Council approves redevelopment plan for former Sears site; members press developer on living-wage commitments

The City Council approved a redevelopment action for a large former Sears/catalog warehouse site that councilmembers and community advocates said offers an uncommon inner-city redevelopment opportunity with little contamination risk.

Ving Nguyen of the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy urged the council to require living-wage jobs for publicly subsidized redevelopment projects and noted precedent in other local projects where living-wage conditions were attached. "Our concern with the site as with all publicly subsidized development projects is that scarce public dollars should go toward creating good jobs," Nguyen said.

Councilmember Pacheco said he and the developer were negotiating thresholds for how many jobs on the project would meet local living-wage standards. He noted prior projects had achieved high shares of living-wage positions and said his office would work to maximize the number of quality jobs generated by the redevelopment. Pacheco asked that language in the Chief Legislative Analyst's (CLA) report be folded into the moving part of the council motion; the council amended the motion to include the CLA summary language and approved the item by roll call (recorded as 14 ayes).

Pacheco described the site as about one million square feet in existing warehouse buildings and said the site's history of use as a catalog warehouse reduced contamination concerns compared with other inner-city redevelopment parcels.

The council adopted the motion as clarified and recorded the roll-call vote in the minutes. Councilmembers said they would continue to press the developer for the greatest feasible number of living-wage jobs in the project while balancing redevelopment practicality.