City Council Votes to Amend Development Agreement on Parson’s Campus Project

The City Council unanimously voted to amend on Monday a development agreement between the city and a local developer that has fallen short in local hiring and participation quotas.

Potential changes include a required minimum percentage of local hires and local contracting, an alternative approach to maximizing investment in community hiring and contracting opportunities and the applicant will partner with a local nonprofit and labor unions in order to develop and maintain an ongoing comprehensive apprenticeship program for Pasadena residents, including skills training and job placement.

Lincoln Properties will also make a financial contribution to partially offset the failure to meet agreed-upon goals for local hires and procurements.

City Manager Steve Mermell will negotiate the specifics of the amendments.

“We have to manage expectations in terms of what’s reasonable,” Mermell said.

Lincoln Properties and the city signed a development agreement that required  20% of its hires on the 10 West Walnut project be from the local community, 20 percent of its contracting would be local, and that there would 15 percent sourcing of materials on a 210,000-square-foot, five-story mixed-use project that includes 400 residential units and three levels of below-grade parking on the campus of the Parsons building in Old Pasadena.

Only 112 local residents, 6 percent of the workforce, were hired, and Pasadena-based businesses signed contracts totaling $14,282,996, or 7 percent of the total contracting.

In addition, $6,741,624 was spent on materials and supplies from Pasadena-based businesses, or 8 percent of the total materials used on the project.

The city could have seen $53 million injected into the local community if the benchmarks were met.

A majority of the councilmembers — Jessica Rivas,  Felicia Williams, Andy Wilson and Tyron Hampton — were not serving on the council when the project was approved.

“These numbers are terrible, abysmal is probably the most appropriate response,” said Mayor Victor Gordo.

Gordo said he cautioned earlier when the quota came before council that the developer would not meet the goal.

Rob Kane, executive vice president of Lincoln Property said there was a common desire for the numbers to be higher.

“We believe this is a great project and there has been and will continue to be great community benefits for Pasadena,” Kane said.  “We have conducted extensive outreach and worked extensively with many Pasadena businesses. We have worked as a team incredibly hard to meet the local hiring goal.”

Kane said the company had exhausted every effort.

“We share a common desire for the numbers to be higher.”

Councilman John Kennedy said it was possible for the company to hit the numbers and called for a way to hold them accountable.

 “I’m disappointed because they have not demonstrated the good faith and integrity that the company’s good name is supposed to represent,” Kennedy said.

Kennedy said he wanted to give the company every opportunity to fix the situation.

According to the staff report, Lincoln Properties originally hired Clarence Broussard to assist with local hiring and local contract procurement. Broussard worked on the Rose Bowl, built the Jackie and Mack Robinson Memorial, and advocated for hiring the disadvantaged. He died on February 21, 2019.

Kennedy called Broussard a respected leader in his field.

After Broussard died, the developers hired Ron Matthews and then former Assistant City Manager Prentice Deadrick, who owns a project management company specializing in construction and community outreach.

Both men helped the company improve the local numbers, and residential impact fees resulted in $9 million going back into the community.