Hi All,
The Altadena Town Council's Land Use Committee just gave their approval for the Conditional Use Permit for the sale of liquor at the Lake and Calaveras development. Some highlights of the information presented...
- The project won't go through without the CUP since this is so important to the proposed tenants. The next step from here is to go before the Altadena Town Council on May 19th. Beyond this will be the ATC's recommendation to the LA County Planning commission then one other County approval is needed.
- They expect the approval process to take another two or three months. If approved, the construction process should take another 12 to 16 months.
- Rite Aid is more firmly on board than the other possible tenant (Fresh and Easy). They're currently on a month to month lease. Without a long-term lease they aren't interested in investing in the property to modernize it.
- Fresh and Easy would sell only beer and wine with no single sales (etc.) that cause cause an attractive nuisance. Rite Aid would continue to sell a full range of liquor as they do now.
- The incoming census tract residents seem to have expressed interest in the project. The outgoing census tract residents seem to have expressed mainly concern that they'll be losing Rite Aid and that the property will remain vacant for some time.
- The Rite Aid representative said she'd noticed that their current property is already being marketed.
I'm really shocked they would do this. it goes against twenty five years of Altadena Town Council policy against having any alcohol outlets expand near schools. we have as a community turned away many would be locally owned restaurants who were going to be less close than that to Eliot because they were too close.
The ATC and LUC seem to have some kind of new ethos where approval for out of town interests is some kind of emergency that must be approved NOW with no real public input, and no thought to what precident they are setting.
I'm sure approval will be instant at the ATC meeting. Monte Cedro all over again.
For more information, see the better written version of this story at Altadenablog...
http://www.altadenablog.com/2009/05/former-wamu-property-conditional-use...