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No. You are absolutely right. In fact, Phillipou is proposing a development at my back door and I am supporting it for the very reasons you present. I was only trying to relate that to welcome every developer to your county may not be a good idea on many levels. His name came up and I used it as an example. Poor one at best perhaps. Maybe with some real guidelines, arroyo preservation plans, water issue guidelines in place, we could have some development we are all proud of. BTW, I don't know what Phillipou looks like, sounds like or where he is from. We have never met but I would like to meet him. He seems like a fascinating fellow. Am I suspicious of everyone...yes. I have over thirty years in the biz of being suspicious. Sorry, at this point in my life, its an occupational hazard.
Oh man...that secret money/Syria nonsense is just about as lame-brained as it gets. Oh...I've "heard"...what a load. I might as well say I've "heard" that Phillippou's competitors pay people to write smears about him on websites. Come on, folks.
LC voters are clearly unnerved by all the recent development and annexations. Part of this, in my view, comes from the fairly frantic pace of development lately (understandable) and partly from sheer ignorance...like the Syrian connection nonsense and other loud voices complaining that developers and development are somehow making home prices skyrocket.
To not annex (giving much more control to the City about how open land is developed) doesn't stop development. It just means there will be more colonias, dirt roads, french drains serving as septic systems and a general disorganized mess in the desert.
Mattiace was very pro-development..Miyagashima seems much less so. Fine. Nothing wrong with taking a breather here, especially given the housing paralysis around the country. And nothing wrong with making developers jump thru hoops to make sure their projects are responsibly done. I wish Ken the best of luck.
But, spare me the conspiracy theories.
One of my concerns is that they'll try to over-regulate development to the point that it drives up prices even higher, while making maintenance costs for the city even higher (more open space = more for the city to maintain). The kind of developments some people expect are very expensive, both for the developers and for the taxpayers paying the maintenace. There has to be a balance between balancing people's desires for parks/open space/etc and the costs involved with that for everybody.
With regards to the Vistas at Presidio specifically, the main criticisms of it is that it was "too big". There was a lot of parks, "town centers", etc. Other than the size, there weren't really any specific objections to it that made any sense.
As a (lame brained) person who spent several years tracking Columbian drug money through the Southern California real estate market, with some success, I can tell you that conspiracy theories come from real places. Of course, they are all not true. I worked for real life governmental bodies that spent real tax payer money looking for laundered money. Was it money well spent? I don't know. I know I found out some pretty interesting relationships between all sorts of folks. Am I saying that is what this is? Of course not. It just doesn't seem to be something anybody here is curious about. Now, maybe its because I am from a state that was mowed down by developers who often skirted the law and the codes and left miles of people in the lurch with poorly built homes on unstable cliffs or on toxic waste dumps. Let's not be so defensive here. Phillipou is undoubtably a terrific citizen. I look forward to his neighborhood at my doorstep as he will drive the price of my land up considerably.
In Kim's defense, tecpatl, she had already backed off her original statement earlier in the thread.
Phillapou is most definitely no angel and there have been sordid rumors involving him. But I can't figure out how the fact the money was Syrian is germane. Is the implication that it's terrorist money? I hadn't thought about it when I read the post originally, but over development would be a heck of way to undermine our western lifestyle, wouldn't it?
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