Council to Consider Amending Hiring and Contracting Agreement on Parson’s Campus Project

The City Council will once again consider amending an agreement with a local developer on local hiring and contracting quotas.

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. Another goal was to require that 15% of the materials used on the 210,000 square-foot, five-story mixed-use project, which includes 400 residential units and three levels of below-grade parking on the campus of the Parsons building in Old Pasadena, be from local sources.

However, the developer has been unable to meet those requirements. 

In February, it was reported that there were 112 workers from Pasadena, and just 7% of the contracting went to local companies.

Since then, the number of local residents working on the project has doubled and an additional $300,000 has been spent with local contractors.

In addition, 30 members of a program at the Flintridge Center have been hired as part of an apprenticeship program. In total, $10,729,309 has been spent with local companies on construction supplies, up from $6,741,624 in February.

In February, council members criticized the company for not hitting the benchmarks, which could have led to $53 million injected into the local community. Mayor Victor Gordo slammed the low numbers, calling them “terrible and abysmal.”

According to a staff report, Lincoln Properties originally hired Clarence Broussard to assist with local hiring and local contract procurement. Broussard, who advocated for hiring the disadvantaged, died on Feb. 21, 2019. 

After Broussard died, the developers hired Ron Matthews and 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. 

Councilmember John Kennedy, who has been critical of the company for failing to reach the hiring goals, said he still considers 10 West Walnut “an extraordinary development for our community.”

The project, he said, “is scheduled to incorporate unique story boards within the open neighborhood that commemorates and acknowledges the awful history underneath it. African Americans, Japanese Americans and Latino Americans had their land taken from them by the city of Pasadena via eminent domain to make way for the Parsons Corporation, who now rents from the new owners, Lincoln Property,” according to Kennedy.

In other U.S. cities, communities are grappling with the right way to resolve similar dilemmas.

In Manhattan Beach, the state of California and the county of Los Angeles returned a large beach front property to the African-American Bruce family that was taken from them by the government.

In that case, on Sept 20, Gov. Gavin Newsom apologized to the Bruce family for the injustice that was done to them. “We haven’t always had a proud past,” Newsom said.

“I suppose it would be only right for the City of Pasadena to issue a similar apology for what happened to those families who had their land taken from them in Pasadena,” Kennedy said,

“However, I am hopeful that representatives of Lincoln Property will publicly share at City Council what affirmative steps they are going to take to make amends and do the right thing for the Pasadena community,” Kennedy said.