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Council approves redevelopment plan for former Sears site; living-wage target remains unresolved
Summary
The council approved a redevelopment plan for the former Sears/catalog warehouse site and directed staff to include CLA summary language in the file; labor and community advocates urged the council to require living-wage jobs but negotiators did not reach a threshold before the vote.
The Los Angeles City Council approved redevelopment actions for the former Sears/catalog warehouse site, with members and advocates urging strong living-wage conditions even though staff and the developer had not settled on a specific wage threshold.
Vi Nguyen, representing the LA Alliance for a New Economy and Economic Justice, urged the council to use scarce public dollars to create “good jobs” and pointed to other recent projects that included living-wage conditions. “In the past 2 years, all major projects have had living wage ordinance conditions,” Nguyen said, and urged comparable standards for this publicly subsidized redevelopment.
Councilmember Pacheco said staff and the developer had worked to include language changes recommended by the City Administrative Officer and asked that those CLA summary changes be included in the moving part of the report. Pacheco also said the committee had discussed living-wage percentages but could not reach agreement on a specific threshold; he said negotiations would continue with the developer to achieve the most living-wage jobs possible.
City staff described the site as roughly one million square feet and said it had no major contamination problems typical of brownfields, noting the site’s prior use as Sears catalog warehouses.
The council approved the item by roll call (14 ayes) after the clerk read the amended motion incorporating CLA summary language.
Action recorded: redevelopment file approved as clarified with CLA summary language included; staff to continue negotiations with the developer to maximize living-wage jobs.
