For comparison, the city's recent purchase of the 2.6-acre Pacific View abandoned school site for $10 million works out to more than 10 times the price at $3.85 million per acre. Pacific View is admittedly an even more prime location, but is zoned far more restrictively.Tonight we learned that not only is there asbestos at Pacific View that will require expensive remediation, but more than 10% of the entire property is useless due to necessary access easements for 4th Street homes.
Given the loss of 0.32 acres to easements, the new Pacific View price is $4.4 million per acre!
Please clarify. I'm multi-tasking with kids.
ReplyDeleteI thought the redux unction in usable property only happens if the neighbors fight for a full width road and setbacks where today it's a narrow alley.
Not sure. A big chunk of the reduction is the existing dirt road which is the only access to the houses.
DeleteThey mentioned an additional setback if the easement was formalized, which I presume it will have to be eventually. That 0.32 acres included the setback.
Thanks. I think you are right. The .32 was a west case, assuming the residents insist on a standard width paved road and setbacks.
DeleteWhat's unclear to me: can the residents make this demand at any time, or can we lock them in to a position now? What happens if we start making plans and one of the homes sells to a new owner who demands the full Monty?
I don't think the current residents want the traffic--they seem to like the existing alley according to the lawyer who spoke.
The residents demands little not, the county fire Marshall will demand a 24 foot width easement, it's county code.
DeleteKranz sold out Encinitas just like Galager did with the hall property....
ReplyDeleteWhat a loser!!!!
Did he hammer watermelons?
DeleteWhat in the world just happened? This is incredible! The City was so sure there was no toxins in the building or on the grounds! Tell me I didn't see what I thought I saw on the screen.
ReplyDeleteThey knew about the asbestos tiles a few years ago. Bob Bonde went in with an assessment crew for the earlier arts proposal. I talked to Bob a few months ago, and his take was consistent with what we heard tonight.
DeleteRight. And our other local schools just as old or older don't have asbestos tiles/insulation etc?. I wouldn't bet much on that. Developers are the first in line to slam PV purchase. Pretty outrageous letting the city sell other acreage so cheap though.
Delete$13 million for a lifeguard tower and a piece of property that will cost at minimum another $10 million.
ReplyDeleteThis Council is clueless and needs to be removed as soon as possible.
I will be voting them out. Kranz has zero chance as mayor.
Dalakranz wants a McMansion ordinance but he'll approve a McTower we can't afford-
DeleteI told you there was asbestos butnoooooo, I crazy wild eyed loonies in this town have to make everyone pay for their recreation. Ie, art colony. What a bunch if maroons.
ReplyDeleteIt was built in 1953. There is a sign on the site. I was at the bidder's walk through in Feb '14, and the question of asbestos came up. The groundskeeper said it was in the glue that was used to affix the floor tiles.
ReplyDeleteThe council tonight spent over 1 and 1/2 hours discussing the findings of the Invasive Plant Committee. They started at 8:15pm. That was right before the Density Bonus item on the agenda. Boy, did they take their sweet time asking one stoopid question after another. However, I learned that figs and olives, although non native, will be spared the woodsman's ax.
how much time did the council spend discussing the due dilgence report, the asbestos and lead paint problem or possibly renegotiating the terms?
DeleteHw much time did the council discuss the unfunded projects that will remain unfunded becuase they just increased city debt levels by $750K a year
What is means is city streets will never get fixed. Bad streets will get worse , good streets will go bad. Thanks to your city council.
DeleteIt must a one enormous fantasy world these politicians live in... To bad the public pays the bills and the price.
Whatever became of pension reform? That is spinning out of control and gets larger by the day.... Millions to a handful of people that did day to day jobs not significantly different from others, but are rewarded as tho they are lottery winners.
DeleteLudicrous is the only word I can come up with. Why, after seven years working on this invasive plant proposal did it have to be on the agenda tonight. There were more important things to discuss.
ReplyDeleteCome on, we all know why: to drive folks out of the room come density bonus discussion time. Same old, same old can't get the agenda quite right excuse.
DeleteWe need some good candidates for both Council and Mayor. It is late in the season. I hope we get some takers. Otherwise, we are screwed. This City Council is ALMOST as bad as the last. At least $tock$ is gone. Time to vote out more incumbents.
ReplyDeleteAsbestos remediation is a contractor's dream. They charge enormous fees to have lower paid workers in jump suits bag the material - then off to a certified toxic waste dump. Because of the potential health issues, the costs can be 10X or more what a comparable clean up would be. But generally it is no CDC operation - just some extra gear from Home Depot. Maybe get Barth, Shaffer and Kranz in jump suits and respirators to do the job?
ReplyDeleteCan Kranz get his designer suit from Men's Warehouse?
DeleteI guarantee it
DeleteWRONG!!!!!
ReplyDeleteIt was a fair price for being north county next to ocean.
Can you provide us any recent comps at $4.4 million per acre that aren't oceanfront?
Delete9:40 as Judge Smails said in the movie Caddyshack "well- we're waiting !"
DeleteI understand that the total cost for Pacific View property alone including asbestos, containinated soil and interest is 22 million dollars. UNBELIEVABLE!
ReplyDeleteWait til they actually try to build something!
DeleteHow much has Friends of the Arts raised so far?
Why didn't they re-negoiate the price with the school district?
ReplyDeleteBasic Business 101
The council got screwed, the city got screwed, and the taxpayers are royally screwed. Thanks for nothing city council for a piece of over priced property that will sit there for years.
ReplyDeleteVote out all incumbents.
Agreed. Drive the bastards out. Let them be followed by 1/2 of the staff.
DeleteAgreed!!!!!!!!
DeleteWhich half?
DeleteIn light of these new disclosures, Gaspar and Muir voted to re-negoiate the contract with EUSD. The majority said NO.
ReplyDeleteSome folks need to chill a bit about the lead and asbestos. Almost all older homes and buildings have these and unless they are disturbed by some kind of construction that opens up the sealed in surfaces they are safe. Any one who works in the construction business knows this only too well. We all have been living with lead and asbestos our whole lives and unless they are messed with they are not a health hazard. If they are, then the need to be hire specialists for proper disposal are required. Don't let this become an issue. It is customary to paint over lead paint and unless the asbestos floor tiles are broken up or cracked they can be covered up the same. Health departments know this well. Anyone who doubts this, please confirm for yourselves if you care to. As for the huge overpaying to baird I am incensed and would relish the opportunity to pay him half, if even that much, of what eventually went down over this special gift to our community.
ReplyDeleteNo govt building can have an acceptable amount of asbestos. Nice try....
DeleteMarco loves people like you. Asbestos clean up at PV will be at least $750K.
Not true. Asbestos is not a problem, including in government buildings, such as the school classrooms, until the flooring is removed. Some asbestos was supposedly already removed the school district.
DeleteThe classrooms could be rehabbed, without tearing out the floors; many government and private buildings, built in the 50's and before, contain asbestos. Lead paint is not an issue, unless it is peeling. Lead paint is remediated all the time.
The City could have renegotiated, though, based on the "due diligence report," which is comparable to a potential homeowner's inspection report. The biggest factor was the private easement for access to homes, which reduces the useable acreage of the school site.
Lisa Shaffer kept saying, "we were already aware of that" (the private road),which is true, but it was LEVERAGE the City could have used to lower the price, as explained to Council, repeatedly, by land use attorney Felix Tinkov, who also spoke on density bonus.
You are not backing up your false statements, because you can't, 2:39.
10 mil is a great price
ReplyDeleteexcept it's not $10M (and that's not a great price when the estimate was about $4.5M)
Deleteadd to $10M- millions more in interest
add to $10M millions more in clean up costs
add to $10M millions more in bond offering and future legal fees
add to the $10M millions more in new construction fees
BURP!!! But the pensions are safe!
ReplyDelete2:28- 10 million is a great price to exactly who? I know I didn't want it for that price, even if that is the final price. None of my neighbors wanted it. So exactly who benefits? And I am really running out of patience with the "legacy property" argument, so can you do a bit better? You think it's a good price. I am respectfully asking "why?"
ReplyDeleteBarth knew she blew it, she stepped down.
ReplyDeleteTony and Lisa are clueless. Them attaching themselves to the stupid $30 million dollar PV art center is as stupid as it comes.
Both will be one term council members. They will not get my money or vote again. Traders. What ever happened to righting City Hall?
10:22pm Is that you your lowness? Are our council members traders or traitors? That bought on line degree doesn't seem to be serving you too well. You got what you paid for though. What does righting city hall mean? Oh, I get it . You must mean writing to city hall. Sometimes it takes me a minute to decipher what you were going for. It is kind of entertaining in its own way. Keep them coming.
ReplyDeleteI disagree.
DeleteEUSD would argue that the city was negotiating in bad faith. If they sued, they would argue that the city knew, or should have known about the asbestos at the time of the $10M bid. They would subpoena documents and emails related to the earlier Arts Alive transaction, which included a due diligence assessment of the property, and also found asbestos.
In court, that's called a slam dunk.
Oops.
DeleteMy 7:16 post should have been in response to 11:14pm immediately below.
Sorry.
7:16
Deleteyou apparently have little business sense and no real world experience.
1.There is a contract to buy the property.
2. The city council could have refused to buy the property based on the due dilgence revelations of led, asbestos or other- (when you save enough money to buy your first home you will learn the transaction has a contingency the buyer (the city) has to remove)
3. Prior to removing the contingency and accepting the due dilgence the buyer can a. accept the due dilgence b. walk away from the deal possibly losing the deposit c. renegotiate the deal- asking for a lower price, repairs to be paid by the seller etc.
There is no lawsuit, there is no slam dunk. Only a council that in March said the city finances were crap and had too much debt, proposed raising taxes a solution, and the voted to waste $10M on a property that appraised for $4.5 million with no plan to pay to clean it up or build a new one
8:14,
DeleteI agree with just about everything you said.
The key word in your post is "revelations." The root word there is reveal. Nothing was revealed. The city was in possession of documents and emails detailing the extent of lead paint and asbestos PRIOR to the $10M bid.
Ask Bob Bonde.
8:14 - there is a concept in real estate transactions referred to as "specific knowledge". Basically, whatever knowledge you have about the property prior to performing your diligence can not be used as a basis to trigger a contingency. Since the city entered into a lease and made improvements to the property, their "specific knowledge" is assumed to be almost total, and their diligence would be limited to only those things they couldn't possibly know about as lessee. So as it pertains to this deal, you got #1 right, but there would have been a very, very high bar for #'s 2 & 3. Hey, 1 out of 3 ain't that bad!!
Delete- The Sculpin
9:03 wrong again
Deletea buyer can back out of a deal - possibly losing the deposit
a buyer can renegotiate a deal prior to accepting due dilgence (as the council did weds night) or signing on off physical inspections
c. The buyer can act like fellow idiots and pay $10M for a property that appraised for far less and move ahead with the deal.
I guess when it's not actually your money you don't really care- like Barth Shaffer and Kranz
9:55 - sorry, but I was under the assumption we were referring to having some business sense - my bad. Sorry, but business sense says you don't back out of a deal on a whim, especially if you know as much as the city did about PV. It's bad faith, and it destroys your credibility for future deals. Business sense says you can't re-trade on information you already knew - again, bad faith and destroys credibility for future deals. As for your 3rd point, OK (again 1 out of 3!). The moment they agreed to the LOI is the moment the train left the station. The only thing that can derail this train now is if the city is unable to get the financing - which is unlikely.
Delete- The Sculpin
9:56,
DeleteSculpin nailed it. Let me add that you are conflating several issues. I agree with you that the city likely paid too much. I would love to have the property at a lower price, and would encourage the city to use legitimate leverage to knock down the price. The problem is--we have no leverage in the due diligence report. There is nothing in the report that the city didn't already know before we agreed to the price.
10:11 BS
DeleteThe city stood to loose a small amount by backing out of the deal and losing the deposit-
this small loss would have reaped big gains by allowing taxpayers to
1. Be on the hook for clean up costs (Millions)
2. Be on the hook for new permitting planning costs (appx 1m)
3. Be on the hook for new construction costs ($5m)
4. Be on the hook for an over inflated purchase price ($5.5 M)
5. Be on the hook for annual debt service ($750,000x30= $22m)
So Eienstien- the council culd have walked away from the deal, told Baird to pound sand (literally) lost the depsit but saved taxpayers over $34M
You might wasting our money-
10:23- you are wrong- if we walked away from the deal who would Baird sell to?
Morevover- the city could have walked away from the deal and filed an injunction comeppling EUSD to apply the Naylor Act
Barth Shaffer and Kranz are not only known liars, they are poor business people as well.
I'll give you this, 10:50:
DeleteYour business acumen, legal analysis, logic are all as advanced as your grammar and spelling.
Again 10:50 - I was under the assumption we were referring to having some business sense - again, my bad. The city stood to lose far, far, far more than its deposit if it backed out of the deal. Where I sit, this is a really bad deal for the city, but equally as bad, no worse, would be to walk away from it for no reason. The city was aware of all of your points and went ahead and made the offer. They can't say now that they didn't totally think it through and "can we have our money back - no harm no foul". If they did that, any future financing of anything would be really, really expensive.
Delete- The Sculpin
Oh, and if you're going to invoke 'ole Albert's name, at least spell it right....................
11:04 walk away for no reason? The post gave you $34 million dollars worth of reasons to walk away. you might prefer taking a bath to getting a haircut or throwing good money after bad but I don't
Deletethe $34M that goes to this boondoggle should be going to fix the $47 million we are behind in roads, the $6M need to replace and maintain our buildings- that Dalakranz talked about at the March 12 meeting- and to fund our capital projects like safe access to schools, quiet zones and rail wayside horns-
You make absolutley no sense- the city just increased annual debt service by $750,000 a year and added a liability of near $30 million to balance sheet for an assett that appraised at $4.5M
you might want to go back to B school- or maybe you are one of those suckers born every minute- your in good company with Dalakranz Barth and Shaffer
11:14 - sigh.....clearly the city does not agree with you (or me) on this issue. They think they can afford it, so that's why they entered into the deal, and that's why they didn't abandon it. At this point, only time will tell if it was a good deal or not.
Delete- The Sculpin
Question for anyone who might know: How can a citizen actually find out what the City did or did not know regarding the asbestos and the fact that 10% of the property cannot be built upon. What would a Freedom of Information request say? Thanks. I'll do and FOI, I just don't exactly know what to ask for. I think that's the only way I will be able to make sense out of this.
DeleteThe asbestos thing was obvious. Every building built in that era had asbestos. Not a problem if you leave it alone, but expensive and dangerous if you disturb it.
DeleteAs for the more than 10% unusable, I don't think Kranz-Shaffer-Barth cares or gave it a moment's thought. They wanted a vanity project at any price, and they're clearly not good with numbers.
Shaffer, Barth and Kranz undoubtedly overpaid for their homes, cars, and everything else they own. They obviously know NOTHING about negotiating. Not to use the newly revealed confirmation that asbestos is in the PV building as an angle to negotiate some advantage, whatever the size, is grossly irresponsible to the taxpayers in Encinitas. The three of them are pathetic.
ReplyDeletePublic records request exchange with EUSD:
ReplyDeletePlease provide the records in whatever form possible of the bids that the Encinitas Union School District had from parties interested in purchasing the Pacific View Elementary School property when or before the city of Encinitas itself committed to the purchase.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
The sale of the Pacific View site was a confidential sealed bid auction with a deadline of 4:00 p.m., March 24, 2014, however, the City of Encinitas made the offer to purchase on March 20, 2014 which the Board of Trustees accepted on March 21, 2014, postponed the deadline to May 22, 2014 and then cancelled the auction on April 29, 2014. All interested parties were notified and requested to be removed from the bid process. Therefore, the District does not have any bids on file from the auction process.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Am I reading correctly that the interested parties themselves asked to be removed from the bid process?
Should I conclude that the District did have bids on file from the auction process but destroyed them after canceling the auction on April 29?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
We had a number of interested parties with the bid process going through the business department who would have destroyed documents since the auction was cancelled.
###
Hidden conclusion: There were no bids. See the artful wording devised to avoid specifically addressing that point.
Delete9:47- You are correct. The wording of the EUSD's letter is significant. If there were sealed bids, by law they could have been opened after they reached a deal with the City. However, there were NO sealed bids, as I have said for months, there were only interested parties, which is a far cry from a bid. Yes, many people inspected the property, no one ever said they didn't. However, after looking at the property, most investors, and/or developers, decided that it was too big of a risk given the deck being stacked against them by both Prop. A, and the other things that are just now coming out, and that Staff (therefore Vina) knew the whole time. Asbestos is a nasty drawback for that site. Yes, I realize it can be mitigated, but it costs money. And, if anyone has ever seen how they dispose of asbestos you realize that whoever is doing the removal and dispose is wearing hazmat suits, and gas masks. There IS a reason for that. Do any of you happen to remember how many people got very sick or died due to asbestos poisoning? Ask any worker who has worked around it. I sure wouldn't want to have my kids, or myself doing art in an asbestos filled room, or for that matter anything else. Let's just call it: Either the Council knew and ignored this not so little fact (add the 10% they can't do anything with), or Staff (Vina) didn't tell them or lied. Take your pick because I cannot see any other way the Council did not know about this.
ReplyDeleteAnyone who declares with certainty that there were no bids is just wrong. No one is in a position to know that.
DeleteOnly the bidders know. Someone posted here that they were a bidder. I don't know of that's true or not.
Even the EUSD business department may not know.
The presence of an unopened packet isn't proof--it's not uncommon for low ball bidders to submit non-compliant bids below the minimum just in case there are no compliant bids.
The LACK of packets in the business department also isn't proof. A submitted bid is legally binding. It makes sense to hold the bid until the final day and continue talking to land use experts, lawyers, other interested parties--you never know what new information might emerge in the last few days.
It's unknowable except by the bidders, and anyone else who claims to know is simply not telling the truth.
1:21 pm, there's probably room for you at the Phoenix, AZ Veteran's Hospital. The auction was a fraud, designed to trick Tony, and it worked, Even Tony realizes it now.
Delete1:21- It is possible to know. You can chose to believe it or not. However, I will say once again "There were no sealed bids". Now I think the only way to prove I'm wrong is if someone states their name, bid #, date they bid it, and who they gave it to, I will eat every word I have posted and then some. I hate to be such a bearer of bad news, but there really were no sealed bids.
Delete5:53,
DeleteWhat you are doing is 5% clever and 95% lazy.
You declare something to be true, without evidence, then declare that it's up to someone else to prove you wrong. So if neither side is proved correct, yours serves as the default.
Unfortunately, in the real world, if neither side is proved true, then we do not know the answer.
I offered a logical assessment that suggests we can't know.
Now, if you disagree, that's okay. But offer facts and reason instead of lazy unsupported declarations.
If there were bids, why did EUSD artfully avoid 11:30's questions? EUSD said there were "interested parties." That's as far as they went.
DeleteRe-read 1:21.
DeleteEUSD may not even know.
Re-read 11:30. Does this sound as if they didn't know?
Delete"We had a number of interested parties with the bid process going through the business department who would have destroyed documents since the auction was cancelled."
Particularly note "interested parties" and "would have destroyed." Not 'bidders' and not 'destroyed.'
Further, if the seller sets a reserve of $9.5 million and gets bids below that, the seller is not going to say, oh, what the hell, we'll forget about the reserve and sell it to the highest bidder. That would violate the terms of the auction.
7:52,
Delete"Interested parties" is all they know. Either they had packets or they didn't.
If they had packets, they had no way to know if the packets contained compliant bids. If an auction aborts or a bidder withdraws before the bids are opened, it's common practice to offer the bidder their unopened bid package back, or offer to destroy it for them.
If they had received no packets at the time the auction was canceled, they had no way to know if this was because none of the interested parties planned on bidding, or if the bidders were waiting until the deadline to submit in case new information emerged.
I work in a large business that submits bids for auctioned contract work every day--sometimes to government agencies.
I can assure you that it is common practice to wait for new information, and submit just before the deadline.
I have also personally been involved in the submission of non-compliant bids that win. It's less common, but it happens. You can win the auction if there are no compliant bids, or if you offer a deal structure that is novel and desirable to the decision maker. Sometimes we even submit both a compliant and a non-compliant bids into the same auction. (Here's what you asked for, and this one is an alternative you didn't consider, but we think you may like better.).
This is pure deception:
Delete"We had a number of interested parties with the bid process going through the business department who would have destroyed documents since the auction was cancelled."
Right. They would have destroyed the documents if they had any.
Delete1:30 sounds like Lois Lerner, Eric Holder and the IRS
DeleteHow about this straightforward wording from EUSD that would have removed any suspicion: "Interested parties submitted sealed packets that we assumed were bids. When the auction was canceled, we returned the packets to the interested parties or complied with their request to destroy the packets without unsealing them."
DeleteAs 9:47 wrote above, EUSD's artful wording was designed to conceal what really happened.
10:06,
DeleteOr the exchange was with a secretary who don't give a crap how you parsed the language because the auction is history and they found a buyer.
Or the responses were crafted by Baird, the perpetrator of the scam. Do you really think he would let a know-nothing underling reply to a public records request?
DeleteFrom Wikipedia:
ReplyDeleteAsbestos litigation is the longest, most expensive mass tort in U.S. history, involving more than 8,000 defendants and 700,000 claimants.[39] Current trends indicate that the rate at which people are diagnosed with the disease will likely increase through the next decade. Analysts have estimated that the total costs of asbestos litigation in the USA alone will eventually reach $200 to $275 billion. The amounts and method of allocating compensation have been the source of many court cases, and government attempts at resolution of existing and future cases.
If and when the classrooms are demolished, only then would the asbestos in the flooring need to be mitigated. Until then, it poses no health hazards. Children were in those classrooms, without harm, until June of 2003. After that, beginning in December of 2003, City of Encinitas public works employees parked vehicles at Pacific View, and used the classrooms as their temporary headquarters.
DeleteYou are exaggerating, attempting to manipulate the gullible, with fear.
Here comes your local environmental attorney to your reduce: Go see Marco!
ReplyDeleteSorry, should have said "to your rescue." Damn computer:)
ReplyDeleteAsbestos does not matter when you tear it down anyway
ReplyDelete10:41- Can you elaborate? What do you mean it doesn't matter? Also, does it matter to you IF the Council knew about the asbestos, and that 10% of the land could not be developed, and still chose to pay 10 million?
ReplyDeleteToday, I received a flyer from Cauldwell Banker Realty for a three acre lot in Del Mar/Solana Beach with views of the ocean and track for $ 4.8 million. That's asking price- with no asbestos, lead paint, historical buildings, coastal commission or easement issues. (It's located at 980 Avocado place.)
ReplyDeleteCouncil voting not to negotiate, but pay full price is ridiculous and not exercising due diligence whatsoever.
-The Badger
The Encinitas troika is ready to offer $10 mil.
ReplyDelete980 Avocado place
ReplyDeleteEast of 5
Bunch of dumb asses here
10 mil for PV is dumb.
ReplyDelete6:49- having a bad day at Coastal Weasel Inc. ?
ReplyDelete-The Badger