Whittier Deserves Better

This project will have significant adverse impacts to traffic and air quality in Whittier while it needlessly destroys a majority of the irreplaceable historic resources on an official California State Historic Landmark.

The 74-acre Nelles property offers a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to enhance the city, but the proposed development provides no public open space, no affordable housing, no playing fields for youth, no continuum of care facility for seniors, no venue for the arts, no unique dining, entertainment and retail component, in short, nothing that this community really needs.

Its touted tax benefits are no greater than any development might offer, and net revenue to the city would amount to no more than four tenths of one percent of the city’s annual budget, even if the developer’s pie-in-the-sky promises are realized. Sales generated by their neighborhood-serving retail will simply cannibalize sales from similar retail nearby, while the jobs it predicts will be low-paying retail and food service positions with no benefits. This project, as currently configured, makes Whittier bigger without making it better.

We ask you to send a message to the state and the developer that Whittier will not settle for an ordinary cookie-cutter plan that does not meet our needs or respect our history.

Challenge this developer to go back to the drawing board and provide our community with a 21st Century project where residents can live, work, shop and play in a more unique, sustainable, pedestrian-friendly, inter-generational, transit-oriented neighborhood with a strong sense of place, or ask them to step aside in favor a developer that will.