (MCT) Open Letter (vote ‘yes’ on measure A) from Danny Rosales concerning the DDR vs. Mendocino County debacle (depending on which side of the issue it’s viewed from).

Mr. Rosales starts with the standard bag of worries by appealing to everyone’s fears about everything as a way of gaining a foothold in his argument. After almost a decade of that tactic, I grow weary of listening to that as the basis for discussion. Sure we are in hard economic times, but are Americans so afraid of challenges that we are willing place all our eggs in yet another big business basket? I hope that is not an accurate depiction of our society now.

Mr. Rosales states that the MCT vision statement “…is to promote responsible community growth…” How responsible is it to promote importing more millions of metric cubic tons of, essentially, garbage consumables from China and elsewhere? Aren’t our dumps full enough? Aren’t our storage units jammed full? Mr. Rosales goes on to parrot words like “sustainable.” Yeah, sustaining DDR and Big Box stores.

If DDR considers dealing with our county “…more difficult than climbing Mount Everest…”, then I don’t think much of DDR’s hand wringing and incapable staff. Could they even manage the whole thing well from here forward? DDR is the one with the big bucks to bash their way through any obstacle so why the whining?

Ukiah Mendocino: Hey Monster Mall Folks – Lighten Up! (Video and Free Concert Announcement)

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From JANIE SHEPPARD
Ukiah

Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing. ~Willam James

DDR generously, but erroneously, attributes to my organizing skills the sing-a-long at their recent “town hall” in Redwood Valley. Kudos should be directed to The Bronnettes for their clever lyrics and singing! The subject of the meeting was Measure A, the initiative to put a monster mall on the old Masonite site. Watch the YouTube video of the sing-a-long portion of the meeting below.

In the video, DDR accuses The Bronnettes of disrupting the meeting.   But if you look at the video, it’s plain to see that the meeting hadn’t begun; the room is nearly empty.  The sing-a-long was simply a bit of pre-meeting entertainment.   Hardly what I’d call “disruption.”

Why do so many oppose Measure A? If passed, Measure A would:  (1) Allow an Ohio corporation to bypass local planning regulations that the rest of us have to follow; (2) Avoid review under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA); (3) Replace jobs at existing local businesses with minimum wage jobs at the monster mall; (4) Create traffic nightmares; (5) Create polluting runoff from a huge parking lot; (6) Use lots of scarce water; and (7) Divert shopping dollars from downtowns across the county to big corporations that have no stake in Mendocino County.

Ukiah: Save Our Local Economy (SOLE) Challenges Measure A Proponents to a Series of Debates

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From Save Our Local Economy (SOLE)
Ukiah

September 3, 2009 Ukiah Valley, Mendocino County, North California

“Save Our Local Economy- No On A Campaign” challenges the “Yes On A Campaign,” Mendocino County Tomorrow and Jeff Adams of DDR to a series of face-to-face debates throughout Mendocino County over the course of the next month.

When asked to debate the issues nearly a year ago, DDR’s Jeff Adams told Citizen U coordinator Mary Anne Landis that DDR would debate when they DDR had their specific plan prepared.  That plan has been prepared and is now on the November ballot. “I certainly hope that Mr. Adams and Measure A proponents keep their promise. They have said they want to do what’s right for our community and that they believe in the American Democratic process, so let’s hear what they have to say, side by side a community member who disagrees with them.  Now is the time for DDR to show us their concern for our community by participating in public debates.” said Landis.

When asked about the challenge, SOLE spokesperson, Guinness McFadden, said, “The Citizens of Mendocino County have a right to a fair and open debate about the merits of Measure A, not staged and scripted town hall meetings.  Every major election in American history has included debates between the opponents.  Such face to face debates are American institutions generating great citizen interest and revealing the facts and issues to voters before an election.  SOLE is looking forward to an open and public discussion of the issues around the Measure A proposal.”

McFadden added, “There are a number of local organizations who would be happy to host such an event, in fact SOLE would gladly participate at the two events DDR has scheduled during September in Willits and Fort Bragg.”
~
From DAVE SMITH
Ukiah

Do I expect DDR to actually debate the Monster Mall in the best traditions of our democracy? I doubt it. They already refused  to engage in the first debate many months ago, and an empty chair represented them on stage while one of their lawyers in the audience scribbled furiously away on his yellow pad as our guy thoroughly trashed their points, one by one, with documented facts. The local elections that followed doomed their project, so they had to import outsiders to collect signatures under false pretenses to circumvent our local democracy, escape our environmental protections, and steal our water, with Measure A.

They are also trying to avoid our local democratic zoning procedures, so why would they become democratically responsive to our local citizens now? With all the money they are pouring into their carefully contrived, million dollar propaganda campaign, they have much to lose —

One Mendocino County Resident’s View of DDR’s Home

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From SUSAN BRADLEY
Mendocino County

September 2, 2009 Ukiah Valley, Mendocino, North California

I just returned from DDR Country and want to tell you about it. DDR?  That’s Diversified Developers Realty, the multi-multi-bucks corporation that purchased the Masonite Site (just outside the city limits of Ukiah). DDR is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to circumvent our county government’s planning process to change the zoning at the Masonite Site so that they can build a Big Box Store shopping center and thus eliminate the possibility of retaining the industrial nature of the Masonite site. Industry, not retail sales, means better-paying jobs. (Locally-owned industry means that $45 out of every $100 earned goes back to the county!)

The interesting  part of my report is that there are no Big Box stores in the DDR neighborhood. No Target, Walmart, Bed Bath and Beyond, Home Depot, Cosco etc near DDR’s enormous glistening-white buildings, or near the fancy, many-million-dollar homes close by. There are some pretty elegant, well-landscaped, themed, expensive shopping centers that run alongside  a couple of busy corridors in the DDR neighborhood. I also noticed that the elegant shopping centers are full of parked cars. And the homes in the neighborhood do not have many “For Sale” signs and certainly no “Foreclosure” signs on them. These suburban Cleveland folks in the Beachwood/Pepper Pike area do not seem to be experiencing an economic downturn like much of the rest of the country.  Nor do they want the kind of shopping center that DDR is proposing for us, not in THEIR neighborhood. Big Box stores would ruin the rural feeling of the landscape, drastically change the skyline, and  bring down their real estate values.

The other observation I made is that the DDR folks DO know what an inviting, walkable, small town looks like. Scott Wolstein, the CEO of Diversified Developers, may not have seen the inviting tree-lined streets in beautiful downtown Ukiah, but his own 36,000 square foot (!!!) palatial mega-mansion home is located near the quaint little town of Chagrin Falls. Known for its picturesque falls, the area surrounding Chagrin Falls is also famous for its horse stables, polo fields, fox hunts, and large estates. It’s a kind of faux-rural area

Instead of a Monster Mall

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From DAVE SMITH
Ukiah

August 31, 2009 Ukiah Valley, Mendocino, North California

To The Editors:

I’m continually baffled by a few of the locals who are promoting the Masonite Monster Mall. When I hear them speak, in one breath they talk about how much they love living in our rural small town, and in their next breath they talk about how great it will be to have a Monster Mall here so they don’t “have to drive to Santa Rosa to shop.”

Yet, they never bridge the gap between what we have, and what we would become. They never say “I’m looking forward to the sprawl and traffic and pollution and sirens and hubbub just like they have in Santa Rosa.” Or, “I want our town to look just like all the other towns and cities south of us. Wouldn’t that be just too cool?”

Instead, I want something else entirely. And Wendell Berry says it better than I can:

“In this difficult time of failed public expectations, when thoughtful people wonder where to look for hope, I keep returning in my own mind to the thought of the renewal of the rural communities. I know that one resurrected rural community would be more convincing and more encouraging than all the government and university programs of the last fifty years, and I think that it could be the beginning of the renewal of our country, for the renewal of rural communities ultimately implies the renewal of urban ones.

“But to be authentic, a true encouragement and a true beginning, this would have to be a resurrection accomplished mainly by the community itself. It would have to be done, not from the outside by the instruction of visiting experts, but from the inside by the ancient rule of neighborliness, by the love of precious things, and by the wish to be at home.“

Is it either/or? Yes, I think it is.

Thank you for voting NO ON MEASURE A to preserve our unique, locally-owned businesses, neighborly small town values, and livable human-scale communities.
~~

“But, Mom? Where would the monster get its water?” “It would TAKE it from US, dear.”

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From MICHAEL LAYBOURN
Hopland
(with emphasis added)

August 26, 2009 Ukiah Valley, Mendocino, North California

EXCERPTS FROM THE LAFCO REPORT CONCERNING WATER USE IN THE UKIAH VALLEY

[This report clearly shows us that the DDR Measure A plan is asking you to vote against your neighbors and possibly yourself if you need water. The DDR plan is also inaccurate and clearly states that the plan is to bypass any laws or careful thinking about how much water is needed or will be used. This is not about politics, it is about resources and there is not enough water. For the complete report go to http://www.mendolafco.org/files/2009-08-Service-Impact-Report.pdf -ML]

The proposed project will not be subject to the level of review required under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) because it is being proposed by initiative.  Therefore, a groundwater analysis is not required to occur and thus any potential impacts to the groundwater will not be fully investigated and reviewed by the County prior to approval of the project.

Water and Millview County Water District (MCWD)

The Ukiah Valley is presently overbuilt to its available water resources. Any new growth will severely impact our existing circumstances. Even in non-drought years we have a water availability problem and are barely able to provide water services to existing development. Drought years therefore cause the requirement of extreme measures such as reduction by 50 percent or more of water consumption. Consider the following: Every time we increase development, we decrease our ability to survive a drought.

Take Action! Sing-Along To DDR Monster Mall Promoters Tonight Wednesday 8/26/09 Redwood Valley (Updated)

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From JANIE SHEPPARD
Mendocino County

August 25, 2009 Ukiah Valley, Mendocino, North California

The Bronnettes singing group strikes AGAIN and all others that would like to participate, are welcome to copy the words below, which (loosely) goes to the Ernie Ford song Sixteen Tons.

DDR is planning a Community Town Hall meeting tonight, 6:15 ish or 6:30 is when we plan to sing.

The place….Redwood Valley Grange, 8650 East Road, near the Fire Station I’m told. Please feel free to make as many copies as you want… pass them around… an unofficial “No on A anthem”? Come sing with us, bring friends, we’ll have a few copies there to pass around too I believe. By the way, I find that snapping my fingers keeps a steady beat through out this piece plus I believe there will be guitar to keep us all “mostly together”.

Vote No on A Anthem
[Original lyrics here.]

some… people say a town is made out of shops,
but a good town has a lotta mom and pops,
mom and pops – not yer great big box -
the money stays here on our own sidewalks

CHORUS
with a DDR mall, what do you get -
another credit card and deeper in debt.
if there’s enuff water for a great big mall
you can be sure that they’ll take it all.

DDR’s too broke to develop what it owns,
that’s why they want us to pass a re-zone,
they can turn around and sell it to a bigger guy,
and no one knows if the project will fly.

now… other comp’nys work with the peoples plan,
but these carpetbaggers do whatever they can,
we’ll be stuck with it even if it ain’t right,
as we stop on State at the seventh stop light

Report From Eureka: Bayshore Monster Mall

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From JANIE SHEPPARD
Mendocino County

August 24, 2009 Ukiah Valley, Mendocino County, North California

Driving to Oregon and wanting to break up our trip, Bill and I stopped at Eureka’s Bayshore Mall.  I wanted to see how the economic downturn was affecting the mall.  Maybe there were some lessons for Mendocino County voters as Election Day approaches for Measure A.

We were surprised to see the parking lot practically full.  Maybe things weren’t so bad after all.

The mystery deepened once we entered the mall because it was practically empty on a Thursday afternoon.

What about all those cars in the parking lot?  We did not solve the mystery, but we did take a few pictures before a very imposing guard informed me that taking pictures was prohibited.  Why? I asked.  Because, he said, there were concerns about trademark infringement, what with all those logos (of extinct businesses?) and store names right out there for anyone to copy.

What It Means To Buy Local – Letter To The Editors

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From DAVE SMITH
Ukiah

August 24, 2009 Ukiah Valley, Mendocino County, North California

To The Editors:

Over the past 50 years, the expansion of national businesses into local domestic markets with Big Box Stores, Chain Stores, Franchises and Monster Malls has diverted and redirected local circulating money to centralized corporate coffers. There it is spent on large capital outlays, national advertising, overseas goods, executive salaries, loan repayments, and dividends to Wall Street investors.

This interception of funds has depleted local towns and cities across our nation of an important source of funds: recirculated income.

To draw attention to this problem and save their small, locally-owned businesses, towns and cities have instituted Buy Local campaigns. They have been somewhat successful, so the giant international corporations are using big buck propaganda campaigns to claim they are “local” businesses.

One of the world’s largest international banks is now claiming to be “The World’s Local Bank” and Lay’s Potato Chips is seizing on citizen’s desire for locally-grown food with a “Lay’s Local” advertising campaign.

And, sure enough, the Masonite Monster Mall folks are also claiming that passing Measure A will be supporting Buy Local. Ha! Because they say it does not make it so! The Monster Mall can mail a million pamphlets, and make a million local phone calls, but the Masonite Monster Mall with Measure A is the antithesis of buying local and will sweep up even more of our money and send it elsewhere.

Buying groceries at Ukiah Natural Foods Cooperative, locally-owned by its members, is buying local.

Letter to the Editors: Monster Mall Measure A Creates Environmental Nightmares

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From DAVE SMITH
Ukiah

To the Editors:

August 17, 2009 Ukiah Valley, Mendocino County, North California

It is obvious why DDR’s Measure A eliminates the requirement for the California Environmental Review Act (CEQA) that is usually an automatic requirement for a project this size.  Big Box retail parking lots rank among the most harmful land uses in any watershed. During rain storms, parking lots deliver a hefty dose of toxic pollutants leaked by vehicles or deposited from the atmosphere — including phosphorous, hydrocarbons, heavy metals, herbicides and pesticides — into our nearby water bodies.

While a 200,000 square-foot mall covers 4 acres and consumes another 12 for parking, the same amount of retail spread over two floors in a Main Street-style setting with shared parking takes up only 4 acres. The Masonite Monster Mall is four times  that size (800,000 square feet). In some cases, permits for big-box projects have been denied on the grounds that they would add additional pollution to a nearby river. DDR has eliminated that possibility and denied the democratic control of our own environment with Measure A.

Instead of creating more disastrous car-dependent sprawl, the solution is to revitalize what is already here — our own walkable, bikeable downtown business district. Compact downtowns that have multi-story buildings, multi-story parking, and support a mix of uses, take up far less land and create far less polluting runoff.

Measure A is an attempt by slickster outside corporations to colonize our valley and override our zoning requirements with big bucks and pretty pictures… while insisting that, somehow, their Monster Mall, full of boring Big Boxes, Corporate Chains, and Industrial Food Restaurants, just like everywhere else, will be “shopping local”. Ha! What a bad joke!

Monster Mall: More letters to the Editor

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From ELIZA WINGATE
Upper Lake

Ukiah Daily Journal

August 12, 2009 Ukiah Valley, Mendocino, North California

DDR and development

To the Editor:

It seems to me that the main issue with DDR is whether a community wants a developer who has no ties to that community to come in and override local planning. If this is allowed, any developer with a great line and money could change the face of your community.

It is not about Costco. There are other sites for Costco. It is not even about development per se. I have not met anyone who expects Ukiah and Mendocino to remain a lost “hippie paradise.” But this is your community. You live here. You pay taxes. The elected officials are elected by you and live amongst you and are accountable to you.

DDR will never be accountable to you, only to their shareholders. That is their job, to make money for their shareholders. And especially if this proposition passes, they do not have to be in any way accountable to you.

This is not a game of monopoly. This will not be a hypothetical free pass. This will be a totally free pass to either develop your community the way they want to or to sell the land to some other developer.
Thanks to Steve Scalmanini
~~

Monster Mall Developer DDR becoming a mere shadow…

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From TOM ANDERSON
Ukiah

Letter to the Editor
Ukiah Daily Journal

August 11, 2009 Ukiah Valley, Mendocino, North California

When Developers Diversified Realty announced payment of $30.5 million in second quarter dividends (at $0.20 per share) on July 17, its stock dropped 9.41 percent on the New York Stock Exchange, closing at $4.33 per share. Its historic high was $72.33 in February 2007.

It was hardly reassuring that DDR paid dividends with $3.1 million in cash and $27.4 million in common stock. Stated otherwise, each 20-cent dividend was for two cents in cash and 18 cents of corporate wall paper.

But what else could it do?

DDR was one of the first commercial mortgage-backed securities peddlers to line up for Federal Reserve bail-out money earlier this month. A column in “The Economist” magazine in July noted, however, that while the Federal Reserve’s program had “extended to commercial mortgage backed securities, … many are or will become ineligible under its present rules because of ratings downgrades.”

Since all three rating services have downgraded DDR to junk bond status, the corporation’s hand-out hopes, not to say its swaggering in our neighborhood, seem like just so much whistling in the dark.

Does anyone, including DDR’s directors, believe this derelict will be capable of developing more than a local disaster in this county?
~~

Letter to the Editors – Prop 13 Encourages Malls

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From JANIE SHEPPARD
Mendocino County

August 5, 2009 Ukiah Valley, Mendocino, North California

To the Editor:

Mr. Jon Fenwick’s lengthy letter (7/30/2009) in which he attacks Dave Smith, Tom Anderson, Judy Pruden and me for hypocrisy and “preachy letters” prodded me to do some research. I first Googled “’Jon Fenwick’ Ukiah California”, turning up only Mr. Fenwick’s letter. Then I called information to ask for his telephone number, and found that there was no listing for a ‘Jon Fenwick’ in Ukiah. I find it strange that Mr. Fenwick’s foray into letter writing to the local paper began with a very long preachy letter. If I talked to him, I figured, maybe there could be some common ground. Mr. Fenwick, please take note.

With respect to the proposed projects at the Redwood Business Park by the airport, Mr. Fenwick may not be aware that although the City of Ukiah did not prepare an Environmental Impact Report (EIR) under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) when it purchased the land for the projects, those projects are not exempt from CEQA. The act of purchasing, because it does not involve any change in land use, does not warrant an EIR. Because the City is subject to CEQA, there will be additional environmental analysis before approval (or denial) of any permits that would allow development to take place. Should Measure A pass, however, Developers Diversified Realty (DDR), would-be developers of the Masonite site, would be exempt from CEQA. That’s a major distinction that Mr. Fenwick should consider.

On at least one point Mr. Fenwick and I are in agreement. Indeed, California is a mess. And the root cause of the mess is Proposition 13. In 1978, voters thought they were capping real property taxes to allow the elderly to remain in their homes. Property taxes would increase only at the time of sale, or so the voters thought. Corporations, however, soon found ways to transfer property without a resultant increase in property taxes.

Five Myths About Big-Box Retail

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From The Institute for Local Self-Reliance

August 4, 2009 Ukiah Valley, Mendocino, North California

MYTH: Big-Box Stores Create Jobs

FACT: Studies by independent economists  show that big-box stores eliminate more retail jobs than they create. A recent study examined 3,094 counties across the U.S., tracking the arrival of new Wal-Mart stores between 1977 and 2002. The study, conducted by Univ. of California economist David Neumark, found that opening a Wal-Mart store led to a net loss of 150 retail jobs on average, suggesting that a new Wal- Mart job replaces approximately 1.4 workers at other stores (The Effects of Wal-Mart on Local Labor Markets, January 2007).

The reason for the overall decline is that a new Wal-Mart store does not increase the amount of money that residents have to spend.  Sales gains at these stores are invariably mirrored by a drop in revenue at existing businesses, which then must down-size or close.  The job losses are larger than the gains because Wal-Mart accomplishes the same volume of sales with fewer employees. Although similar studies have not been done of other big-box retailers, it’s likely that they also have either a negative or no impact on employment because the underlying dynamics (i.e., no increases in consumer spending) are the same.

MYTH: Big-Box Stores Boost Tax Revenue

FACT: The tax benefits of big-box stores are negated by the cost of providing public services to these developments and declining tax revenue from existing commercial districts. Big-box development creates substantial public costs.  These  sprawling stores are not efficient users of public infrastructure. Compared to traditional, compact business districts, they require longer roads, more road maintenance, additional miles of utilities, and more fire and police time. One case study in Barnstable, Mass., found that the annual cost of providing city services to traditional downtown and neighborhood business districts

Accused of Hypocrisy – Letter to the Editors

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From DAVE SMITH
Ukiah
(original letter below)

July 30, 2009 Ukiah Valley, Mendocino, North California

In a democracy, one should always appreciate opinions that engage the debate, are well articulated and offered with passion, even when in opposition to one’s own. And I do. In the July 30th issue of the UDJ, I am taken to task for being hypocritical for opposing the Masonite Monster Mall while at the same time being “in favor of the City of Ukiah spending redevelopment money to purchase the remaining acres of land out near the airport” for retail development. This, he wrote, had him “rolling on the floor in laughter.” Thereafter he went on at great length, taking up two full columns, describing my positions and how wrong all my letters to the editor are.

However, he misinterpreted a letter that simply pointed out that the argument for the Monster Mall so we could have a Costco was a false argument and took that to mean that I supported having another Big Box store. Not true. He can get up off the floor now.

He failed to include letter(s) of mine that could have saved him all that effort. For example, in response to the UDJ supporting the purchase of that land, I wrote “This seems like nothing but dumb growth based on dumb oil… which is destroying nature and community.”

Ukiah Monster Mall – A Mega Financial Fiasco

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From TOM ANDERSON
Ukiah

Letter to the Editor
Ukiah Daily Journal

July 26, 2009 Ukiah Valley, Mendocino, North California

Developers Diversified Realty didn’t show much savvy when it failed to change the Masonite site’s zoning before it closed escrow. Seasoned commercial developers would have done that; DDR did not.

Now it is stuck for the purchase price and thrashing around to fix things.

Its timing was not the best either.

“The commercial real estate bomb is ticking,” said Rep. Carolyn Mahoney (D-N.Y.), who chairs Congress’ Joint Economic Committee, in opening remarks to her panel on July 5.

Testimony to the panel was that today’s roughly $6.7-trillion commercial real estate market is crippled with about $3.5 trillion of debt. Money to pay the debt is evaporating as mall vacancy rates rise to 10 percent, the highest since 1992.

DDR’s vacancy rate this May was about 9.5 percent. (That’s why it has applied for a federal bailout.)

With many commercial properties worth one-half their peak 2006 value, banks have turned off the tap for commercial real estate refinancing.

The crisis is far from over.

Commercial real estate is “decaying and getting worse,” said Victor Canalog, a director of research for Reis, Inc., the nation’s leading commercial real estate analysis firm. Canalog said he did not “foresee a recovery in the retail sector until late 2012 at the earliest.”

“Given the depth and magnitude of the recession,” he added, “you can argue that we are facing a storm of epic proportions and we’re only at the beginning.”

Those are the mega-problems now dogging DDR’s Mendocino mega-fiasco.

The mall simply cannot and will not happen as promised.

If Proposition A passes, expect a vacant lot at the Masonite site for many years to come.

And the last thing we need is an abandoned project in our county seat and largest city.
~~

New, Much Better Alternatives to Dinosaur Monster Malls – Bright Green Retail

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From Worldchanging.com

July 22, 2009 Ukiah Valley, Mendocino, North California

Right now, many of us in the developed world shop by driving to large chain stores — this is especially true in North America, but has become common elsewhere too.

The problem is, this way of shopping adds an enormous ecological burden to all the goods we buy: not only do we burn gas getting to the store and back, but the building and operation of that store and its parking lot have a huge impact; the supply chain that keeps huge stores stocked with masses of various kinds of goods adds more impacts; while the packaging and sales presentation of the goods we buy tops it all off with more energy and materials waste. From the lighting to the loading docks, the freezer cases to the shopping carts, conventional retail is unsustainable.

Retail today has other costs as well. Big chain stores are not generally known for their excellent labor practices, meaning that part of the savings we get by shopping in them comes from the mistreatment of the people who serve us while we’re there. The kinds of volumes that it takes to stock big box chain stores means that these stores will only buy things in huge orders, often from the lowest-cost big provider, which often means supporting sweat shop work conditions, factory farmed food or toxic knock-off products. Furthermore, because the backstories of the objects they sell is often so atrocious, big chain stores are often at the forefront of fighting transparency and labeling laws…

Not all chains are as bad as this, of course, [b]ut there are real limits to how much the model of big box, auto-dependent chain stores can be improved…

[Instead... Webfronts; Flexible Spaces; Micro-commerce; Backstories and Display Transparency; Delivery; Drop Shops and Reverse Supply Chains]… Keep reading at Worldchanging→

Wait just a minute! (Answer to UDJ Letter to the Editor)

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From DAVE SMITH
Ukiah

July 21, 2009 Ukiah Valley, Mendocino County, North California

Editor:

Wait just a minute!

I don’t mind being called “ignorant” or being accused of trying to scare people “just like Bush and Cheney” or that I “want to be Amish” (Letter to Editor: What’s wrong with Capitalism? UDJ 7/20/09 – see below). But when someone who lives in Lower Lake comes over here and calls Downtown Ukiah “an armpit” — that’s just going too far!

It’s especially offensive during these hot, hundred plus temperatures when everyone is doing their best to stay cool. After all, we in Mendoland don’t have the ability, like Lake County folks, to take those crisp, clean dips in Clear Lake algae water to stay freshened up and re-fragranced!

But it was only when I read on and found “please people (sic), quit whining about marijuana” that I realized the writer had mistaken the aroma of our number one crop, now maturing on the landscape and in boarded-up houses, for our personal lack of good hygiene.

Can’t we import some Monsanto scientists to genetically modify our main crop with some aromatherapy oils? It could save our personal reputations, not to mention our tourist industry… tourists must think we’re just a bunch of yokels and hippies up here who don’t bathe!

Who knew?
~

What’s wrong with capitalism?

MONDAY, JULY 20, 2009
Ukiah Daily Journal
To the Editor:

Dave Smith and all the people who think big box stores are so bad because they send local money overseas are ignorant. Let me explain the cycle of selling widgets.

How Masonite Monster Mall’s Developer DDR Treats Small Town Folks Like Us

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From Daily News of Newburyport

July 17, 2009 Ukiah Valley, Mendocino County, North California

Town sued on denial of Monster Mall Plans

SEABROOK — An Ohio-based shopping center giant is suing the town over the Planning Board’s denial of its proposal to build a 500,000-square-foot retail outlet in town.

The shopping center, which planned to have a Target store as its anchor, would have been the largest in Greater Newburyport, and more than twice as large as Newburyport’s Port Plaza. It would have been located just to the northeast of the busy intersection of Routes 1 and 107.

The town was served notice of the lawsuit yesterday. The more than 60-page brief and its attachments were filed with Rockingham County Superior Court on June 17, according to the stamp on the document, within the 30-day appeal window of the Planning Board’s May 19 denial.

In the brief, Developers Diversified Realty attorney Malcolm McNeill Jr. wrote: “The Planning Board in denying (DDR’s) request for site review approval for its retail shopping center was unlawful and unreasonable and the product of bad faith by the Planning Board, and was arbitrary, capricious and confiscatory.”

There’s only one: Authentically unique Ukiah

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by LOUISA ARONOW
Redwood Valley
Ukiah Daily Journal 7/12/09

July 14, 2009 Ukiah Valley, Mendocino County, North California

In the summer of 2002 my family and I took a car trip from Massachusetts to California. I was curious to see how the many towns and cities we visited along the way might reflect the incredible beauty of the vast and varied landscapes we passed through, so I decided to search for those elements that make a place authentically unique. I wondered what features might distinguish one town from others. Were there interesting restaurants, architecture, stores, parks, historical places, vegetation, or anything special I wouldn’t see in other regions of the USA? How does a town represent its inhabitants and the land from which it grew?

My entertaining investigation became sadder and sadder and we visited more small cities and found nothing authentically unique. Most cities consisted of the same franchise businesses by the highways or interstates, and a depleted downtown. Sometimes the downtown included city and county offices, but all included many empty buildings.

One small city we stopped in was a rural county seat; I wondered if it would be similar to Ukiah. The downtown had many elegant old three-story buildings, with copper trim and sculptures, but it seemed to be a ghost town. In the late afternoon, no humans were in sight and our footsteps echoed in the canyon-like streets. I felt that the heart and guts had been ripped out of the city. There was activity in the chain stores and restaurants by the interstate exit, but the shopping center included nothing authentically unique.

The few exceptions were the places that had preserved a bit of history to attract tourists. It was interesting to learn a few tidbits of history across the US (especially the sod house in Kansas), but it didn’t seem that the attractions were interesting for local people.

Monster Mall Ukiah: Another Snake Oil Letter to the Editor

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From DAVE SMITH
Ukiah

July 13, 2009 Ukiah Valley, Mendocino County, North California

Editor – Ukiah Daily Journal:

In her letter to the editor titled Still Shopping in Santa Rosa (UDJ Sunday, July 12) a writer asks “Why is Ukiah so afraid of allowing this town to grow?” and then proceeds to cheer the Masonite Monster Mall Big Box Stores. She states “If we don’t let a few of them in, then we will have to go to Santa Rosa to shop and spend our hard earned money, it won’t be spent in Ukiah.” This argument continues to be put forward in the paper even though it continues to be countered with facts. This is the old Big Lie tactic of repeating falsities over and over, hoping to win over those who are not paying close attention.

OK, I’ll counter it again. The City of Ukiah is not afraid of growing. It has set aside properly zoned land in the City for more retail stores. They recently purchased even more land for retail. That is where retail for Ukiah and the surrounding area belongs, with its appropriate requirements of environmental, design, and traffic impact reviews and requirements. The Masonite site should not be rezoned for retail because it is properly zoned for green industrial, better-paying jobs, which the Obama administration is intent on helping us create.

Just the facts, ma’am.
Image Credit: Evan Johnson
~
See also Big Box Mart cartoon→
~~

Ron Lippert: The Monster Mall’s Worst Nightmare

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From JANIE SHEPPARD
Mendocino County

July 7, 2009 Ukiah, Mendocino County, North California

In its campaign to make the idea of a mega mall on the old Masonite site attractive to county voters, DDR (Developers Diversified Realty) didn’t count on Ron Lippert. Turning up at a focus group, Wednesday, July 1, in Ukiah at the Hampton Inn, Lippert and 11 other gentlemen were paid $50 each to let Nichols Research, Inc., a Fresno-based research outfit, pick their brains and shape their opinions.

In a phone conversation with Lippert, he told me how it unfolded. For starters, 9 participants initially favored DDR’s plan for the mega mall, 2 were neutral, and 1 (Lippert) was opposed.

The process began with the participants registering their awareness of local institutions and personalities by using a hand held device akin to a game boy toy. The results are revealing. A third did not recognize the names of the members of the Board of Supervisors.

Monster Mall Letter to the Editors

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From DAVE SMITH
Ukiah

July 6, 2009 Ukiah, Mendocino County, North California

Editor:

In his diatribe against our Ukiah City Councilors who dared vote 5-0 opposing the Masonite Monster Mall, the letter writer (UDJ July 6) asks “why there is this vehement opposition” and “how arrogant is it for an elected body to pass a resolution opposing something that was (sic) passed by popular vote?”

Well, sir, it is the arrogance of democracy and the law. Elected officials are voted by the populace to represent and lead their community. And the reason there is vehement opposition is because the initiative process, bought and paid for by a huge outside corporation, bypasses the legal zoning rights and environmental reviews required by local zoning ordinances democratically set up by our community of citizens to protect ourselves.

You go on to suggest that they should come up with a “plan to patrol” the project, rather than oppose it. Having just chastised our officials for wanting to enforce local laws, one wonders what silly, powerless patrols you would suggest?
~~

As The Monster Malls Die: Retrofitting Our Towns

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From The Christian Science Monitor

As it once sucked the life out of Main Street, the suburban mall is being reconsidered – or torn down – as towns move back to the concept of a multiuse town center.

June 30, 2009 Ukiah, Mendocino County, North California

Lakewood, Colo.

Few here have forgotten the Villa Italia, the hulking, whitewashed mall that once spilled across the skyline of central Lakewood. Unveiled in 1966, the Villa was the largest indoor shopping center west of the Mississippi River and east of California. The gaudy main hall – ornamented to evoke the charms of old-world Europe – played host to hundreds of after-prom parties, first dates, and all-day festivals. In its heyday, in the 1970s and ’80s, the Villa anchored this large, affluent Denver suburb, which never had a Main Street to call its own.

Then in the ’90s, like hundreds of malls nationwide, the Villa began to lose its luster. First went the jewelry stores and the luxury-goods boutiques. By 2001, destination department stores such as Montgomery Ward and JCPenney had vanished, too, and with them, most of the foot traffic. The kids who hung out in the food court decamped for more vibrant locales; the corridors grew hushed. The once-great mall became a cemetery of dollar stores and a glorified walking track for senior citizens. In 2003, it was mercifully reduced to a pile of rubble.

For at least a decade, Americans have been regularly reminded that the indoor mall was hurtling toward obscurity. The causes were manifold: the rise of Internet shopping, the sharp spikes of an ailing economy, the success of Wal-Mart and its big-box kin, the fading relevance of mall culture.

Welcome to 2009, the year that the mall, the staple of so many childhood memories and a longstanding pillar of suburban commerce, could finally and truly go bust. From west to east, shopping centers stand darkened, the hulks of Circuit Citys boarded up, the parking lots of Linens ‘n Things deserted. Malls are posting the highest vacancy rates in a decade, and retail rental rates are plummeting, according to Reis, a New York firm that studies trends in commercial real estate. And the slope is precipitous:

Masonite Monster Mall: Zoning? Zoning? We don’t need no stinkin’ zoning!

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From Ukiah Daily Journal

DDR initiative approved for ballot

June 25, 2009 Ukiah, Mendocino County, North California

[...]McCowen said the public should take time to educate themselves on the impacts of the project in lieu of a California Environmental Quality Act study as would normally be required.

“All of the other things that would normally be identified during the planning process for any project of this magnitude, they certainly should be discussed and debated by the public,” he said. “If the initiative does pass there will be no opportunity to institute any mitigations to deal with these problems, so that’s what you get with this process.”

Go to full article here→
Thanks to Steve Scalmanini
~
From analysis of Ballot Initiative

*    What development standards would apply to the project?

Only what DDR has written into the Specific Plan, which substitutes for all County Zoning regulations [Initiative, Section 3].  In other words, DDR has written its own rules. Not surprisingly, these conflict with the existing limits and aesthetic standards that are common in Mendocino County. For example, DDR gives itself the right to erect a 100-foot tall lighted sign next to the freeway, four times taller and eight times larger in area than allowed by County zoning [B-124].   Signs on the stores themselves can be up to 500 square feet, three times larger than allowed by County zoning. [B-120].   There is no provision whatsoever for design review by the County of the buildings or other features.
~~

DDR plans to outsource its monster mall debt to taxpayers

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Developers Diversified plans to pursue Fed funds→

By STAN BULLARD
Crain’s Cleveland Business
June 17, 2009

In an effort to retire debt outstanding, Developers Diversified Realty Corp. (NYSE: DDR) plans to pursue funding for $300 million to $600 million through the Federal Reserve Board’s new lending program for commercial mortgage-backed securities.

Scott Wolstein, Developers Diversified chairman and CEO, said in a phone interview that the Beachwood real estate investment trust is pursuing the program because commercial real estate lending sources largely have dried up and the major active source of such loans — life insurers — has too little capacity to meet demand. Moreover, loans through the Fed program will cost at least 100 basis points less than conventional commercial loans.

David Oakes, chief investment officer of Developers Diversified, said in a June 3 conference call at an annual conference held by the National Association of Real Estate Investment Trusts that DDR might be the first company to access the new Fed program.

However, Mr. Wolstein downplayed the significance of being first in line. He said at least a dozen real estate companies are pursuing the program and it has adequate funding for all of them.

“We’ve got lots of loans that mature in 2010, 2011 and 2012,” Mr. Wolstein said. “This will allow us to borrow loans with a maturity in 2014. As loans mature, you can generally extend them a year at a time (with the same lender). We think it would be prudent to do this. Clearly, the Fed is doing this because they think they can help repair the capital market and make more money available.”

Developers Diversified is working with two investment banks Mr. Wolstein declined to identify on the two potential loan packages. Mr. Wolstein said Developers Diversified is likely to issue the package in September. The Fed launched the program this week.
~
Thanks to Evan and Citizen S
~~

Monster Mall Attacks Critical Water Report

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Developers attack report critical of Ukiah project

By GLENDA ANDERSON
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

Published: Friday, June 5, 2009 at 4:03 a.m.

A developer’s campaign to persuade Mendocino County voters to directly approve a 74-acre shopping-based development has shown its legal muscle.

An attorney for the campaign is demanding that Mendocino County officials disown a study that indicates the project could impact Ukiah Valley water and sewer customers.

The study is “an illegal expenditure of public resources in violation of the California Constitution,” states the letter from San Rafael attorney Marguerite Mary Leoni to the Mendocino County counsel and the Local Agency Formation Commission. The report was created by LAFCO executive director Frank McMichael.

Leoni represents the initiative campaign, which is funded by Developers Diversified Realty, one of the country’s largest mall developers.

She said the report also fails to meet the legal requirement that such government reports be objective. “It is replete with speculation and fear-mongering,” Leoni said.

Her letter demands that LAFCO officials declare they did not request, authorize or approve the report, that it is not based on a factual investigation, that it is not a LAFCO report and that McMichael lacks the credentials to support an authoritative opinion on water issues as they pertain to the development plan.

As the director of LAFCO, McMichael is charged with ensuring there is adequate water and other public services for developments prior to annexation to special districts that supply water and sewer.

Complete article here→
~~

Ukiah City Council Unanimously Opposes Monster Mall

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From DAVE SMITH
Ukiah

June 3, 2009 Ukiah, Mendocino County, North California

RESOLUTION NO. 2009-

RESOLUTION OF THE CITY COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF UKIAH STRONGLY OPPOSING THE MENDOCINO CROSSINGS MASONITE MIXED USE SPECIFIC PLAN BASED ON THE CITY COUNCIL’S CONVICTION THAT THE SPECIFIC PLAN WILL HAVE DETRIMENTAL EFFECTS ON THE CITY OF UKIAH AND THE REGION

WHEREAS a request for Ballot Title and Summary for an initiative has been filed with the Mendocino County Clerk to Amend the Mendocino County General Plan and the Inland Zoning Code of Mendocino County, and to enact the Mendocino Crossings Mixed-Use Masonite Specific Plan; and

WHEREAS the Mendocino Crossings Mixed-Use Masonite Specific Plan would allow approximately 650,000 square feet of commercial development and 150,000 square feet of residential development on approximately 74 acres north of and in close proximity to the City of Ukiah; and

WHEREAS the City of Ukiah has reviewed and discussed the Mendocino Crossings Mixed-Use Masonite Specific Plan; and concludes that build-out of the Masonite site pursuant to the provision of the Specific Plan could result in potential impacts to the City of Ukiah; and

WHEREAS the potential impacts include:

1) Traffic congestion resulting from the future connection of the Orchard Avenue Extension to proposed Valley Drive that would serve commercial and residential development rather than previously assumed industrial development;

2) Traffic congestion associated with the uncertainty of the effectiveness of the 5 additional traffic lights on North State Street proposed as part of the Specific Plan;

3) The cumulative build-out of the greater Ukiah Valley area has already negatively impacted public safety services within the City of Ukiah. The proposed project increases these negative impacts on police and fire services. These impacts include

Hey DDR! No water!

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From MICHAEL LAYBOURN
Hopland

May 28, 2009 Ukiah, Mendocino County, North California

A tip of the fedora to Mark Scaramella for reporting on one of the most critical issues in our county.

We finally find some knowledgeable information at a Board of Supervisors meeting about our water situation in Mendocino County. Mark Scaramella in the Anderson Valley Advertiser reports that the Executive Director of LAFCO, Frank McMichaels, gave a report to the supervisors about the obvious situation we all are faced with in terms of water: We don’t have enough.

I’ve met Frank McMichaels several times and have seen him to be a no-nonsense, straightforward, conservative person. If Frank gives us (and the Supes) a report, it’s probably the real deal.

The report fully evaluates our water situation and contains the following:

-“The Ukiah Valley is presently overbuilt as to water resources.”

- Reserves are maxed out.

- The Russian River Flood Control District is fully contracted and is now under a 50% conservation order.

- Redwood Valley is on a court imposed moratorium – no more hookups for water.

- Calpella has the same constraints.

As Scaramella said, “the facts just kept on coming”…

“McMichaels said that ‘DDR owners (and would-be developers of the Masonite site) seek to bypass these laws. Present service recipients would see dramatic reductions. It would put them in a drought regimen even in non-drought years. And the costs of dealing with these impacts (water, sewer, fire, police, etc) will be imposed on existing ratepayers and districts. DDR wants to bypass the rule of law –especially on water’”

There is no water in the Ukiah Valley for large scale development. Even developers with their capacity to ignore contradictory evidence and hot-to-trot shoppers must try to look for some common sense. There is not enough water.

Monster Mall – Letters to the Editor, etc.

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Letter to the Editor
Ukiah Daily Journal
May 21, 2009

Reasons to rezone the old Masonite Property:

Stop the leakage of money to Sonoma County. This method is very inefficient. Better to replace it with a giant drain to send our money directly to the conglomerate retail businesses back east.

Improve the health of our citizens. Every spring many suffer from pollen allergies. Putting in a giant mall is at least a start for eliminating grassy areas and other plant growth.

Put the useless land to work. Rezoning Masonite for a mall could open up possibilities for other rezoning of land that is now being wasted to grow food.

Encourage competition. By rezoning the Masonite site, owners of the land that is already zoned for retail will have to reconsider what they want to do with it.

It will also give our local government officials something to do — argue over whether to rezone all that land.

Create jobs. Think of all the electricians who will be needed to put in the five new stop lights, all the good (temporary) construction jobs, all the low paying retail sales jobs to give bored, rich housewives in Ukiah something to do. (And we know how many of those live in this affluent area.)

Free up housing for the homeless. How? The buildings that will become vacant downtown and in other shopping areas will quickly be taken over by squatters and thereby solve the homeless problem.

Provide a corporate stimulus plan for DDR. If they get their initiative passed, they can sell the site at a huge profit, thereby getting themselves out of a financial hole.

Bring Ukiah into the 21st century. All the other areas are uniform with the same stores and eateries. Ukiah is just out of step with its unique shops and restaurants. Anyone coming into town immediately recognizes that we are different. We surely don’t want that, do we?

So what are we waiting for? Let’s get into step with everyone else in the country. DDR will lead us to the future.

Janet Freeman
Ukiah

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So what do we propose instead of a dumb growth Monster Mall?

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From DAVE SMITH
Ukiah

From Downtown Ukiah Form-Based Planning Project

How Local Stores Get Chomped By Monster Malls

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Why Local Sustainable Enterprises are at Competitive Disadvantage, and What to Do About It

May 20, 2009 Ukiah, Mendocino County, North California

The Small-Mart Revolution
Michael Shuman
Reviewed by Dave Pollard

MICHAEL Shuman has written an excellent book diagnosing the reasons entrepreneurial businesses face an uneven playing field and an unfair competitive disadvantage versus the multinational corporatist oligopolies (MCOs). This book, The Small-Mart Revolution, also prescribes 95 ways we can help rectify this damaging distortion of the ‘market’ economy — as customers, investors, public policy-setters, community members, citizens, and entrepreneurs ourselves.

Shuman introduces a useful acronym to differentiate the types of entrepreneurial business we need to encourage and support: LOIS (local ownership & import substitution). Only when owners live and work in the communities they operate in do they really care about the people and environment in those communities, he argues. And only by replacing shoddy products and services transported half way around the globe (at enormous social and environmental cost) with goods and services produced right in the community can we hope to build strong, healthy and resilient local economies where people can both live and make a reasonable living.

The first part of the book outlines the 13 market distortions that multinational corporatist oligopolies (MCOs) have been able to create and exploit to enormous advantage, to the great detriment of entrepreneurs who actually add value to the communities in which they operate — and offer customers much greater value for their dollar:

1. Government Subsidies: More than $300B in corporate subsidies, almost all of which go to MCOs, are paid by North American and European governments each year to protect and incent these rich and powerful corporate goliaths. These subsidies are ‘purchased’ with MCO campaign donations, junkets and lobbying.

2. Access to Cheap Capital: MCOs can borrow money much cheaper and under much more favourable terms from the big financial corporations than entrepreneurs can. These rates reflect formulaic conventional lending wisdom and not actual risk.

3. Labor Negotiating Power: MCOs have the clout to smash unions and bully employees into accepting lower wages and fewer benefits, with the threat of outsourcing and offshoring jobs if the cuts are resisted.

4. Supplier/Retailer Negotiating Power: With their corner on the markets for supply (oligopoly) and big box retail distribution (oligopsony), MCOs are in a position to bully big, brand name suppliers into offering their products exclusively through the MCOs, at hugely discounted prices. These ‘deals’ force suppliers in turn to outsource and offshore their operations to afford these prices, and often force these suppliers into bankruptcy in the futile attempt to endlessly reduce costs.

5. Subsidized Transportation and Energy Infrastructure: Because the cost of gasoline is suppressed by political deals with OPEC, and energy and highway projects are heavily subsidized with tax dollars to favour long-distance transportation carriers, the true cost of imports is hugely distorted, to the advantage of MCOs.

6. Undervaluing of People’s Time: Because we are too busy to find and visit small local suppliers, and because we undervalue the time and energy it takes us to drive to big box malls, we overvalue the ’savings’ we supposedly receive from MCOs.

7. Deceptive Advertising: Huge MCO advertising and PR campaigns delude us into believing we are getting value from overpriced, poor-quality imported junk that MCOs sell us. And if you try to get your money back, the armies of ‘customer care’ and the armies of corporate lawyers are ready to dissuade you.

8. Addiction to Consumption and Debt: MCOs and their handmaidens in the lending industry and in government spend a fortune to persuade you that irresponsible spending and borrowing beyond your means is socially necessary and good for ‘the economy’. Once you’re hooked, there’s no way out — especially now bankruptcy laws have been tightened up.

9. Lack of Consumer Protection: Under the guise of ‘deregulation’ and blocking ‘frivolous’ litigation, consumer protection laws in many countries have been weakened or gutted, encouraging poor quality production and services and other irresponsible MCO practices.

10. Naive Local Planners and Zoners: Because they’re unaware of the multiplier benefits of LOIS enterprises, local zoners and planners often offer huge incentives to attract MCOs that yield little local return on that investment, and actually destroy local employment and manufacturing.

11. Oligopoly Network Power: MCOs, by striking exclusive deals with other MCOs, cut LOIS enterprises out of the bidding for major supply contracts, effectively starving them out of all distribution channels except local independents’. You won’t find small local food vendors’ products in large chain grocery stores, for example, because the Big Agribusiness producer oligopolies won’t let the chains carry small competitors’ products.

12. Lack of Environmental Regulation: Thanks to heavy ‘deregulation’ lobbying by MCOs, environmental regulations in many countries have been weakened, or are unenforced, allowing megapolluting MCOs to ‘externalize’ (pass off to taxpayers and those who have to live in the polluted communities) the heavy environmental costs of their operations.

13. Lack of Training in Entrepreneurship: As I have been harping on in these pages for years, there is little or no reasonably-priced training available to entrepreneurs on how to establish and operate a responsible independent business effectively. The consequence is huge entrepreneurial failure rates and millions of enterprises that could easily, with a bit of coaching, be much more effective, successful and happy places to work.

If these distortions could be overcome, Shuman argues, we have a lot to gain from an economy in which LOIS enterprises compete fairly and effectively with MCOs:

* LOIS enterprises are closer to the customer and hence better attuned to their needs, and able to be more innovative and adaptable to meet those needs.
* LOIS enterprises are less vulnerable to spikes in energy and transportation costs, which are certainly on the horizon (though Grist argues that this is offset by the endemic lack of infrastructure that LOIS enterprises must live with).
* LOIS enterprises are better able to customize products to meet the unique needs and opportunities that are present in each local market (One size never fits all).
* LOIS enterprises are better able to leverage virtual and peer production and distribution networks because they are less committed to and invested in older physical networks and infrastructure.
* LOIS enterprises, thanks to the personal touch and local ownership, generally have much lower turnover (and hence more knowledgeable staff) and greater employee loyalty (and hence better service) than MCOs.
* LOIS enterprises are less dependent on corporate subsidies and low interest rates, and if, as many suspect, the US dollar and economy soon tanks and interest rates spike, they will have the resilience to continue to operate when many MCOs go under.

The balance of the book prescribes the 95 actions we can take to remedy the market distortions:

* As customers — e.g. by buying local and creating local buying networks
* As investors — e.g. by investing in local enterprises and creating local investment funds, networks and capacity
* As public policy-setters — e.g. by appreciating the economic advantages of LOIS enterprises and leveling the playing field for them
* As community members — e.g. by creating local community-based economies
* As citizens — e.g. by combating the wealth and power of MCOs politically (e.g. by voting out corporatists) and economically (e.g. through boycotts)
* As entrepreneurs ourselves — e.g. by creating local Natural Enterprises and networking them with others

There are two disturbing and enduring myths about entrepreneurship:

1. That franchises are a healthy form of local entrepreneurship; and
2. That entrepreneurs need to compete on price with MCOs by offering customers the same imported, subsidized low-price crap as MCOs, instead of local, high quality, non-mass-produced (‘unaffordable’) products

Shuman tackles the first misconception well, but sidesteps the second. One of the most frustrating experiences of enlightened customers is to go into locally-owned retailers and discover everything on the shelves is imported (mostly from China) when good local sources of similar goods are available (just invisible). Or to hire a local service provider only to discover that they buy all their supplies from a wholesaler’s catalogue, most of which is imported products that by-pass local producers.

But we have to start somewhere, and this book provides a good blueprint on how to do so.

What will be even more essential than a grassroots buy local movement will be entrepreneurs and local activists researching, cataloguing and creating networks of LOIS enterprises, and acting as organizers and intermediaries to help customers in local communities become aware of, and arrange to buy from, LOIS enterprises.

Just as important will be encouraging and coaching new LOIS enterprises to get properly and sustainably established, and helping them appreciate (and explain to their customers) the benefits and value of buying the goods on their shelves, the service that support them, and replacement and supply parts and accessories, from local suppliers.

This book is the perfect antidote and response to the corporatist apologists’ argument that “no one is forcing you to buy from Wal-Mart”. It’s time for responsible, enlightened LOIS entrepreneurs to break ranks with the corporatists in chambers of commerce, the anti-Kyoto forces, and the cynical ‘deregulation’ lobby, and realize that MCOs are not their allies but their worst enemy. The Small-Mart Revolution is long overdue, and needs our support and collaboration to make it happen.
~

See also The Masonite Monster Mall series→

…and Michael Shuman An Urgent Call to Buy Local→
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Ukiah City Council Meeting Tonight 5/20 at 6:00 pm (Post-meeting update)

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[Update: A good time was had by all. Language of resolution will be tweaked for sure passage next meeting. -DS]

From Save Our Local Economy (SOLE)

May 20, 2009 Ukiah, Mendocino County, North California

This Wednesday May 20 the Ukiah City Council will consider a resolution about Developer Diversified Realty’s (DDR) ballot measure to change the Masonite site from industrial zoning to a huge shopping mall.

One of the versions of the resolution before the Council will urge the public to vote “No” when DDR’s measure goes before the voters in November.

The presence of those of us who oppose DDR will be essential.  Please attend if you can.

The item will come up early on the Council’s agenda, possibly 6:15 to 6:30 p.m.

The outcome could have a MAJOR effect on the upcoming election campaign.
~
See also The Masonite Monster Mall series→

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[I didn't move to this beautiful valley to shop. -Guiness McFadden]

The economic structure that mega-retailers are propagating represents a modern variation on the old European colonial system, which was designed not to build economically viable and self-reliant communities, but to extract their wealth and resources. Yet many cities eagerly usher in these corporate colonizers.

Some envision a tax windfall, only to discover that these sprawling stores impose a significant burden on public infrastructure and services. Or worse, after their local economies have been bulldozed, they find that they are utterly dependent on a few big boxes that might raise prices, lay off employees, or threaten to move to a neighboring town if they don’t receive a tax break…

As retail sprawls outward, running errands entails more driving. The 1990s saw a jump of more than 40 percent in the number of miles driven by the average household for shopping—which translates into an increase of almost 95 billion miles a year for the country as a whole. Mega-retailers are thus fueling smog, acid rain, and global warming. Retail sprawl has also emerged as a top threat to our rivers, lakes, and estuaries…

Keep reading Big Box Swindle→

Take Action! Summary of the Monster Mall Ballot Measure

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From Save Our Local Economy (SOLE)

May 19, 2009 Ukiah, Mendocino County, North California

•   What it does

The ballot measure would amend the County General Plan and zoning code to adopt a Specific Plan covering DDR’s 76-acre Masonite site.  The Specific Plan was written for DDR by an Orange County consultant and is 310 pages long.

It allows DDR to build “Mendocino Crossings” with any combination it wants of big box retail stores, residences and other facilities.  The limit for big box stores is 800,000 square feet [B-41], which would make Mendocino Crossings a tie with Coddingtown Mall in Santa Rosa as the largest shopping mall on the North Coast.  The parking lot would hold more than 3,000 cars.

The Specific Plan would also allow DDR to build up to 150 residences.  Although the Specific Plan provides 3 different “Conceptual Plans” of how the shopping center might look, it also states that “The exhibits shown are conceptual and do not reflect what may actually be constructed on the site.  The actual development of the site is subject to change based on market and regional demands.” [B-42]

•    Could the Specific Plan ever be amended?

Only by another ballot measure [Initiative text, Section 8].  Once adopted, the Specific Plan is law and the County’s elected officials would have no control over what DDR does with the property, within the broad limits established by the Specific Plan.

•    How does the Initiative affect the County General Plan?

If enacted, the Initiative would require that everything else in the County General Plan would have to be revised to eliminate any inconsistency with DDR’s Specific Plan [Initiative, Section 5-B].

•    Will there be an Environmental Impact Report?

No.  Rezonings that are put on the ballot by petition are exempt from the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), since there is no public agency which is responsible for approving the project [B-228].

•    How did DDR qualify the Initiative for the ballot?

DDR, under the name “Mendocino County Tomorrow,” hired a professional signature-gathering company, H&H Petitions, which brought approximately 20 signature gatherers here from out-of-county, beginning April 9, 2009.  They were paid $2 per valid signature.  According to numerous citizen reports, the petitioners mostly told the public that the petition was to “clean up the Masonite site.” There were 4 letters to the editor in the Ukiah Daily Journal from different individuals who stated that they had been misled in this way, and 82 people who had been misled by the signature-gatherers sent letters to the County Clerk asking that their names be removed from the petition.  Nevertheless, DDR was successful in submitting its petition to the county on April 29, 2009, claiming it had sufficient signatures to force a special election in November on its Initiative.

•    What is the history of the property?

The site is zoned for industry and was used by Masonite Corporation for 50 years.  DDR bought the site in 2005 and demolished the plant facilities, despite appeals to save it for new industrial uses.  The 76-acre property is the largest industrial parcel in the inland county and has rail access and other features that make it ideal for new industrial development.

•    Why should the site stay in industrial zoning?

Because industrial employers offer better wages and benefits than the minimum-wage jobs offered by big box stores.  Also, industry creates a stronger local economy because it brings money into the area, instead of draining it out like big box stores do.  There is good potential for future industrial use of the Masonite site, if it stays in industrial zoning.  About 27 acres of new industrial buildings have gone up just north of the Masonite property just since 2001, showing the demand for industrial property.  Many timber industry officials believe that the regrowth of the county’s forests will create a need for a new wood byproducts facility.

•    How would DDR’s mall affect traffic?

The County’s draft Ukiah Valley Area Plan found that major traffic improvements are needed if there is more development around the Masonite site, including a new north-south road and a new freeway access off Brush Street.  But DDR’s Specific Plan doesn’t include any of these new roads.  Instead, the Specific Plan dictates that North State Street will bear all of the burden. DDR’s Specific Plan specifies 5 new traffic lights on North State Street, bringing the total to 7 traffic lights in the ½ mile stretch from Orr Springs Road to Ford Road [B-65].  While this forest of red lights will make North State Street a nightmare for thru-traffic, DDR apparently figures that it can still get shoppers off and on the freeway.

•    Besides North State Street, would DDR pay for other off-site road improvements?

Almost certainly not.  The Specific Plan says DDR will pay for the new traffic lights and road widenings it wants on North State Street.  Beyond that, the County must prove by a “nexus report” that any fees imposed on the project are justified by impacts created by the project, AND THEN, whatever DDR has paid for the North State Street alterations will be DEDUCTED from those fees [B-223].

•    How would it affect the water shortage?

DDR says that it would meet the large new water demand for the shopping mall from an existing well (Masonite well #6) near the Russian River [B-73].  How this pumping would affect the total demand on the river and on Lake Mendocino isn’t clear, since DDR is circumventing the requirement for an Environmental Impact Report.

•    What development standards would apply to the project?

Only what DDR has written into the Specific Plan, which substitutes for all County Zoning regulations [Initiative, Section 3].  In other words, DDR has written its own rules.  Not surprisingly, these conflict with the existing limits and aesthetic standards that are common in Mendocino County.  For example, DDR gives itself the right to erect a 100-foot tall lighted sign next to the freeway, four times taller and eight times larger in area than allowed by County zoning [B-124].   Signs on the stores themselves can be up to 500 square feet, three times larger than allowed by County zoning. [B-120].   There is no provision whatsoever for design review by the County of the buildings or other features.

•    How can this area support such a huge shopping mall?

Only by capturing the lion’s share of all retail business in Mendocino County.  With about 12 big box stores and numerous smaller shops, the development would be designed to be a “magnet” destination sufficiently compelling to attract shoppers and keep them on site for most of their shopping needs.  The impact on downtowns and existing shopping districts throughout Mendocino County is obvious.  An economic study commissioned by the county in 2007 concluded, “The prospects for new regional retail [center] depend on its ability to capture expenditures from a trade area larger than the Ukiah Valley.”  [“Ukiah Valley Area Plan Economic Background,” Economic & Planning Systems, Inc., p. 37]  DDR claims that its shopping mall would create hundreds of new jobs, but there is every reason to believe that these new jobs would be offset by lost jobs at existing stores in Mendocino and Lake counties.

•    But don’t we need DDR’s shopping mall to get a Costco store?

No.  Costco was in advanced negotiations to build a store in Ukiah’s Redwood Business Park and detailed site plans had been submitted to the city in both 2003 and 2007 for a 15-acre parcel.  As soon as it bought the Masonite site in 2005, DDR went to work to persuade Costco to give up on the City of Ukiah site.  Finally DDR succeeded, and Costco suddenly stopped talking to the city in June, 2007. But when DDR’s ballot initiative is defeated, Costco can still build on the original City of Ukiah site if it still believes the local market will support its store.  The City of Ukiah has 95 acres of vacant land zoned for retail.

•    DDR is experiencing financial distress.  How could DDR build a new shopping mall when it is trying to sell property to raise cash?

It’s true that DDR is shaky.  Last year its stock plunged to only $2 a share, and its debt was recently reduced to junk bond status by the rating agencies.  But the ballot measure is a potentially lucrative speculation for DDR, even if the election campaign costs $1 million.  A rezoning could increase the market value of the DDR property by as much as $30 million.  Then DDR could sell it to another developer.

•    But isn’t it the democratic way to let the voters decide?

Only if there is full information fairly presented to the voters.   As DDR showed in the signature-gathering campaign, lies succeed when they are aggressively disseminated without opposing information.  DDR figures it can spend so much money painting a one-sided picture of the Initiative that it can drown out all opposition.  Even before the Initiative drive, DDR mailed 5 fancy brochures to all county voters, projected a false image of their plans.  DDR will circumvent the normal requirement for an Environmental Impact Report, which is an essential source of objective analysis on any project.  DDR seeks to lock its 310-page Specific Plan into law and prohibit any public hearings or review by our elected officials.  This can’t be described as democratic.  It’s more like direct corporate rule.
~

Go to Save Our Local Economy→

See also The Masonite Monster Mall series→
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Masonite Monster Mall – Letters to the Editor

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From DAVE SMITH

May 18, 2009 Ukiah, Mendocino County, North California

Editor:

A recent letter to the Ukiah Daily Journal 5/15/09 decries the “lack of logic” and “emotional arguments” of anti-Monster Mall citizens, saying that “All these objections disappear when the same stores are proposed inside Ukiah’s City Limits and are not objectionable at all. Pure hypocrisy.”

Citizens oppose bad projects for many different reasons. Some of us oppose any big-box or chain store to save our local economy and downtown merchants; others oppose the Monster Mall at the Masonite site to save our best industrial land for good-paying jobs; and still others oppose it because there is land already set aside for retail stores in town.

As a self-described, life-long developer, the letter writer knows perfectly well that our opposition is by a united coalition of diverse interests.

Nothing at all hypocritical about that.
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Monster Mall Supporters to Descend on Board of Supervisors Tuesday 5/12

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From Save Our Local Economy (SOLE)

Will DDR Suppress Your Right To Know The Truth?

This Tuesday, May 12, the Supervisors are scheduled to consider whether they want local staff to prepare an analysis of impacts of Developers Diversified Realty’s (DDR) ballot measure for a huge shopping mall at the Masonite site.

Preparing such an analysis for the voters is a clear duty of the county and it is specifically authorized by the state elections code.  It is likely to expose some serious problems. Not surprisingly, DDR has issued a call to its supporters to jam the Board chambers to speak in favor of the ballot measure.  “We cannot allow them to take control over this process,” says DDR representative David Clark in his over-heated email sent Thursday.

With the collaboration of Board chair John Pinches, the only supervisor who supports DDR, the strategy appears to be to intimidate the Board and to talk the agenda item to death, so there won’t be any objective analysis of the project. If you can attend Tuesday around 1:30 to 2 p.m., please speak up for the public’s right to have some expert analysis of DDR’s impact.  If you can’t attend, you can email the Board members at

mccowen@co.mendocino.ca.us
smithk@co.mendocino.ca.us
browncj@co.mendocino.ca.us
dcolfax@wildblue.net

The Board’s fax number is 463-4245.

Some points to consider…

• We need the traffic engineer who is on local government staff to reveal what the impact will be of DDR’s 5 additional traffic signals in a 1/2 mile stretch of North State Street.

• We need our water agency director to tell what impact DDR will have on the valley’s water supply.

• We need the planning staff to report on how the development rules that DDR has written for itself will compare to our County Zoning Code.

DDR wants to suppress the facts.  We need to stand up for the public’s right to know.
~

See also Jesse Ventura on Larry King→
Thanks to Ron Epstein
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The Hippie Canard – Masonite Monster Mall

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From DAVE SMITH
Letters To The Editors

May 8, 2009 Ukiah, Mendocino County, North California

Editor:

As regards the Masonite Monster Mall debate in local letters to the editors, first we had the “Vote to clean up the Masonite site” canard, misleading citizens about what the initiative really is about. Then we had the Costco canard, where the argument that we could have Costco if we voted in the Monster Mall was shown to be false.

Now we have a “straw man” argument where citizens who are against the Monster Mall are labeled “hippies”, and then we are told that hippies are a minority in our county… implying that a majority will vote for the Monster Mall.

I like hippies. Some of my best friends are hippies. But the majority in this county who will defeat this initiative are citizens. This is a sad continuation of the culture wars.

We’ve heard all this before during the Measure H campaign where we defeated big corporate interests who wanted to poison our county with genetically modified organisms. We beat the big bucks that time. We’ll beat them again this time, and save our local economy from outside occupiers.

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The first evacuation of an entire community due to manmade global warming is happening on the Carteret Island→

by George Monbiot

Journalists – they’re never around when you want one. Two weeks ago a momentous event occurred: the beginning of the world’s first evacuation of an entire people as a result of manmade global warming. It has been marked so far by one blog post for the Ecologist and an article in the Solomon Times*. Where is everyone?

The Carteret Islands are off the coast of Bougainville, which, in turn, is off the coast of Papua New Guinea. They are small coral atolls on which 2,600 people live. Though not for much longer.

As the Ecologist’s blogger Dan Box witnessed, the first five families have moved to Bougainville to prepare the ground for full evacuation. There are compounding factors – the removal of mangrove forests and some local volcanic activity – but the main problem appears to be rising sea levels. The highest point of the islands is 170cm above the sea. Over the past few years they have been repeatedly inundated by spring tides, wiping out the islanders’ vegetable and fruit gardens, destroying their subsistence and making their lives impossible…
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It’s Not About Making Them “Good Corporate Neighbors!”

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We are ‘We the People.’
We must write the laws.
We must enforce them.

There is no one else.

Organizing Communities to Govern Cartel Retailing Empires like Wal-Mart

Many communities are frantically trying to resist the encroachment of giant retail merchandising corporations and the economic and environmental injuries that those corporations inflict on locally owned businesses, community character, and workers.

Past efforts to control the amount of harm inflicted by these corporations have resulted in increased environmental and land-use regulation, but there has been a marked failure to secure local authority over whether those corporations will be allowed to operate by the communities that they impact.

In recent years, organizations, communities, and community leaders working on a range of other “single” issues have begun to question why their industrious enforcement of zoning laws, environmental regulations, environmental impact studies and other legal land-use tools have failed to protect the natural environment, create an improved quality of life, or increase community control over corporations. As some community leaders have learned, available legal regulatory remedies are drawn from a “stacked deck” of sorts. Created to enable communities to make it more expensive for corporations to site or operate in a particular location, those regulations maintain the illusion that the community has fundamental decision-making authority over how, or whether, the corporation will operate within the community.

Over the years, activists and communities have struggled to correct the symptoms of corporate control through their use of the regulatory system – a system that, in effect, serves as nothing more than an “energy sink” for activists. Indeed, regulations aimed at lessening corporate harms may actually serve to work against that goal. So often the temporary, regulatory “wins” of activists merely codify specific levels of permissible harm that corporations may legally inflict on people and communities.

Unless these communities, groups, and municipal governments shift their focus from regulating corporate behavior (seeking to lessen corporate harms) to asserting local, democratic control over corporations, attempts to build sustainable communities and protect the natural environment will fail.

Keep reading Organizing Communities to Govern Cartel Retailing Empires like Wal Mart at CELDF.org→
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Breaking The Chains: Global Call To Action – Update: Masonite Monster Mall Will Be Defeated

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From Organic Consumers Association

Dear Friends,
We, the undersigned, call on ethically responsible people across the world to Break the Chains of self-destructive consumerism by boycotting Wal-Mart and other national and international chain stores, fast food restaurants, corporate coffeehouses, and products bearing the logos of the multinational Brand Name Bullies.

Wal-Mart and the multinational chains are colonizing our communities and our minds, North & South, East & West, rural and urban, killing off small businesses, exploiting workers and farmers, devastating the environment, and sowing a toxic culture of cheap goods and social unaccountability. Unless we stop this Wal-Martization of our communities, we can say goodbye to Fair Trade, family farms, independent businesses, workers rights, and environmental sustainability.

From Manhattan to Mexico, from China to Chile, farmers, consumers and independent businesses are resisting the invasion of Wal-Mart and the Corporate Chain stores and building grassroots power through local, green, and just commerce. The answer to Wal-Martization and so-called “Free Trade” is ethical consumer purchasing and political action–building and supporting local and community-based producers and businesses through solidarity, collective purchasing power, and mutual aid. Fair Trade, not Free Trade, must become the global norm, with organic and sustainable production leading the way. Local and community control over essential goods and services provides the only solid foundation for economic democracy, a sustainable environment, and public health.

Help us mark the beginning of the end for Wal-Mart and the Corporate Chains. Please join us as we step up the pace to re-localize and green a just global economy. Consumers of the world unite! We have nothing to lose but our chains!

In Solidarity,

• Ronnie Cummins, Organic Consumers Association; Vandana Shiva, Navdanya International; Kevin Danaher, Global Exchange; Judy Wicks, White Dog Cafe, Philadelphia; Anna and Frances Moore Lappe, Small Planet Institute; Randy Hayes, International Forum on Globalization; Maude Barlow, Council of Canadians; Frente Civico (Mexico); John Stauber, Center for Media and Democracy; Kenny Ausubel, Bioneers; Lorette Picciano, Rural Coalition / Coalicion Rural; Robin Seydel, La Montanita Coop, Santa Fe; Deb Edrozo, Bike Aid; Jennifer Rockne, American Independent Business Alliance
  

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[Update]
Ukiah Citizen’s Group Predicts Victory Over DDR Inc. Mega-mall Ballot Measure

DDR halts construction of Connecticut Monster Mall

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["Rockpile Lifestyle Center" returning to just a pile of rocks. -DS]

They fought long, hard, and at great expense to build a “lifestyle center” atop the “Rockpile” in town. Now it appears that bad timing and a sluggish economy have caught up with Developers Diversified Realty Corporation (DDR) of Ohio.

According to DDR Senior Executive Vice President of Leasing and Development Paul Freddo, construction of the 150,000 square foot, $37 million retail center called Guilford Commons has stopped, for the interim, he says.

“For now, Developers Diversified’s Guilford Commons, a 26-acre lifestyle center development, has suspended further construction,” stated Freddo. “We view the suspension as a temporary delay.”

Not surprisingly, Freddo said that current economic conditions, including shrinking consumer confidence and poor retail sales, have caused retailers who prefer the lifestyle center format to slow their expansion plans on a national level.

In many of its presentations to the community, DDR indicated that tenants such as Talbots, Ann Taylor Loft, Banana Republic, Chico’s, Coldwater Creek, and Panera Bread Company would most likely be part of their “lifestyle center” family…

The developer has four other projects in Connecticut in Manchester, Plainville, Waterbury, and Windsor.

Go to Recession Hits the ‘Rockpile’→
Thanks to SHERRY GLAVICH
~~

Newcomer says: Don’t make the same Sonoma County mistake – Masonite Monster Mall (Updated)

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Letter to the Editor
Press Democrat→

As a newcomer to Ukiah, I find it disheartening to find my new home possibly about to make the same mistake as my old one, Sonoma County.

DDR, a development company, is pushing for a shopping center on Ukiah’s Masonite site, and while the project is promoted as a small strip mall, the developer’s 2009 proposed specific plan amendment calls for construction of a mixed-use center with maximum building area of 800,000 square feet — making it comparable to Coddingtown or the Santa Rosa Plaza.

In the 1980s, the Santa Rosa Plaza emptied Santa Rosa’s downtown of commerce, and it’s taken decades for that downtown to recover. I would hate to see the same fate for downtown Ukiah and its nearby smaller shopping centers.

There’s evidence nationwide that Americans are rejecting mall culture as gas prices rise, turning instead to smaller local shopping areas and to online shopping that doesn’t require car travel at all. DDR’s large mall would require a large shopping population drawn from a wide radius, not just from small Ukiah.

How sad if we in Ukiah allow construction of a major shopping center when other Americans are learning the lessons of the past decades, coming to prize their downtowns and avoiding huge malls.

VICTORIA GOLDEN

Ukiah

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[Update -DS]

GUINESS McFADDEN talks about the Monster Mall plan on BARRY VOGEL’S Radio Curious (podcast)→

McFadden discusses why he is strongly opposed to the attempt by Ohio-based Developers Diversified Realty Inc. (DDR) to pass a ballot initiative which would rezone the 76-acre Masonite plant site to allow a shopping mall of up to 800,000 square feet.

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Obama’s First 100 Days Makes and Remakes History

…what team Obama has accomplished in its first 100 days is nothing less than an unprecedented reversal of decades of unsustainable national policy forced down the throat of the American public by conservatives.  While I will present a longer list below — and welcome your additions — three game-changing accomplishments stand out:

1. Green Stimulus:  Progressives, Obama keep promise to jumpstart clean energy, economy — conservatives keep promise to jumpstop the future
2. Sustainable Budget:  The first sustainable budget in U.S. history.
3. Regulatory breakthrough:  EPA finds carbon pollution a serious danger to Americans’ health and welfare requiring regulation

Obama has clearly demonstrated he has a serious chance to be the first President since FDR to remake the country through his positive vision.  Indeed, if Obama is a two-term president, if he achieves even half of what he has set out to, he will likely be remembered as “the green FDR.”

Go to article at Grist→
~~

The power of money – Masonite Monster Mall

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From JANIE SHEPPARD
Save Our Local Economy (SOLE)
P.O. Box 1530, Ukiah CA 95482
SOLE@pacific.net – www.NoMegaMall.com

April 25, 2009 Ukiah, Mendocino County, North California

Efforts of Diversified Development Realty (DDR) to put a mega mall on the old Masonite Site demonstrate the power of money.

See what corporate money buys:

Jeff Adams, spokesman for DDR, says $1 Million has been spent so far for mailers and public relations. He says DDR will spend another million to get its initiative on the ballot.

H & H Petitions hired signature gatherers to blitz the county. The signature gatherers are paid $2.00 per signature. DDR foots the bill through a consultant.

Arno Political Consultants, a very big-time outfit paid by DDR, subcontracted H & H Petitions to gather signatures. On its website, Arno brags that it has turned signature gathering into an “art form.” Among the services offered is “assisting letter writers in putting their own thoughts on paper [for letters to the editor].” Be skeptical when you read those letters that are subsidized by DDR.

Brian Sobel, principal consultant at Sobel Communications, is paid by DDR to go to the local media. Sobel boasts that his clients include Chevron and Unocal. His services are not cheap.

Mendocino County Tomorrow purports to be an exclusive club. If you want to join, be prepared to pay least $80 and be scrutinized for suitability. “Mendocino County Tomorrow reserves the right to refuse membership to anyone.” In reality, it’s a front group paid for by DDR.

All the money is being spent to pass a 324-page “specific plan” which is the actual initiative language. That’s what we would vote to accept or reject if the H & H signature gatherers get enough valid signatures to qualify for the ballot. How specific could it be when it is “subject to change” in 28 places?

The initiative, if passed, allows DDR to do whatever it wants. If passed, we would have no control, no public hearings, and no environmental review. We would, however, have a mega mall.

Help Save Our Local Economy. Join SOLE by going to its website, nomegamall.com, and signing up. If you can, please make a donation.

SOLE’s coffers are empty. You can send a check to SOLE, P.O. Box 1530, Ukiah, CA 95482. Thank you very much.

Janie Sheppard
Treasurer, SOLE
~

From EVAN JOHNSON:

The list of known entities DDR/”Mendocino Crossings” has hired to ram this project through:
1. Mendocino County Tomorrow
2. Hogle-Ireland, Inc.
3. Muelrath Public Affairs
4. Ruff and Associates
5. Nielsen, Merksamer, Parrinello, Mueller & Naylor, LLP
6. Sobel Communications
7. CoxCastleNicholson
8. Arno Political Consultants
9. MCG Architecture
10. Fair & Powerful Communication
~~

Judge Issues Restraining Order Against Paid DDR Petition-Gatherer – Masonite Monster Mall

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Save Our Local Economy
P.O. Box 1530, Ukiah CA 95482
SOLE@pacific.net – www.NoMegaMall.com

NEWS RELEASE – April 22, 2009

For additional information:
Spokespersons:
Guinness McFadden (707) 621-2311
Mari Rodin 707-272-1937

A paid petition-gatherer for Ohio-based shopping center developer DDR Inc. was ordered to stay 100 yards away from Long Valley Market and to cease harassing its customers and employees.

On April 22, Superior Court Judge John Behnke issued a temporary restraining order against Jay Taylor, an employee of H&H Petitioners, the company hired by Developers Diversified Realty (DDR) to gather signatures for its proposed ballot measure to rezone the Masonite industrial site for a huge shopping mall.

Michael Braught, owner of Long Valley Store in Laytonville, sought the restraining order. Braught filed a sworn statement describing an incident where Taylor punched a 67-year-old customer and knocked him to the ground.  Braught’s statement also described how Taylor harassed customers to get them to sign DDR’s petition using tactics such as blocking the store entrance and following customers to and from their cars in the parking lot.   [Braught was interviewed on KZYX news on April 22.  The audio file of  the interview is posted at http://www.nomegamall.com/audio/20090422_KZYX_TRO.mp3]

Braught was represented by Ukiah attorney Barry Vogel (462-6541), who says that Judge Behnke set a hearing date of May 1 to decide if the restraining order should be continued.

DDR began its petition drive on April 9, blitzing the county with approximately 20 paid petitioner-gatherers from as far away as Orange County. Numerous petition-gatherers told questioners that they are being paid $2 for each signature they get for DDR’s proposed ballot measure.

DDR’s ballot measure would amend the County General Plan to rezone the 76-acre Masonite plant site  from industrial use to uses outlined in a 310-page “Specific Plan” written by DDR. The Specific Plan would allow DDR to build up to 800,000 square feet of retail stores, and 150 townhouses, in any combination it wants.  Thus far, DDR’s signature gatherers have not been honest about the meaning of the proposed ballot measure. In  letters to the editor published in the Ukiah Daily Journal on April 19 and April 20, Ukiah residents Ed Fox and Terry Poplawski describe how they were told that the petition was “to clean up the Masonite site.”  [The letters are online at www.ukiahdailyjournal.com/letters/ci_12183219 and /ci_12183226]

“The petitioners are dishonest and abusive,” said SOLE spokesperson Guinness McFadden. “Their demeanor ranges from patently dishonest and misleading to confrontationally arrogant and disdainful. They act as though Mendocino is a Cow County where we locals are yokels and rubes whose main purpose in life is to shop.”

Choosing a future for the Masonite Site

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by MARI RODIN
Ukiah City Council
Opinion, Press Democrat

Developers Diversified, or DDR, is one of the country’s largest developers of shopping malls. The proposed zoning change would allow it to override Mendocino County’s ongoing general plan update, giving it the green light to develop a 500,000- to 700,000-square-foot mall just outside the city limits of Ukiah — perhaps without any environmental review.

Since DDR purchased the property, its representative, Jeff Adams, has been attempting to change the zoning to allow for retail use.

Adams began more than a year ago, at a time when a majority of the Board of Supervisors was favorable to the zoning change. In November, however, two new supervisors were elected (Carre Brown and John McCowen), and there is now at least a 4-1 board majority opposed to the project.

DDR’s project was a major campaign issue, and there has been significant community mobilization in opposition to it. The reasons for opposing the project include:

• Sprawl development right outside historic downtown Ukiah is bad for the environment and bad for small, locally owned businesses.

• The project would support mostly low-wage jobs. We should reserve the site for industrial land uses that provide jobs at a living wage.

• Depletion of sales tax revenue for the city of Ukiah would lead to a severe cutback in public services to the county seat.

DDR’s petition for a ballot initiative changing the zoning of the former Masonite site to retail/mixed use ignores the fact that Ukiah Valley voters have already expressed opposition to the project by electing supervisors Brown and McCowen. Moreover, DDR is sure to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a campaign to convince voters that a mega-mall is in our best interest.

Masonite Monster Mall Owner DDR – Fire Sale of 52 Shopping Centers

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From Janie Sheppard

Apr 15, 2009, Ukiah, Mendocino County, North California

See article here.

This only confirms local suspicion that DDR is interested in making a fast $30 million by getting the Masonite site zone changed, then flipping it to who knows who to develop.

Here is the link to the DDR Plan Amendment:

http://www.mendocinocrossings.com/pdfs/2009-3-28%20Mendocino%20Crossings%20Specific%20Plan%20-%20Exhibits%20AB.pdf

Note 2 things:  it is in pdf format and can be searched and it is on the website mendocinocrossings.com
~~

New Citizen Coalition Will Oppose DDR’s Attempt to Buy Approval of Zoning Change to Allow for Mega-Mall

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Press Release

Apr 14 2009, Ukiah, Mendocino County, North California

Save Our Local Economy

P.O. Box 1530, Ukiah CA 95482

SOLE@pacific.net – www.NoMegaMall.com

NEWS RELEASE – April 14, 2009

For additional information:

Spokespersons: Cliff Paulin 707-463-0413

Mari Rodin 707-272-1937

Guinness McFadden 707-743-1122

A new coalition has formed to lead Mendocino County’s opposition to a ballot initiative funded by Ohio-based Developers Diversified Realty, Inc. (DDR) that would change the zoning of the former Masonite site to allow development of a mega-mall.

Save Our Local Economy (SOLE) will counter the corporate funding of DDR’s campaign with grassroots organizing, education, and fundraising. SOLE’s website is www.NoMegaMall.com and e-mail is SOLE@pacific.net.

SOLE includes local business owners, farmers, attorneys, and elected officials from throughout the Mendocino County who are concerned that a giant mall on the outskirts of Ukiah will economically drain locally-owned shops around the county, and cause a host of adverse environmental and traffic impacts.

When last November’s elections resulted in a majority of the Board of Supervisors opposed to DDR’s plan for a mega-mall, DDR decided to circumvent local review by sponsoring its own ballot initiative. “We’re confident that most voters will take offense at DDR’s attempt to use outside money and influence to undermine the general plan process for land use planning,” said Mari Rodin, Ukiah City Council member and a spokesperson for SOLE. “When the voters of the Ukiah area elected Carre Brown and John McCowen last November—and the future of the Masonite site was a major campaign issue—they were expressing support for the maintenance of the site for new industrial jobs.”

If you’ve signed the Masonite Monster Mall petition in error, you can un-sign it!

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From Janie Sheppard

Apr 12, 2009, Ukiah, Mendocino County, North California

Un-sign yourself. Please spread the word . . . lots of people are really confused.

Dave will have forms available at Mulligan Books during store hours (11-6) to sign, and I will pick them up and take to the County Clerk.

According to the Ukiah Daily Journal:

Those who believe they have signed their names to a ballot petition in error recently can have their signatures removed, provided they provide paperwork to the county before the petitioners get there first, said Assessor/Clerk/Recorder Sue Ranochak on Friday.

“As long as we receive the written requests before the signatures get here that will work,” she said.

Ranochak said Section 103 of the California Elections Code covered the procedure voters could follow should they wish their names stricken from the record.

“Any voter who has signed an initiative, referendum or recall petition pursuant to the constitution or laws of this state shall have his or her signature withdrawn from the petition upon filing a written request therefor with the appropriate county elections official or city elections official prior to the day the petition is filed,” stated the code.

To read more about this issue click here.
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Masonite Monster Mall Developer In Financial Turmoil

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From Janie Sheppard

UKIAH, Mendocino County, North California Apr 8, 2009

[The New Hampshire project is in trouble for not agreeing to widen the road and the the design plans for DDR's project here in Ukiah also has no plan to reroute traffic. -JS]

SEABROOK, Apr 06, 2009 (The Daily News of Newburyport) The developer proposing a massive shopping center for Route 1 has fallen into financial distress as it continues to refuse to widen the state highway that town officials say would assure the project’s approval.

Developers Diversified Realty has already poured more than $20 million into buying and improving the site for its proposed 500,000-square-foot shopping center. The additional roadwork would add a few million to its investment.

The company, however, has widely reported financial problems, its stock losing about 95 percent of its value in the last year.

Although doing very well in 2005 when it began its initiative in Seabrook, DDR — a publicly traded company — has been hit hard by the recession. A look at its stock values in the past four years shows stock that once traded at a high of $72.33 per share in February of 2007 opened on the stock exchange late last week at $2.39 a share.

According to market reports, the company has been suffering from rising debt and a cash shortage. Last month, DDR was dropped from Standard & Poor’s 500 Index “due to low market capitalization,” according to a report from Zacks, an Web-based market reporting site.

Keep reading DDR Owned by German Company→

Dumb Growth – When is enough, enough? (Masonite Monster Mall)

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From Dave Smith

5/6/09 Ukiah, Mendocino County, North California

At Sprawl-Busters.com you will find a list of 395 communities who have beaten a big box store in their community at least once, or pressured a developer to withdraw.

At NewRules.org you will find these victories over the forces of dumb, unsustainable growth:

Voters in Agawam, Mass soundly rejected two ballot measures that would have allowed National Realty & Development Corporation to build a 563,000-square-foot shopping center (about ten football fields, plus another 25 football fields worth of parking). Although NRDC did not name tenants, the project likely would have included two or more big-box stores and numerous mid-sized and smaller chain retailers.

Voters in the small town of Damariscotta, Maine, overwhelming approved a local law barring stores over 35,000 square feet (about the size of a medium grocery store). The vote puts an end to Wal-Mart’s plans to build a 187,000-square-foot supercenter in this village of just 2,000 people.

Voters in Frisco, Colorado, resoundingly defeated a plan to develop a Home Depot superstore.

The City Council of Santa Maria, California, voted unanimously to deny Wal-Mart’s request to rezone land for a supercenter. The vote took place before an overflow crowd of more than 200 citizens. Nearly forty people spoke at the hearing.

Masonite Monster Mall – The Initiative Measure Being Submitted to the Voters

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Initiative Measure to Be Submitted Directly to the Voters

The County Counsel has prepared the following title and summary of the chief purpose and points of the proposed measure:

Petition to enact a general plan and zoning code amendment, and mixed-use specific plan for the former site of the Masonite facility.

The ballot title is as follows:

AN INITATIVE TO ENACT A GENERAL PLAN AND ZONING CODE AMENDMENT, AND MIXED-USE SPECIFIC PLAN FOR THE FORMER SITE OF THE MASONITE FACILITY

The purpose of this Initiative is to amend the Mendocino County General Plan and Inland Zoning Code and to enact the Mendocino Crossings Mixed-Use Masonite Specific Plan for the former site of the Masonite facility.  The proposed amendment to the General Plan is attached to the Petition as Exhibit A and the Specific Plan is attached to the Petition as Exhibit B.

The former Masonite site is located in unincorporated Mendocino County and consists of approximately 76 acres.  The site is bounded on the west by North State Street, on the South by State Highway 101, on the east by the Northwest Pacific Railroad tracks, and on the north by Masonite Road.  In the current General Plan, the site is designated as Industrial and it is zoned as I-1 (Limited Industrial) and I-2 (General Industrial) for industrial use.

This Initiative would modify the existing land use designation of the site from Industrial to “Mixed-Use Specific Plan”.  This Mixed-Use Specific Plan designation will allow for a variety of uses including light industrial, retail, commercial, residential, office, hotel, entertainment, educational, public facilities, utility installations, parking lots and structures, and open space.

The proposed Specific Plan contains a conceptual land use plan, development standards, design and landscape guidelines, circulation and infrastructure plan, and project mitigation measures to mitigate potential impacts to the community and the environment.  The actual development of the site is subject to change based on market and regional demands.  The Specific Plan also states that water will be supplied to the site by the same well that serviced the area when the former Masonite facility was operating there.  Because the Specific Plan would be enacted by initiative, under the law it is not subject to the procedures under the California Environmental Quality Act (“CEQA”).

This Initiative must be adopted by a majority of the voters.  The Initiative also states that, in the event there is a competing measure on the ballot relating to a general plan designation, zoning, or permitted uses on the site of the former Masonite facility, or any other measure that seeks to amend or limit any provision of this Initiative or allow uses incompatible with this Initiative, those measures shall be deemed to conflict with the entire cohesive scheme adopted.  Because of this conflict, if this Initiative, and any such other measure, receives a majority of the votes at the election, the measure receiving the most votes shall prevail.

Dated:  April 1, 2009
JEANINE B. NADEL
County Counsel
County of Mendocino

[Thanks to Janie Sheppard -DS]
~~

Big Box Swindle – Masonite Monster Mall

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The True Cost of Mega-Retailers and the Fight for America’s Independent Businesses

4/1/09 Ukiah, North California

Excerpts from the Introduction

[I didn't move to this beautiful valley to shop. -Guiness McFadden]

The economic structure that mega-retailers are propagating represents a modern variation on the old European colonial system, which was designed not to build economically viable and self-reliant communities, but to extract their wealth and resources. Yet many cities eagerly usher in these corporate colonizers.

Some envision a tax windfall, only to discover that these sprawling stores impose a significant burden on public infrastructure and services. Or worse, after their local economies have been bulldozed, they find that they are utterly dependent on a few big boxes that might raise prices, lay off employees, or threaten to move to a neighboring town if they don’t receive a tax break…

As retail sprawls outward, running errands entails more driving. The 1990s saw a jump of more than 40 percent in the number of miles driven by the average household for shopping—which translates into an increase of almost 95 billion miles a year for the country as a whole. Mega-retailers are thus fueling smog, acid rain, and global warming. Retail sprawl has also emerged as a top threat to our rivers, lakes, and estuaries. The specific culprit is pavement, which does not allow rain to soak into the ground, but sends it, loaded with oils and other pollutants, rushing into nearby bodies of water. No other category of land use creates more pavement and polluted runoff than big-box stores and shopping centers…

Local retailers breathe life into our downtowns and neighborhood business districts. They provide a setting for casual socializing with our neighbors—standing in line at the bakery or walking along the sidewalk—which builds a sense of camaraderie and responsibility for one another. This kind of informal interaction has a tangible impact on community health. Studies show that people who live in places where a larger share of the economy is in the hands of locally owned businesses take a more active role in civic affairs. These communities come out ahead on various measures of social well-being. They have lower rates of poverty, crime, and infant mortality, and are more resilient in times of adversity. Their citizens are far more likely to attend public meetings, volunteer, and even vote than those living in areas dominated by big corporate chains…

I suspect a trick…

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From Michael Laybourn

3/30/09 Ukiah, North California

With a tip of the fedora for Janie Sheppard…
The big question is why would DDR want to change the zoning to build a mall these days? The economy tells us quite clearly that malls and shopping centers are not the way to go. Mall developers including DDR are all in serious financial trouble, as we can see here:

Friday March 27, 2009, 10:58 am EDT
NEW YORK (AP) — Fitch Ratings downgraded several ratings on Developers Diversified Realty Corp. on Friday, citing the shopping center developer’s liquidity position.

Fitch downgraded Developers Diversified’s issuer default rating, $1.3 billion in unsecured revolving credit facilities, $1.4 billion in unsecured medium-term notes and $833 million in unsecured convertible notes one notch to “BBB-” from “BBB.” The new rating is Fitch’s lowest investment-grade rating.

Fitch also downgraded $555 million in preferred stock to “BB+” from “BBB-,” sending it into non-investment grade, or “junk,” status. It assigned a negative outlook to the new ratings, implying another downgrade could be forthcoming. Fitch also said the company would have a liquidity shortfall of $300 million through the end of 2010 due to limited availability under the company’s revolving credit facilities and debts coming due in 2010. Last week, the company was removed from the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index due to a low market capitalization.

Holy smokes! Here is a company spiraling down to worthlessness that wants to spend a huge amount of money to convince voters to change the zoning for the Masonite property they bought to build a mall. This doesn’t seem to make any sense, just considering their own financial problems. In the past year DDR’s stock has plummeted from a high in 2007 of around $70 per share to a low of under $2 a share as of March, 2009. Nosing around a little bit more, we find that In December, 2008, another article noted that:

Mendocino County Voters Beware!

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From Janie Sheppard

3/30/09 Ukiah, North California

In April, a group calling itself Mendocino County Tomorrow will launch an effort to get enough signatures on a petition to allow placing an initiative on the ballot.

The initiative, if passed by a majority of Mendocino County voters, would allow building an 800,000 square foot mega mall on the old Masonite site, just north of the Ukiah city boundary.

Diversified Development Realty, better known by its initials “DDR,” realizing that the Board of Supervisors would vote 4-1 to defeat the attempt to change the zoning from industrial to retail, will now go to the voters.

The initiative, a 310-page document, would become the law on the Masonite site without environmental review under the California Environmental Quality Act.  Once passed, the developer could do anything it pleased, provided what it wanted to do fit within the very loose parameters of the initiative.  The county would have no leverage to get changes.  Now, when the county finds a builder’s plans would damage the environment, the county planners can get the plans changed.  Not so on the Masonite site if the initiative passes.

DDR, if it remains the developer, has very little capital.  It would skimp on the fancy stuff that you likely saw in the appealing mailers.  We know this because on Friday, March 27th, Fitch Ratings, the same rating agency that downgraded the county’s debt, downgraded DDR’s debt.  DDR debt was downgraded to the lowest investment grade.  Its preferred stock now has “junk” status.  And, it has a “liquidity shortfall” of 300 Million Dollars.  DDR’s broke.

Alternatively, what DDR may be trying to do is put the Masonite site up for sale, recouping its 6 Million Dollar investment and then some.   In which case, the county would not be dealing with DDR, but with some other developer that would be so leveraged after buying the site, it too would have no money for niceties.

Don’t sign DDR’s petition.  Just say NO.

Let’s save the Masonite site for industry and real jobs.

We can do it.  Si se puede.
~

See also Is the American mall dying? at MSN Money→
~~

Living from our local landscape and countryside – Wendell Berry

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From Wendell Berry
Interview mashup

3/20/09 Ukiah, North California

People need to live from their local landscape and their local countryside as much as they possibly can, as much as they reasonably can… The idea that a city surrounded by fertile farmland that’s well-watered should be importing food 2,500 miles away is preposterous. It drives the cost up and it removes from the consumers all the powers of choice, of knowledge and of judgment. The consumers who import foods from long distances eat what they’re given to eat, what they’re sold. Many things would improve if they ate closer to home, including the local farm economy.

It would be wonderful because the quality of our food would go up. As the distance that it’s transported decreased, the quality would go up, and it would also go up as it came more and more under the influence of the consumers. Consumers don’t eat hard, tasteless, characterless tomatoes because they choose to. They eat those tomatoes because those are the only tomatoes they’re offered…

If you’re talking about a local food economy or any other kind of local economy, you’re talking about an economy that’s going to have to run a considerable extent on cooperation, not on competition between consumers and producers. You’re talking about an atmosphere of good feeling in which people try to find out what they can do well for one another. The local consumer is going to have to be concerned that the local producer have a livable income. The local consumers want the best products possible and the local producers are going to have to be interested in supplying the most desirable products possible to the local consumers. So if you’re going to succeed, it can’t be a situation in which everybody is in an economic war against everybody. That’s a description of the global economy.

The advantage of the local economy is you can secede from the global economy, which permits the exploitation of everybody and everything for the benefit of relatively few.

There’s  a lot of scorn now toward people who say, “Not in my backyard,” but the “not-in-my-backyard” sentiment is one of the most valuable that we have. If enough people said, “Not in my backyard,” these bad innovations [big box malls] wouldn’t be in anybody’s backyard. It’s your own backyard you’re required to protect because in doing so you’re defending everybody’s backyard. It is an altogether healthy and salutary.

However, a community has to understand that if it refuses the proposal, then it has to come up with something better. And if a corporation comes in and says, “We want you to have this obnoxious installation because it will employ your people; it will bring jobs,” then the community has to have an answer to the question: “Where are we going to find jobs?” Sometimes it won’t be an easy question. Sometimes it will be a devastating question, but the community nevertheless has to begin to look to itself for the answers, not to the government—and not to these corporations that come in posing as saviors of the local community, because they don’t come in to save the local community.

So the community has to begin to ask what they need that can be produced locally, by local people and from the local landscape, and how it can be produced in a way that doesn’t damage the local landscape or the local community. You have to realize that people are working very hard to remove the choice between an economy of grace, based on generosity, and in an economy of scarcity based on acquisition. They can remove that choice simply by making it impossible for small economic enterprises to survive.

A community, for one thing, is an economy. And if you have a community but no local economy your community is seriously impaired. It becomes a thing of feeling only. And you can’t exclude any members from the community. If a community becomes false, it becomes artificial, and is in danger the way all false things are. A community can’t exclude the nonhuman creatures, for instance, if it hopes to last. It can’t exclude its climate. It can’t exclude the air. All these, in a real community, are members. So if you are careful enough in defining a community, you see that it’s a pattern of practical relationships. It’s also, of course, a pattern of loyalties and it’s an emotional pattern.
~~

Stark Choice: Masonite Monster Mall…

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…or…

…Transition Town Ukiah→

and

Masonite Transition Park
(Appropriate Technology Center)

:: Stay tuned in to Ukiah Blog ::

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Marching Orders – Masonite Monster Mall

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5/23/09 Ukiah, North California

Dear Mr. Smith,

There are reasons most of us members of “Mendocino County Tomorrow” cannot identify ourselves as we march to assemble signatures for “Mendocino Crossings”, or Developers Diversified Realty, or whatever you want to call us. Yes, DDR/”Mendocino Crossings” is our sponsor with their $1,000 gift, and are helping us in many other ways*.

And it’s true we’re not actually a legally registered non-profit organization. But this is all about profit. In fact, most of us were hoping to profit directly on DDR’s coattails, before their stock prices fell from $70 to $2 a share. You can understand why we wouldn’t want our names associated with that, either.

And some of us were silenced at our very first meeting of “Mendocino County Tomorrow”, when that micro-economist “expert” from Sonoma State, Rob Eyler, told us that DDR’s mall there would create the worst possible outcome for economic development in Mendocino County. The room sure was quiet then, and we’ve been silent since. Silence really is golden!

But many of us are Realtors® and other business men and women in Ukiah, and would not like to be singled out for a boycott. If people in town knew we were collaborating with DDR’s hoax, selling our neighbors out, we’re afraid we’d be tarred and feathered! So we’re forced to operate by stealth, hoping that we can dupe enough people into signing a petition – you know, in the interests of democracy.

Not all of us are proud of our roles in this end run around the County planning processes, the elected officials and the will of the citizens. It’s hard for some of us to swallow this line about “taking it to the people”, especially after that last election. It’s really all about leapfrogging over the public. But with this petition, there won’t be any environmental review of the Masonite site. We’ll be saving the public a lot of time looking at that old dump. No “Love Canal” here!

I know that some have characterized this petition thing as some kind of “corporate hostile takeover”. That is so not us! We are not hostile, not at all. We are your neighbors, your associates and business partners. We just prefer to remain nameless. Think of us as your special “Secret Friends”. Others have already called us “collaborators”, as if we’re some kind of “fifth column”. Where do people get those ideas? And as for that sarcastic guy calling us “Mendocino County Yesterday”? Well, I think you can understand why we don’t want our names in the paper!

I wish I could say more, but I have to rush off to a “Board” meeting, if I can find it. Perhaps I can come out later, contact you, and we can discuss this more. Please don’t print my name, or put this in any stupid “blog”.

Very best,

XXX

Mendocino County Tomorrow

*PS:   See enclosure above. DDR/ “Mendocino Crossings” really helped us on the “Mendocino County Tomorrow” website!

[A letter we have yet to see from "Mendocino County Tomorrow" -EJ]
~~

Lipsticking The Pig – Masonite Monster Mall

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From Dave Smith

3/15/09 Ukiah, North California

Letter To The Editors

Our community is gearing up once again to keep the Masonite site available for living-wage jobs as a light industrial site, rather than permitting DDR to change its zoning so they can impose a Monster Mall on our citizens, colonizing our county, sucking revenue and profits out to distant absentee owners from our small towns and communities, devastating our locally-owned, independent businesses, crushing our small business entrepreneurial  spirit, and reducing our job seekers to non-living wages with no benefits. Two County Supervisors have lost their jobs, and several City Council candidates were defeated, for supporting this travesty. What part of our resounding NO don’t DDR, and its local enabler Ruff and Associates, understand?

Corporate retailers have so eroded our sense of community that they think they can sell it back to us in the form of superficial design concepts. To overcome opposition on the part of city planners and elected officials, DDR has made a big show of redesigning their original Monster Mall plans “to better fit the community” by adding amenities, like pockets of “green space” and pedestrian walkways that snake alongside parking lots to add a suggestion of walkability to their project built entirely for cars, and solar powered parking lots. This is standard operating procedure that mall builders have used to hoodwink communities for many years.

These revisions are presented to us as major concessions and meant to make county planners feel as though they are doing their jobs by holding a tough line with the developer and even forging a legitimate compromise with citizens who oppose their project. But they are obscuring the real issues by putting lipstick on the pig. You can’t put cosmetics on a bad concept and expect it to work. It won’t work, and we’re not going to allow the project.

Another common ruse is to depict themselves as responsible and involved members of the community by donating to various local causes and charities, then manipulate the publicity to further the corporation’s goals. One community charity  in another town celebrated with one of those blown-up checks from Wal-Mart for $500. That Wal-Mart store was doing upwards of $100 million in sales, a big chunk of it stolen from downtown merchants.

The most critical question about corporate retailers charitable giving, rarely asked, is whether their donations actually make up for the contributions lost when locally owned businesses close in their wake. WalMart donated $170 million in 2004, which actually works out to less than one-tenth of 1 percent of revenue, the equivalent of someone who earns $35,000 a year giving $21 to charity. Why did Target, with no local presence, recently donate to a local charity?

We will vote NO on any initiatives DDR puts on the ballot to change the zoning on the Masonite property. History has moved on, malls are dinosaurs, and our community will defend itself and create its own unique future.

[Thanks to Big Box Swindle for some of the above info. -DS]
~

See also The Mall Man’s Dreams For Ukiah at The AVA→

…and More Big Box Marts Coming To Ukiah?→

…and The Wal-Mart Dilemma→

…and Muy Mall Meltdown→

…and DeadMalls.com→

…and what about the malls here soon to be abandoned?
The Parable of the Shopping Mall (Alexander Cockburn) at Creators.com→
Hat tip Jim Houle

Images Credit: Evan Johnson
~~

The Mall To Nowhere – Mendocino Crossings (Masonite Monster Mall)

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From Cliff Paulin

3/16/09 Ukiah, North California

”Mendocino Crossings”:
A Metaphor for Our Time in the Ukiah Valley & Mendocino County

Much has been made of the proposed regional retail shopping center, Mendocino Crossings, being proposed by Developers Diversified Reality (DDR) at the former Masonite site just north of Ukiah.  While the name Mendocino Crossings was likely chosen by DDR to represent the Ukiah Valley as the county’s center of trade, the name also reflects the fact that our community faces a major decision concerning the direction we want to see our valley move in.

In the direction proposed by DDR, we have a model that promotes suburban sprawl: a development outside the city limits and urban core of Ukiah that requires conversion of valuable industrial land into an island of retail in a sea of parking lots.  This is a model that undermines local business, brings low wage service sector jobs, puts strain on city and county resources, brings increased traffic, and causes further homogenization of the unique character of our county.

In the other direction is community self determination that builds on local assets by constructing an infrastructure that will provide sustainable economic growth for the future via the reactivation of light industry, value creation for local products, the creation of living wage jobs, and the relocalization of our economy which is so vital in these uncertain times.

Living in the wasteland of the free – Iris Dement

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We got preachers dealing in politics and diamond mines
and their speech is growing increasingly unkind
They say they are Christ’s disciples
but they don’t look like Jesus to me
and it feels like I am living in the wasteland of the free

We got politicians running races on corporate cash
Now don’t tell me they don’t turn around and kiss them peoples’ ass
You may call me old-fashioned
but that don’t fit my picture of a true democracy
and it feels like I am living in the wasteland of the free

We got CEO’s making two hundred times the workers’ pay
but they’ll fight like hell against raising the minimum wage
and If you don’t like it, mister, they’ll ship your job
to some third-world country ‘cross the sea
and it feels like I am living in the wasteland of the free

Living in the wasteland of the free
where the poor have now become the enemy
Let’s blame our troubles on the weak ones
Sounds like some kind of Hitler remedy
Living in the wasteland of the free

We got little kids with guns fighting inner city wars
So what do we do, we put these little kids behind prison doors
and we call ourselves the advanced civilization
that sounds like crap to me
and it feels like I am living in the wasteland of the free

We got high-school kids running ’round in Calvin Klein and Guess
who cannot pass a sixth-grade written test
but if you ask them, they can tell you
the name of every crotch on MTV
and it feels like I am living in the wasteland of the free

We kill for oil, then we throw a party when we win
Some guy refuses to fight, and we call that the sin
but he’s standing up for what he believes in
and that seems pretty damned American to me
and it feels like I am living in the wasteland of the free

Living in the wasteland of the free
where the poor have now become the enemy
Let’s blame our troubles on the weak ones
Sounds like some kind of Hitler remedy
Living in the wasteland of the free

While we sit gloating in our greatness
justice is sinking to the bottom of the sea
Living in the wasteland of the free
~

Our Town

And ya know the sun’s settin’ fast
And just like they say, nothing good ever lasts
Go on now and kiss it goodbye
But hold on to your lover ’cause your heart’s bound to die
Go on now and say goodbye to our town, to our town
Can’t you see the sun’s settin’ down on our town, on our town
Goodnight.

Our Town – Iris Dement on YouTube→
~~

The Wal-Mart Dilemma

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From Dave Pollard (2003)

Please read this thorough and extraordinary article from Fast Company entitled The Wal-Mart You Don’t Know. If its length discourages you, read the following excerpt (emphasis mine), and you’ll want to go back and read the rest:

If Levi [Strauss] clothing is a runaway hit at Wal-Mart, that may indeed rescue Levi as a business. But what will have been rescued? The Signature line–it includes clothing for girls, boys, men, and women–is an odd departure for a company whose brand has long been an American icon. Some of the jeans have the look, the fingertip feel, of pricier Levis. But much of the clothing has the look and feel it must have, given its price (around $23 for adult pants): cheap. Cheap and disappointing to find labeled with Levi Strauss’s name. And just five days before the cheery profit news, Levi had another announcement: It is closing its last two U.S. factories, both in San Antonio, and laying off more than 2,500 workers, or 21% of its workforce. A company that 22 years ago had 60 clothing plants in the United States–and that was known as one of the most socially reponsible corporations on the planet–will, by 2004, not make any clothes at all. It will just import them.

The article brilliantly describes what I call the ‘Wal-Mart Dilemma’, which is represented by the cycle diagrammed at above in red.

The intervention in blue that can stop this ‘race to the bottom’ is anathema to ‘free’ traders. It says simply that if a product can reasonably be produced domestically, then duties and other regulations should be imposed to protect domestic producers. In other words, the alternative to ‘free’ trade is not no trade, but rather regulated trade, regulated to protect the economy and social fabric of the regulating country. That switches the cycle shown in red to the cycle shown in green.

Of course, it’s not all black and white, or we would have resisted the globalization extremists and wouldn’t be facing this dilemma today at all. In the red vicious cycle, the seduction is:

• lower prices ‘every day’
• low inflation

and the downside is:

• low wages
• low product quality
• high unemployment
• high poverty levels

The green cycle also is not perfect. Its seduction is:

• high wages
• high product quality
• lower unemployment
• lower poverty levels

and its downside is:

• higher prices
• higher inflation

You pays your money and you takes your choice. In my biased opinion, the vast majority of people are ahead with the green cycle, and the very rich few are ahead with the red cycle. Guess who’s lobbying and bribing governments for untrammeled globalization and ‘free’ trade? Contrary to what most of us are taught in school, modest inflation is the single most effective way to painlessly redistribute wealth from the rich to the poor, because it allows debts to be repaid in ‘cheaper’ future dollars. There are environmental and social advantages to the green cycle as well. The use of slave labour is discouraged. Lax environmental laws in third world countries are not exploited as much. And if the red cycle gets out of control (some would argue it already has), a possible consequence is deflation, a terrible threat to the whole economy that we need to avoid like the plague.

Keep reading The Wal-Mart Dilemma at How To Save The World→

See also The Mall To Nowhere→

and Wal-Mart chased out of Santa Rosa→
Hat tip Steve Scalmanini
~~

Muy Mall Meltdown

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From Grist

Mall-operating behemoth General Growth Properties plunges in value

Here’s a name that deserves a bit more attention in this financial meltdown: General Growth Properties, which owns, manages, or has interests in more than 200 shopping malls in 45 states. Staggering under a massive debt load and battered by the bad economy, General Growth looks headed for bankruptcy or a fire sale. As recently as last June, its shares fetched $40. Today, you can snap one up for less than 40 cents.

Does General Growth’s plight augur the un-malling of America? Maybe. The Wall Street Journal reported recently that:

Last year, [mall-based] retail sales on a per-square-foot basis in the top 54 U.S. markets declined by their greatest extent since the 1990-91 recession…. Vacancy rates at U.S. malls climbed to 7.1% in the fourth quarter, the highest rate since real estate research firm Reis Inc. started tracking the figure in 2000. And average rents have started to decline.

The mall industry, like so many industries in the modern global economy, thrives on rapid growth fueled by easy credit. Now credit has dried up, debt needs to be repaid, and sales growth has gone into reverse.

Time to start thinking about other economic models?

See also The Mall To Nowhere→

Big Box of Trouble: Dealing with the coming plague of empty superstores

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[Lord knows we already have too many Big Boxes here that will be going belly-up. Let's stop the Masonite Big Box of Job Loss project in its tracks, so we don't have to deal with even more of these out-of-human-scale monstrosities later. -DS]

by Jebediah Reed
The Infrastrucurist

When Circuit City announced last month that it was going out of business, everyone’s concern was naturally with the 34,000 employees that got laid off. Less noted has been the fate of the chain’s 1,500 big box stores scattered across the U.S. and Canada. The company, whose locations average about 25,000 square feet, was an anchor tenant in many malls and shopping centers. With numerous other big retailers teetering, not only are the prospects for filling Circuit City’s spaces gloomy, there will likely be a rash of follow-on closings among neighboring stores. And many analysts think the national retail shakeout is still in its early stages.

The problem of retail vacancies on this scale is so new that it hasn’t really been studied yet. Perhaps the only authority on the subject of empty big box stores is Oberlin College professor and artist Julia Christensen. She has spent the last seven years traveling around the country seeking out and documenting cases of communities reclaiming abandoned big boxes and putting them to a socially productive use–for instance, as museums, libraries, rec centers, and schools. She wrote about it all in her recently published book Big Box Reuse (MIT Press). A few days ago, we got her thoughts on how towns and cities can make beneficial use of these vacant structures and turn a hole in the local fabric into a community asset…

You describe big box stores as unsustainable. In what way particularly?
The main thing is that they are built on a car-centric structure. So you can’t really get to these buildings without cars. Then there’s the acres and acres of impermeable parking lots, land that we’re just paving over…

Keep reading Big Box of Trouble at the Infrastucturist→
Hat tip Energy Bulletin
~~

An urgent call to ‘buy local’

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From The Christian Science Monitor

[Many of us remember the "debate" that Michael Shuman had here in Ukiah, which DDR refused to attend, during our fight to save the Masonite site for future jobs. Michael has just been appointed the position of Director of Research and Public Policy for Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE) - DS]

Job developer Michael Shuman seeks to rebuild struggling communities with home-grown businesses.

For Michael Shuman it was the equivalent of an earthquake. Seeking cheaper labor in Canada, Toronto-based Branscan Corp. threw 1,400 people out of work by closing two paper mills in Millinocket, Maine, in 2002. The unemployment rate in this region of central Maine skyrocketed to Depression era levels of nearly 40 percent.

Mr. Shuman, an economist and job developer, was called in for damage control. Aided by an $8 million federal grant, he and his colleagues at Maine’s Training and Development Corp. were able to help most of the laid-off workers get back on their feet. But the experience convinced Shuman to do what any sensible person might do after such a calamity: Build something that’s earthquake-resistant.

To him, that involves locally owned businesses.

For the past five years, Shuman has been barnstorming across the United States, preaching the gospel of economic “localism.” It’s an appeal to community values as well as economic self-interest, a call to support locally owned businesses that don’t outsource, don’t pack up their businesses and leave on a moment’s notice, and who recycle their customers’ dollars back into the community.

Shuman describes his effort as “a political campaign that never ends.” He speaks mostly in small rural communities, often desolate landscapes with shuttered mills and boarded-up storefronts. His campaign has put him in the epicenter of a debate about what’s best for the economic health of a community: Locally owned businesses or large, multinational chain stores.

Keep reading An urgent call at CSM→

Exclusive! DDR Signs First Tenant Contract For The Masonite Site (Parody)

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More Big Box Marts Coming To Ukiah?→

[Retail leakage occurs when members of a community spend money outside that community or when money spent inside that community is transferred outside the community. Chain stores and franchises have high leakage rates due to the transferring of sales revenue and profits to a corporate headquarters. Start enforcing anti-trust laws and get these leakage piggies out of our community. Our local entrepreneurs are eager to serve our community and keep our dollars circulating locally. -DS]

Do you see what I see?

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From Janie Sheppard
Mendocino County

Jeff Adams, the man on the ground for DDR (Developers Diversified Realty, aka, Mega Mall at the old Masonite site) resurfaced recently.  In a January 13, 2009 letter he informed the Governor that DDR intended to create a project that we could be proud of.  Looks like DDR isn’t going away any time soon.  I wonder why not when I contemplate what’s happening locally and on the national scene.  Why doesn’t DDR see what I see?

I see:  Lead article in the New York Times Sunday (2/1/09) Business Section, entitled Our Love Affair With Malls Is on the Rocks.  In the article, the reporter points to the nation’s bad habit of overspending as one of two causes of the economic crisis, the other cause being “mortgage-related financial insanity.”  But, the reporter informs us, because “personal consumption” accounts for 70 percent of the American economy, if we don’t spend, we don’t recover.  The reporter analogizes thusly:  “[T]he mall we married has become the toxic spouse we can’t quit . . ..”  So, why marry the mall?  If we can make DDR go away, we wouldn’t have to marry it and we wouldn’t end up paying alimony if things didn’t work out.  Seems obvious, doesn’t it?

I see:  Windsor Town Green, a mixed retail/housing development between Healdsburg and Santa Rosa, isn’t doing well.  When that development first opened, Laura Fogg and I visited it, describing what we saw  in an article published in the Ukiah Daily Journal (December 11, 2005).  Three years later, I revisited the area to see how it was faring in the face of the current economic downturn, depression, recession, whatever you want to call it.  I found lots of empty storefronts.  Why would DDR’s project, Mendocino Crossings, be different?

I see:  The localization movement is growing.  More and more people don’t like the idea of the money they spend going to distant corporate headquarters, never to be reinvested in Mendocino County.  Local shops reported good holiday sales while big chain stores mostly reported their sales were poor to awful.  We could continue our personal consumption without acquiring Mendocino Crossings, a toxic spouse.  So far as I know, it’s not even immoral to spend money locally . . .

So:  DDR’s matchmakers urge us to get married.  I say the odds are so against such a marriage working out that we should call off the romance.  Jeff Adams seems like a nice guy.  We could remain friends.

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CFAR Pushes Masonite Site Environmental Review

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From Antonio Andrade
Citizens For Adequate Review

As DDR was not being responsive to our lawsuit and claiming refuge for their activities claiming they were simply implementing the site remediation plan signed off on by the North Coast Regional Water Quality Board’s (NCRWQB), it prompted Citizens For Adequate Review (CFAR) to review an early communication directed to the Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) and to reframe some of those issues and follow-up with other issues that had not been addressed in the remediation process.

We did not go public with the communication when it was sent in late summer. We did not want to negatively impact our negotiations with the County or DDR. Now that the suit is settled, it is important that the City, County, local agencies and Boards who have oversight responsibilities continue to press for comprehensive remediation of the site. My conversations with Environmental Health Director John Morley were not encouraging in this respect. It was John’s position that his Department has no oversight responsibilities for the site and that his Department was mistakenly listed in the NCRWQB-approved remediation plan as a secondly agency who should be coordinated with for remediation of the site. Isn’t the site located in Mendocino County? Don’t they oversee the buried fuel containers for gas stations in the county and didn’t they oversee the remediation process for leaky fuel tanks?

Right now the focus needs to be on getting a response to this communication and/or getting DTSC in on the oversight…

Continue reading CFAR→

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This and That and DDR

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From Janie Sheppard

This post will most likely turn out to be a bit of this and that, locally inspired. A bit of this: I wish someone would tell us exactly what DDR, would be developer of the old Masonite site, is up to. Are they folding their tent? All I know is that Jeff Adams, DDR’s local man-on-the-scene, isn’t answering phone calls, even from people who were (are?) working with him. We do know that DDR, apparently without any qualms on the part of the Board of Supervisors, tore up all the railroad track on the property, which would be a strange thing to do if DDR was thinking of unloading the property, or maybe not. Mysteries abound. On a related matter, could someone who attended the December 14th meeting of Mendocino County Tomorrow report on what’s going on with that group?

The larger question posed by DDR’s plans is: Who does DDR envision its customers would be? Mervyn’s couldn’t make it, Kohl’s thinks it can even while more county residents have less money to spend. I’m curious how they figure that. Long suspicious of marketing studies I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that whoever conducted the original DDR marketing study was using made-up numbers, just like Ponzi scheme master, Bernie Madoff. Likewise, whoever conducted the marketing study for Kohl’s.

On the subject of made-up numbers one memorable scene comes to mind: Supervisor Colfax expressing disbelief that DDR’s proposed development would result in an increase of 26 eating establishments hereabouts. Disbelief seems too mild a word; astonishment perhaps? And yet on the basis of patently ludicrous numbers shopping centers get built. Not all succeed. In the end, I suspect their success or failure has little to do with the forecasts in a marketing study and more to do with elusive factors such as feng shui. There isn’t a lot of feng shui at the Mervyn’s site, which is owned by DDR, as Evan Johnson’s ironic photo shows. If Kohl’s succeeds, obviously I’m wrong, but I’d rather see the building demolished and a community garden established on the site, growing vegetables for the local food bank, Plowshares, and the Ford Street Project. The feng shui would emerge, people would eat, and profits would be in the form of healthier local residents.

The local farmer’s market at Alex Thomas Plaza has quite a different vibe: Local merchants selling fresh, locally grown food, handmade toys, beautiful woolen hats and scarves, and cosmetics, some of which I captured in a photo post. I’m spending whatever I can afford there, where the local merchants are appreciative and helpful and the profits stay at home. Why should I help DDR or Kohl’s when their profits go to huge out-of-state corporations? And what the local merchants don’t carry (yet) I will try to do without, or buy at a thrift shop, where the profits stay right here.

For a winter vacation we went to Mendocino to stay at the Stanford Inn, within 50 miles of our house, but with all the amenities of far-away fancy resorts. There, the profits do not get sucked up by a big corporate chain, but are plowed right back into the business and the county. It is a great way to get away while keeping your money at home . . . My grandson was drawn like a magnet to the electric train set up under a lovingly adorned Christmas tree; Bill and I loved the imaginative food, and my daughter and son-in-law loved the huge swimming pool and the hot tub. The dogs loved the strange smells, the other dogs, and the cats (well, love isn’t quite the right word for the cats, but their tails did wag).

And that’s it for today.
~~

See also The Mall Man’s Dreams For Ukiah at the AVA→

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