Boutique Bungling Bears Bounty

And by “bears bounty,” I mean the boutique hotel scam pulls Fullerton into ever deeper shitwater.

By now we all know how stupid, inept, and problematic the so-called “Tracks at Fullerton” has been.

Starting out as a boutique hotel, a dumb idea took on a bloated, lumbering life of its own and has been kept alive through bureaucratic inertia and predictable metastasis.

Hostert

Now there’s a new twist. Word on the street is that the family of the guy with the original brainstorm, Craig Hostert of Westpark Development, is suing the current “developers” TA Partners. You may recall that Hostert is dead. His relatives seem to think that his money men, Johnny Lu and Larry Liu of TA Partners, pushed Craig out of his interest in the project. Johnny and Larry are said to be counter suing.

That can’t be good…

Parenthetically, I might add that Johnny and Larry are no strangers to the legal system, having left a trail of bankruptcies, foreclosures, and fraud in their wake. Fullerton being Fullerton.

Enhanced with genuine brick veneer!

I don’t know what the lawsuits might entail, legally, but due to the incompetent actions of Councilmembers Bruce Whitaker, Shana Charles, and Ahmad Zahra in upzoning the property, there could be a lot at stake. Remember, the City sold Westpark/TA almost two acres of land for $1.4 million (less demolition costs) while making it worth ten times that amount by abusing the allowable density in the Transportation Center Specific Plan.

Right now the City Hall silence remains deafening. We do know the council met in closed session about this awhile back, and still the public remains in the dark. Why hasn’t the City kicked Johnny Lu and Larry Liu to the curb long ago? They were supposed to have performed all sorts of stuff by now. Here are Johnny and Larry’s milestone obligations per the Development and Disposition Agreement, approved at the end of December, 2022.

Read. Weep.

Westpark/TA Partners are clearly in default. Plans submission was supposed to take place in December 2023 – fifteen months ago. Permits were required to be obtained fourteen months ago. Grading was supposed to start eleven months ago. Above ground construction was supposed to start by the end of last October – five months ago. See a pattern?

For some reason TA Partners was given some wiggle room in the actual verbiage of the contract for plans submittal – 240 days which would have been February of 2024, still thirteen months ago, and still a massive default.

Was there an “Unavoidable Delay?” Who gets to know? Why would the City fail to exercise its right retake the property? If you see a councilperson, please be sure to ask. Of course you won’t get an answer as the whole thing is shrouded in Closed Session secrecy. Without any action on the part of Fullerton, the two fly-by-nighters are still in possession of entitlements worth a pile ‘o cash – enough to excite the pecuniary envy of Mr. Hostert’s heirs and assigns.

I get the strange feeling that this latest legal entanglement might have repercussions for any case Fullerton might have in getting rid of Johnny and Larry. It shouldn’t, but it might be cause for staff to continue to string this thing out since it has been such a lucrative toy for Fullerton’s crack “economic development” employees.

Boutique Fun and Games With Johnny Lu and Larry Liu

FFFF has already reported on some of the colorful financial background of Johnny Lu of TA Partners, our City’s stand-up partner on the so-called “boutique” hotel project at the railroad tracks. This hot mess even has a name: The Tracks at Fullerton Station. The development has morphed into a monstrous minotaur by adding approval for a massively dense apartment – an amalgamation which gives us a shocking 130 units per acre, overall.

Well, anyway, we previously shared the news that Johnny was in default on massive construction loans he somehow finagled for projects in Irvine a few years ago. The lender on those has foreclosed on those properties.

That can’t be good…

And here’s some even more recent news. It seems that Johnny has waded out into more legal problems over in LA, according to The Real Deal, a real estate news source. Here’s the thrust of the complaint by bamboozled investors on a “project” at Playa Vista:

The investors — who form an entity called RUC14 Playa LLC — sued Lu, Liu and TA Partners, alleging commingling of funds, fraud and misrepresentation, court records show. Attorneys for TA Partners, which have requested for arbitration in the case, did not respond to a request for comment.

Johnny and his partner, Larry Liu, declared their bankruptcy on the Playa Vista project. But let’s give the misunderstood boys a break. A little contrition goes a long way, right? Said Larry:

“We would like to offer our apology for the non-compliance during project execution,” Liu wrote in the letter. “Self-reflection is needed and I would like to apologize.”

Whatever any of this means to “TA Westpark LLC.,” the corporation that was awarded the Fullerton project entitlements (without any competition) remains to be seen. But now Johnny and Larry have equity – and boy have they got equity; see, Councilmembers Zahra, Charles and Whitaker handed them a bonanza – a plot of land available for hundreds of units – for a mere pittance: $1.4 million less associated costs.

Ms. Charles happened to mention at a council item about raising funds for Fullerton’s fiscal disaster, that the boutique hotel plan was moving along. But there was no mention of the fiscal disaster facing Johnny and Larry Enterprises. Does she even know? Does she understand what is happening? Does she care? Probably no on all three.

The plan here is crystal clear. At this point nobody is going to lend Lu and Liu a bent nickle. But these fine fellows will have entitlements worth tens of millions on this project; a project that never should have happened in the first place – an unsolicited proposal by a local guy who had no chance of building a birdhouse.

This project will be reassigned to a third party, someone the City “business development” expert bureaucrats will be sweet-talked into recommending. And then Johnny and Larry will quietly disappear from Fullerton with millions belonging to us.

Fullerton being Fullerton.

Bungling Boutique Boondoggle Blunders

Some folks have been asking about the fate of the idiotic “boutique” hotel project that had morphed into a hideously overbuilt hotel/apartment hippogriff that is twice the allowable density permitted per the City’s own Transportation Center Specific Plan. Of course the project was never contemplated at all in the Specific Plan, so who cares, right? Fullerton being Fullerton.

In an act of utter incompetence the City actually rushed the approval to transfer of title to the land, before the deal had received final approval. Then they gave it away the land for pennies on the dollar.

Friends may recall our last October post in which we discovered that the new “developer,” one Johnny Lu of TA Westpark LLC, was way upside down on loans he had somehow leveraged on apartment blocks in Irvine and was in default.

You may also recall that Lu started shifting the property to different corporations, the first of which, a Delaware corporation, was non-existent. And just for grins, Mr. Lu changed the property description, too, when he later deeded it back to his California Corporation.

Anyhow, it looks like Johnny has finally created and recorded the appropriately named Delaware corporation in March – only two years too late, but, hey, not bad for Fullerton, right?

There has been nothing but radio silence from City Hall as to the status of Mr. Lu and whether he has met any of the stipulated deadlines in the Development and Disposition Agreement, but as we have learned in the case of the Florentine/Marovich sidewalk heist, contractual obligations mean nothing when the “I Can’t Believe It’s a Law Firm” of Jones & Mayer is your City Attorney. Recently, cluelessly verbose Shana Charles indicated that the project was still alive and well. She didn’t mention Mr. Lu’s financial embarrassment, but then nobody else has, either.

And now for some sadly interesting news. It turns out the original Founding Father of the boutique hotel concept, Craig Hostert of West Park Development – the guy who sold the idea to Jennifer Fitzgerald, Jan Flory, Jesus Quirk Silva, Ahmad Zahra, Bruce Whitaker, et. al. – died in late May.

Hostert

Poor guy. He went to his Reward after getting pushed out of his own scheme, and sticking us with the appalling, metastasized mess the concept has predictably morphed into; showing that once again, no bad idea goes unappreciated in downtown Fullerton. Being Fullerton, of course.

Bungled Boutique Hotel May Be In Big Trouble

Friends probably remember that FFFF has been relentlessly critical of the dubious scheme approved by our City Council to underwrite a downtown boutique hotel and uber-dense apartment project on a parking lot owned by the City and used by Metrolink commuters.

Here’s a reminder: three councilmembers Bruce Whitaker, Shana Charles and Ahmad Zahra voted to sell this property to a developer for a mere $1.4 million (less site material removal) while simultaneously time jacking up the value of the land by approving density 2.5 times the limit specified in the Transportation Center Specific Plan. It was a gift of public funds at least ten million dollars.

Here’s the fun part. The original and completely unqualified baby daddy of the project, Craig Hostert, didn’t have the wherewithal to make the deal. After years of failing to perform on his Exclusive Negotiating Agreement and numerous extensions, Hostert’s West Park Investments, LLC joined its non-existent forces with TA Partners Development of Irvine, Johnny Lu, proprietor.

Mr. Lu, the new face of the project, appeared at council meetings to seal the deal with a ration of gobbledygook bullshit.

Now it appears that Mr. Lu may not have been the best choice of partner according to the Real Deal Real Estate News.

Why is Johnny smiling?

It seems that Johnny has gotten himself in over his head on two projects in Irvine, including second bridge loans that he has now defaulted on. And of course Sunayana Thomas, Fullerton’s crack “business development” director seemingly failed to inform the City Council of Mr. Lu’s impending financial embarrassment, something that should have been revealed in even a cursory perusal of TA Partners’ asset to debt ratio and its balance sheet.

And then, of course there is the problem with the completely incompetent concept of rushing the approval to transfer of title to the land, before the deal had received final approval.

By now the Council has possibly, though not necessarily been informed by the Fullerton City Manager, Eric Leavitt, of the problem, but where does the deal stand? Title to the property has been transferred from the City to and through Lu’s companies*, presumably for the original sale amount. But if TA Partners can’t perform, will the City get its now very valuable property back, or will it be encumbered by bankruptcy receivers? Will the City, in order to save face as it always has, permit Mr. Lu to assign his rights and interests to another party as a face-saving strategy? If that happens, will the original bad idea still go forward, or will the Council approve something even worse as a sop to a new developer so to avoid admitting their horrible mistake in the first place?

You can try asking Whitaker, Charles, or Zahra, the architects of this inexcusable and completely avoidable mess, but don’t hold your breath waiting for a response.

* Topic of future post

“Boutique” Hotel Lumbers Along

Enhanced with genuine brick veneer!

An item on last week’s Closed Session council meeting just caught my eye. The item identified the southeast corner of Pomona Avenue and Santa Fe, location of the previously discussed “boutique” hotel proposal. I last reported it here, when the Council voted 4-1 to let the unsolicited, single proposal issue get a time extension. As usual the lone no vote came from Bruce Whitaker. The July 6th item just says “terms and price” so that it can be hidden behind the Brown Act exemption.

Huh?

When the City Attorney emerged he declared that this harebrained idea was moving ahead on a 3-2 vote to authorize a Letter of Intent to approve a development agreement. Hmm. We know that Jesus Quirk Silva would go for it. After all, he already changed his vote once to move this along – way back in December of 2018 as a parting gift to Doug “Bud” Chaffee. And Ahmad Zahra is always a reliable vote to support some stupid government giveaway or overreach.

Dunlap-Jung
One of them?

So that leaves councilmen Nick Dunlap, Fred Jung and the aforementioned Whitaker. It is really hard to believe that Whitaker would suddenly change course 180 degrees from a previous commonsense, conservative position. Dunlap and Jung have so far shown unusual sales resistance when it comes to ridiculous bullshit so it’s hard to see either one going for this. But obviously, one of the three did. Who was it, and why? We were not told by the City Attorney and the minutes do not include such potentially embarrassing things.

And this will be a giveaway. You and I own that parcel of land that is currently providing popular parking for Transportation Center commuters. What is the land truly worth? If the Council continues on this reckless course to support a massive public subsidy to for an idea that has no basis in market demand, we may never know.

The days of the Fullerton Redevelopment Agency writing checks to fly-by-night developers, scammers, and other corporate welfare queens is over; but the so-called Successor Agency is perfectly capable of handing over real estate and getting nothing in return. And that looks likely to happen as the story of Fullerton’s unsolicited boutique hotel lurches forward.

 

 

Older Kennedy Sister Reveals Plan

So young, so innocent…

Yesterday Sharon Kennedy published a post by tender young Elijah Manassero – Part 2 of what is supposed to be a damning legal revelation against the Bushala family. It’s really the wild product of an angry man-child against all of his relatives, but no matter. The point of the post is to try to make Tony and George Bushala look bad to Fullerton Boohoo, and at the same time call into question the upcoming lease agreement between Bushala Brothers, Inc. and the City of Fullerton at the Depot.

Giving honesty the middle finger…

Sharon Kennedy telegraphed this intent by making the following comment on her own blog:

This is clearly supposed to be a talking point for the usual gaggle who loudly harass the City Council majority at every meeting over some silly grievance or other.

Zahra Congratulates Marovic for his lawsuit…against us.

It’s funny how nobody evert hears from Fullerton Boohoo about the legal entanglements surrounding Mario Marovic’s stolen sidewalk or about the legal entanglements and bankruptcies that enveloped Johnny Lu and Larry Liu before the entitled land for the so-called boutique hotel/rabbit warren apartments was essentially gifted to the grifters. That would require intellectual and moral consistency, two qualities sorely missing from Fullerton Observers.

That can’t be good…

Well, the item is on the agenda for next Tuesday, so we can expect a vocal shrieking from the banshees Sharon Kennedy and her younger sister, Skakia intend to call out.

Offering employment to the youth of OC…

And I would be remiss if I didn’t point out (again) the secondary, perhaps primary purpose of the Kennedy Klan’s plan: to create fodder for next year’s campaign for County Supervisor, in which fresh young Elijah’s (alleged) boss, Connor Traut is running against Fullerton Boohoo Public Enemy #1 – Fullerton Mayor Fred Jung.

Sweet Elijah Gets Nasty. And He’s Still Wrong

So young, so innocent…

Our new friend, sweet young Elijah Manassero, has written a letter to selected Fullerton City Councilmembers and FFFF got a copy. This communication is very is ignorant and confrontational; and if the writer thinks it is going to persuade through reason or threat, he’s sadly mistaken.

The topic is the Bushala lease revision at the Santa Fe Depot that would be expanded to include the abandonned loading dock area. Here’s what tender, innocent Elijah had to say to Councilman Nick Dunlap:

Dear City Council,

I’m writing to express deep concern about the lease agreement approved for Mr. Tony Bushala. The terms are lopsided, irresponsible, and betray the values you claim to uphold: fiscal responsibility, transparency, and local control.

Worse, they come in the context of political donations from the very party benefitting. This is a breach of public trust.

Councilmember Dunlap,
With your background in commercial real estate, you know how bad this deal is.

Section 10 of the agreement allows Bushala to assign or sublease the lease to any entity controlled by George, Tony, or Salma Bushala, including shell companies. This eliminates oversight, obstructs transparency, and gives one political donor unchecked long-term control over public property.

Even more troubling: the lease includes rent credits that discount the already-low rent by up to 75%. That means Bushala can pay pennies on the dollar and then turn around and sublease to a third party at market rate, pocketing the profit with little obligation to improve the property. The City receives nothing from this resale.

You know this isn’t standard in municipal leases. Cities typically reserve the right to renegotiate when property is flipped for private gain. That clause is missing. The power to cancel a lease or require public bidding? Gone. That’s not fiscal responsibility. It’s a giveaway.

This lease is also next to the development, The Tracks at Fullerton Station, which makes the low rent and numerous benefits even more egregious. Mr. Bushala can lock-in a low payment now, before major development takes place which will raise the value of the surrounding area.

You say you believe in local control. But locking the public out of a city-owned property next to a major transit hub until 2060, while giving control to a donor network, is the opposite of local control. It’s donor control.

Ah, poor, sweet boy. Completely uninformed; and he doesn’t let ignorance interfere with the enthusiastic gush of opinion. Elijah wants to come across as knowledgeable and yet shows his political motivations at every misstatement. He’s obviously Ahamad Zahra’s latest toy, and he shows it.

It’s a bad deal because Elijah was told it was.

  1. The term “shell company” nonsense is rolled out for sensational and perjorative effect. Really the object here is to secure and expedite future assignment rights for the leasee, acceptable to the landlord, too. There is nothing illicit or objectionabl about this; it’s not uncommon.
  2. Excitable young Elijah’s next objection (he’s even more troubled!) is a “rent credit” of 75% – lowering the rent even more. Poor, sad Elijah. He’s referring to the construction rent credit that offsets rent by applying the contruction cost to rent over a long time. But the poor boy misunsterdands (or pretends to). The 75% figure refers to the qualifying amout of the credit – 75% of the construction cost – agreed to by the City. Construction rent credits are not rare, in fact they are used all the time, althought young Manassero doesn’t know anything about it. At the end of the lease the owner gets a built facility, in this case commercial/retail space in the otherwise useless loading dock. And, by the way, how does this impressionable sprout know what’s “standard” in any sort of lease?
  3. Newly blossomed Elijah seems to think that something is being “flipped” and a “resale” is going on. Oh, well, how can you even respond to nonsense like that?
  4. Finally! The young bud mentions “The Tracks at Fullerton Station” a project that will make the Bushala’s “low rent” even more “irresponsible”egregious.” How, Elijah doesn’t say. And he doesn’t mention that “The Track” developers are convicted conmen, have missed all of their required milestones, and are embroiled in a lawsuit with the heirs and assigns of the original mastermind, Craig Hostert. And Elijah isn’t done omitting facts, probably because Zahra never told the eager youngster: “The Tracks” (that Zahra voted for) amounted to a fantastic giveaway, entitling property that increased in value geometrically and was concurrently sold (by Zahra, again) for 6 cents on the dollar: a real giveaway. Naturally, the land involved was never offered to the public in the form of a developers RFQ. Finally, if “The Tracks” ever happens I’ll fly with callow Elijah to the moon on gossamer wings.
  5. Our puerile interlocutor wraps up by asserting that the lease will somehow “lock out” the public from a city-owned property. I have no idea what this means. We could guess what Elijah means, or what he thinks he means, but really, why bother?
Nick Dunlap

Nick Dunlap is involved in commercial real estate. As such he knows that the Santa Fe Depot space is highly unique and not in the way typical real estate types use the phrase. The three parts, not counting the loading dock, are comparatively small, noncontiguous areas that are hard to lease; the Bushala’s are also responsible for a share of the maintenance that would otherwise be paid for by the public. The Loading Dock is of no use to anybody but the Bushalas: there is no access to the dock except through their existing leasehold. In other words the rents here are not comparable to other properties downtown and certainly not to any other city leases. Dunlap surely knows all this, even if sweet, young Elijah and the Kennedy Sisters and Zahra don’t.

The public’s trust is not being “breached” as asserted in young Elijah’s attempt to make his rhetoric take flight. It’s actually being tended to in a way that will generate sales and property taxes to the city and to the county.

The Depot Lease Part 2; Utter Hypocrisy in Boohooville

On Tuesday the Bushala Depot lease agreement was not voted upon. It item was continued until July 15th.

But that didn’t keep a gaggle of Zahra followers from trying to continue the narrative of subsidies and below market rate rent.

Young and innocent…

Our new friend, tender young thing Elijah Manaserro, local scholar, was there to do just that. And a few other callers in.

Representing the bus drivers, the homeless, the CSUF students and all the little people…

My favorite speaker was the itinerant pest Curtis Gamble, whose near homelessness makes him qualified to opine on real estate deals.

How dare you!

When public comments were done, Zahra showed his role as coordinator of the opposition. He wanted comparative market rates, he said; there won’t be any, but okay, fair enough. But then he displayed his fundamental ignorance by including agreements with The Summit Restaurant and the Boys and Girls Club – completely different properties.

On the docket…

The fact is that the Santa Fe Depot doesn’t have any “comps” in Orange County. The historic building is is unique and made up of several disparate areas, each of pretty small space; in other words, hard to rent out. And the Loading Dock, proposed for inclusion in a revised overall lease, is only connected to an area already leased by the Bushalas. Adaptive reuse will require a huge outlay of money to effect structural reinforcement, enclosure and interior finishes. And because there is no place for kitchen or restrooms, it is functionally useless for anybody except the Bushalas who have ten year lease extension options.

Enhanced with genuine brick veneer!

Here’s the hypocrisy part. Remember the ill-fate “boutique hotel/monster apartment,” an unsolicited proposal with no RFP, no RFQ, no RF-anything? Do you remember any of Fullerton BooHoo raising Hell about that? Me neither. I do remember that Ahmad Zahra and Shana Charles voted to give con-men Johnny Lu and Larry Liu a $14,000,000 price subsidy on a parcel they upzoned themselves. Talk about short-term memory loss.

Hopefully when this item returns, staff will explain (based on their extensive expertise) the expertise Fullerton Boohoo is always praising – that the deal they negotiated is not a subsidy and that rather than losing money, the deal will bring in tax revenue to the City and to the County; and that letting the Loading Dock fall down doesn’t help anybody – even those taxpayers Zahra and Charles pretend to care so much about.

Fuck-ups For Fullerton’s Future

The City Council meeting agenda for March 4th has some interesting “Closed Session” items on it. For those who don’t know, Closed Session is a private meeting of the Council when legal, personnel or real estate issues are involved. The City Attorney attends the session, too, in our case the hapless buffoons of The I Can’t Believe It’s a Law Firm of Jones and Mayer.

Here’s the line up of issues.

Number 1 is about something up at the City Owned golf course – one of the too little scrutinized assets of the City of Fullerton. This has been a source of embarrassment for City staff and FFFF instruction in the past.

Ferguson and Curlee. The easy winners…

Our Friend David Curlee ran afoul of City Staff when he uncovered the rank incompetence of Alice Loya and Hugo Curiel as well as the misappropriation of Brea Dam Enterprise funds. And that’s likely the reason they dragged him into the FFFF/Joshua Ferguson lawsuit.

Why is Johnny smiling?

Number 2 is about the idiotic “boutique” hotel fiasco in which the City up-zoned the Hell out our property and then virtually gave it away to “Westpark/TA” an operation run by a couple crooks whose prior record was never disclosed to the City Council or the public. Well we found out all about it, even if our highly paid “professionals” in City Hall didn’t bother.

Any reasonable representatives of the people would have shit-canned this deal on Day 1. Not Fullerton, of course. What in the world could they be negotiating? TA hasn’t met any of its deadlines, got caught recording a phony deed, etc. TA should have been dumped a long, long time ago and their purchase amount forfeited. Interestingly the City seems to have brought in Best, Best and Krieger to do represent the City. At least it isn’t Jones and Mayer. Still, I wonder why.

Zahra Congratulates Marovic for his lawsuit…against us.

Number 3 is about our old friend Mario “Bump Out” Marovic, the scofflaw who took over from the Florentine Family in ripping off the public. He’s still illegally occupying the space he was supposed to have demolished two goddamn years ago.

Forgotten but not quite gone…

He is obviously in default of that agreement – a deal that moronically permitted him to open up his businesses and profit off our building on our sidewalk. Our indifferent City staff and Council doesn’t seem to have the stomach to give this weasel notice that he has been trespassing and that they were going to demolish the building add-on and restore the sidewalk themselves.

No, we don’t have to say shit…

Number 4 is one of those “anticipated litigation/significant exposure to litigation” items in which secrets can be withheld from potential litigants – like Friends for Fullerton Future – based on the squishy definition of the word “significant,” and self-serving public servant who happens to be defining it. Could this item be related to FFFF’s request for presence on City property? I don’t know, but I wouldn’t be surprised.

Time for Fred Jung’s Iron Fist

Yeah. It’s about time. For decades Fullerton’s citizenry have picked up the tab for one bad idea after another. So if Mayor Jung really did say he wanted the City run with an iron fist, let’s get going with the plug pulling.

It’s a total waste of money, but it sure is short…

The Trail to Nowhere

The abysmal Trail to Nowhere, a bad idea that was germinating for 14 years before the grant was finally approved at the end of 2023. City staff has never told the truth about this fiasco, and because of incurious and stupid councilmembers, they never had to. I can simply say that it would accomplish none of things its backers promise, mostly because the wishful thinking behind it was so untruthful from the start. No users, possible contamination, no linkage to anything, no destination at either end. Just a waste of 2.1 million bucks.

Oh, and yeah – the milestones for design submittal to the State and start of construction were blown past 9 months ago and still no status update from anybody.

Enhanced with genuine brick veneer!

The Boutique Hotel

The boutique hotel next to the train station started out as just a stupid idea by then Mayor-for-Hire Jennifer Fitzgerald. Then as the likelihood of failure increased, the City kept doubling down on dumb, adding density to density until an appended apartment block raised the density to at least 2.5 times the already dense limit in the Transportation Center Specific Plan. No one seemed to care, because those plans are only occasionally adhered to.

Nobody bothered to ask why useful City property had to be deemed “surplus.” Bruce Whitaker didn’t.

And last we looked the whole thing had been turned over to a couple of con men who paid 1.4 million for a property whose new entitlements made it worth ten times that much. Fullerton, being Fullerton. Those guys haven’t met any of their milestones and must certainly be in default. Not a peep out of City Hall, of course. I’ll bet my last dollar Sunayana Thomas is desperately looking for a new “developer” to assign the mess to, without a backward glance.

Forgotten but not quite gone…

The Florentine/Marovic Sidewalk Heist

This 20 year+ scandal is still alive and kicking thanks to the stupid and cowardly attitude of staff/city council toward first, the Florentine Syndicate, and now, a new scofflaw, Mario Marovic. Somehow, the City let Marovic do remodeling construction work on our building on our sidewalk – an illegal trespass if ever there was one. Then the City let him open his newly remodeled place with promises to remove the “pop-out” as a condition of re-opening.

Zahra Congratulates Marovic for his lawsuit…against us.

Naturally, Marovic gave the City a big fuck you on that agreement, as he no doubt planned to do all along. He had six moths to start and nine months to finish. That was two fucking years ago, and Marovic is drawing income from our property the whole time. Nowadays this matter is safely hidden in closed session, where the painful subject of accountability for this quagmire can be safely discussed away from embarrassing public revelation.

Fortunately for the cast of characters involved there are so many culpable people in this story that blame can be diluted to the point where nobody feels the least bit compelled to explain what happened over two plus decades, just so long as the municipal humiliation goes away once and for all.

So, yes. Let the Fullerton Observer sisters and their ilk boohoo about iron fists and poor, intimidated staff. Fullerton has been in need of some accountability, even a tiny bit, for a long, long time.