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littps://outlook.live.com/mail/sentitems/id/AQMkADAwATEO... <br />Received at City Council <br />Meeting 2/19/2019 <br />Re: Great editorial from Nextdoor re: 2525 N. Main St <br />Diane Fradkin <br />Fri 1/25/2019 8:12 PM <br />To: mpulido@santa-ana.org <mpulido@santa-ana.org>; ciglesias@santa-ana.org <ciglesias@santa-ana.org>; <br />JSolorio@santa-ana.org <JSolorio@Santa-ana—org>, dpenaloza@santa�ana.org—<dp7enaloza@santa-ana.orgs; <br />jvillegas@santa-ana.org <jvillegas@santa-ana.org> <br />In case you are not on Nextdoor...... <br />P-451mark rothenberg <br />, Floral Park <br />2525• -An Alternative to An Alternative Viewpoint <br />My good friend Tim Johnson whom I respect immensely wrote extensively about an alternative <br />view point in support of the 2525 project. As many of you know, I wrote in opposition to this <br />project when it was first announced and have followed the considerable and Herculean efforts <br />of neighbors to oppose it. I am a land use attorney with two decades of experience, teach land <br />use law, and have previously represented large developers in major metropolitan areas such as <br />Miami, Fort Lauderdale, and the Palm Beach counties along with Orange and Los Angeles <br />County California. I also spent a good deal of time representing cities as a contract city attorney. <br />These are of course solely my personal views and I encourage any reader to retain their own <br />counsel as again—I only speak for myself. That having been said, I respectfully disagree with my <br />good friend Tim. As Tim notes, the project ranges in size from 2 to 6 stories coupled with an 8 <br />story parking garage. There are a number of assumptions being made about the project. That is <br />where our paths begin to diverge. As Tim notes, "rents will not be cheap -in fact they will likely <br />be the highest in the city in line or exceeding a lot of mortgage payments." That is the first of <br />many problems with this project. You cannot take a developer's description of his project at <br />face value and have to assess it in the context of the community and area market. Moreover, <br />there is an old saying worth repeating here... "no one washes a rental car." When a developer <br />develops a rental project, it typically flips the project to someone who will then own and <br />operate it. Rental rates along with building maintenance and amenities are driven by a number <br />of factors including the economy, housing stock, transportation, community amenities, etc. <br />Although we can hope that the apartments remain "luxury", the reality is that the apartments <br />will either be rented by multiple students/families and/or prices will decrease along with <br />maintenance of the building itself. It is possible the developer sees something special in the site <br />and can get that rent. However, if that is true, I think it is just as true that one could encourage <br />office or special retail for the same fundamental justifications used to justify residential. This is <br />anecdotal but there are a number of apartment buildings in Santa Ana that were built in the <br />70s -90s. Many of these buildings were likely represented to be luxurious and containing <br />architectural elements, etc. However, with time, changes in ownership, and market conditions, <br />the buildings become under -parked shells with nothing but horror stories from tenants. The <br />risk of this happening is lower in cities with robust code enforcement (like Irvine). <br />Unfortunately, our fair City is not particularly well Known for its Code Enforcement prowess. <br />One final point, the Wells Fargo building was extremely well regarded when it was built in the <br />early 1980s. There is an article in the Register on June 27, 1982 about the building having <br />I of 6 2/11/2019, 3:25 PM <br />