Century City/ Westwood APriL 29 – MAy 26, 2022
NEWS CenturyCity-WestwoodNews.com
French-Based Owners of Westfield Mall Chain to Sell American Properties Unibail-RodamcoWestfield looking to sell 24 properties By Dolores Quintana French company, Unibail-RodamcoWestfield (UWR) is going to sell all of its mall properties in the United States to concentrate on their European properties. The 24 malls will be sold over the next two years. Jean-Marie Tritant, the chief executive officer of URW said during a stockholder meeting, “We will strengthen our core
business by completing our deleveraging plans to emerge as a focused European pure-play. Deleveraging remains the key to unlocking future value, and we are progressing in our clearly defined disposal plans. We are positioned to execute on the radical reduction of our financial exposures to the U.S. over the course of 2022 and 2023.” as quoted by Spectrum News. Paris-based URW has made this commitment as the retail shopping business in the United States has finally started to rebound slightly after two years of the pandemic. Online retail sales have gone up in comparison to in-person retail sales because of fears of Covid 19 and the customer’s rising preference for online shopping and home delivery.
Retail stores and shopping centers have been some of the businesses most impacted by the pandemic. Lockdowns, stay-at-home orders and Covid fears have made customers more comfortable with shopping from home. Among many customers, online shopping has become the go-to option rather than a fallback. Even before the pandemic, malls were already suffering from a lack of foot traffic, so the coronavirus emergency just made an already tenuous situation worse. Because malls were already in trouble, commercial real estate experts are not surprised by URW’s decision. Mall owners had already started to move to a model based on mixed-use residential, office or hotel-based retail locations in the last
several years. The 24 URW locations are spread out over the states of New York, Florida, Illinois and New Jersey. URW’s Westfield Malls in California are among the most well-known malls in the area like the Westfield Century City, Westfield Santa Anita, Westfield
Westfield Mall, see page 9
Report Raises Questions About VA Land Usage According to CNN, in a violation of an act of Congress, the VA leases land to an energy company to drill for oil on the land By Dolores Quintana Questions have been raised about the Department of Veterans Affairs (DVA) usage of land that was donated specifically to house veterans of America’s wars who are disabled, as reported by CNN. Mayor Eric Garcetti pledged that he would end veteran homelessness in 2015 and then went back on his word in August of 2015. According to statistics from Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, based on the 2020 Homeless Count, Los Angeles has 3,681 homeless veterans, the largest number in the United States. However, near Brentwood, there are 388 acres of land that the DVA manages and most of the land was donated specifically so that housing for veterans would “be thereon so located, established, constructed and permanently maintained” in 1888. Veterans and advocates for veterans think that the land should be used to give homes to veterans in need. Instead, the federal government, through the DVA, rents significant portions of the land for other commercial purposes in an area that is half the size of Central Park in New York City. Ten acres are leased to UCLA for the Bruins baseball field; veterans do get free tickets
to games. The Brentwood School leases 22 acres of this land and uses it for an athletic track, swimming pool and tennis courts for its students. Brentwood School charges each student anywhere between $28,000 to $87,000 per school year and is a for-profit business. The Brentwood School has 1,205 students attending each year. While not every student pays a tuition fee in the highest bracket, that of overseas students who are housed on campus, but you can get an idea of exactly how much money the school is making from the land that they’ve leased. They do have a Veterans Partnership that allows usage of the sports facilities and tickets to shows among other benefits, but it hardly seems beneficial to veterans of our wars who don’t have anywhere to live. The swimming pool was “conceived as a theater for swimmers.” according to the architect as quoted by CNN, so you can imagine that no expense was spared in its construction. According to CNN, in a violation of an act of Congress, the VA leases land to an energy company to drill for oil on the land. Iraq War veteran Rob Reynolds said, as quoted by CNN, “It’s really kind of disgusting to see. When you see people who raise their right hand to serve our country sleeping and dying on the street, and you have one of the most elite private schools in the country charging $40,000 per year per student, and they have immaculate amenities and the veterans are living in squalor, it just doesn’t make any sense.” Arcadia Bandini Stearns de Baker, a senator and businesswoman, gifted most of the land 135 years ago. Christina Barrie, a distant relative of de Baker, said, My great-greatgrandmother was her sister. It’s scandalous. It wasn’t given to anybody but veterans. For a home.” Barrie lives nearby and is the head
of The 1887 Fund, which aims to restore the long abandoned Wadsworth Chapel near Wilshire Boulevard. The fund’s website says“A Veterans Home will be reestablished in perpetuity on the VA West LA campus. It will be operated in a manner that is consistent with the original 1887 charter.” The ACLU has sued the Department of Veterans Affairs over this issue. DVA manages the campus through the Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System. The lawsuit stated “VA GLA does not offer permanent housing for any disabled veterans, including homeless veterans who suffer from severe mental disabilities or brain injuries.” in 2011. After four years, the only progress was the VA’s renovation of Building 209 which was characterized as a transitional housing unit, not a permanent housing solution for veterans who are unhoused. The ACLU settled the lawsuit with the VA, after which the VA released a “master plan” that would provide permanent housing units on the disputed land. According to the VA’s “Potential Phasing Timeline”, there should be 710 units of permanent housing for unhoused veterans on the property, but not a single unit has been built since the plan was published in January of 2016. The VA claims credit for 54 units that were opened in 2015, prior to the Master Plan’s release. Ryan Thompson, an advocate for veterans who formed a coalition of veterans and residents in 2019 said “It’s a paltry number. But 54 is better than zero.” He added, “What we’re doing is trying to build as much public awareness as possible of the facts around the lawful use of that land.” as quoted by CNN. Anthony Allman, a veteran who is a member of the board meant to oversee the VA and their management of this land, said “We’re supposed to be on our second revision.
We’re only on our first.” About 180 units are finally being constructed and are scheduled to be completed by the fall of 2022. Senior executive homelessness agent Keith Harris said, “That is the hope.” as quoted by CNN. Harris is a recent appointee to the project. Manager of the Master Plan, Robert McKendrick, said, “We should be up with the 1,200 within the next eight years.” as quoted by CNN. This means that it will take 14 years to complete these permanent homes. Rob Reynolds said, as quoted by CNN, “I’ve dealt with quite a few veterans dying right outside the gates of the VA. If you have the right program and the right processes in place from the beginning, those deaths would’ve been preventable.” It is easy to see that had action been taken sooner, it could have literally saved the lives of veterans who served our country. The issue of veterans on the street without help from our government is not only shameful, but is a critical need that is going mostly unaddressed. Behavioral psychologist Sarah Braverman spent time with veterans who lived near the VA campus for a year, studying their lives. She
VA Land Usage, see page 8