A lawn sign on Fremont and Mission (File Photo – Melissa Michelson)
On Monday, February 27, the City Attorney of Alhambra announced that a judge has ruled in favor of the City of Alhambra, who were the defendants in The Ratkovich Company-ELITE’s lawsuit for denying their construction of The Villages.
By Melissa Michelson
Before the open session of the City Council began, City Attorney Joseph Montes told the council and the public that on Friday the trial court judge had denied Wayne Ratkovich’s writ and that the “City of Alhambra prevailed on all of the arguments pertaining to the writ.”
He said that the court “has determined that the Housing Accountability Act doesn’t apply to the project, and that the City Council was correct in denying the project.”
On September 20, 2021, at a six-hour Special Meeting and after six years of public outrage, the City Council of Alhambra unanimously rejected The Villages project, which would have built 790 market-rate condos and apartments at Fremont and Mission, with only a 10% set-aside of apartments for moderate income renters.
When asked about the The Villages result, Councilwoman Katherine Lee said, “I have been very encouraged by the public participation during the entire process. It was an example of democracy at work – government for the people, by the people and of the people.”
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Ratkovich and the Elite International Investment Group lose and the people of Alhambra win. Ratkovich will have to pay for all the court costs including the city expenses defending their decision to deny his luxury condo project. The land was rezoned in 2006 from industrial/business to high density housing despite the area being a superfund site. Mark Paulson was the instrumental in the rezoning and mayor at the time and after terming out became their paid consultant. The rezoning was done without any public outreach so most of the residents did not know this was happening. The backdoor development deals has a long history in Alhambra. It was a long hard fight by the public to stop this project of unaffordable housing that does not address our housing needs . Ratkovich refused to provide any affordable housing but a token number of units on the most polluted corner of the parcel.