A developer is planning to build a new property less than a mile away from the AES power plant, site of the now-dead Harbor Village plan. Whether or not he will be able to move forward with the project depends on decisions to be made at the April 7 Redondo Beach City Council meeting.
The developer’s political contributions to local candidates, current District 3 City Council candidate Christian Anthony Horvath and Mayor Steve Aspel, are tinted by ties to a Hawthorne city councilman who pled guilty to corruption charges after favoring the developer in a land deal.
Mohamad Pournamdari is an owner of 3600 Torrance Management LLC, which purchased the land at 750 N. Francisca Avenue more than a year and a half ago. Now, following the relocation of the land’s former tenants, The Dirt Yard, Pournamdari is hoping to build a 202 room hotel on the property — “a Marriott or a Hilton brand,” he says.
“Basically, I think the best use for this land is a hotel,” Pournamdari said. “It’s enough market for [our competitors] and us as well.”
An obstacle in his path is similar to one faced by his neighbors to the west. Last year, AES proposed a mixed-use development on the 50-acre power plant property. But first, the land needed to be rezoned to allow for commercial and residential use. That effort was blocked last month when the Ballot Measure B, which would have allowed the zone change failed.
Pournamdari’s rezoning effort may trigger Article XXVII of the City Charter. Introduced in Nov. 2008, Article XXVII requires that a zoning change that may have a “significant impact” be subject to a citywide vote — including traffic increases of more than 150 morning or evening peak hour trips or more than 40,000 additional square feet of residential, office or nonresidential floor area.
That issue can’t be determined until the land undergoes an environmental review, which requires city council approval, according to a report presented to the Council on March 17 by Community Development Director Aaron Jones.
Discussion during that meeting District 2 Councilman Bill Brand raised another complication. Following Measure B’s defeat, Aspel, a proponent of B, and Brand, who opposed the measure, put together the framework for a citizens’ task force to study the AES site and neighboring properties, including the 750 N. Francisca Ave. property. Brand said that making decisions on the Francisca property without more information “would be putting the cart before the horse.”
Aspel disagreed.
“We’re supposed to get a citizen’s group to discuss the area down there, but we’re not going to impede someone’s right to process,” Aspel said. “He’s been working on it for a long time, and he will be one of the people invited to sit at the table, because he is a stakeholder there. I don’t think it’s a big deal to let him go through process here.”
“The guy bought industrial land and is entitled to due process,” Brand said, “but we have a city process too. If we go along with this without discussing it, we are intimating that we’re approving it.”
District 5 Councilman Matt Kilroy said he believed Pournamdari “was gambling on certain things happening,” such as the passage of Measure B.
“Normally I’m not in favor for the stars to be in alignment before we vote, but since we are having discussions for the AES property I think we do a disservice if we don’t look at everything together,” Kilroy said. “It’s the first I’ve heard about it, and at the minimum we should wait until we get more information.”
Political donations
Former District 3 Councilman Steve Colin began to take an interest in this year’s City Council race when he received a visit from District 3 City Council candidate Christian Anthony Horvath during Horvath’s canvassing. Colin agreed to put a Horvath sign in his yard. After that, he said, he “didn’t hear from him for two weeks.” It was then that a friend stirred his interest in supporting the campaign of Horvath’s eventual May 12 runoff opponent, Candace Allen Nafissi.
Colin’s conversation with Horvath, he said, included concerns that council members could be influenced by special interest groups, and a promise from Horvath that he was not in favor of overdevelopment. Colin, an opponent of Measure B, subsequently saw a Yes on B sign in Horvath’s yard.
That spurred Colin to look into Horvath’s campaign filings, where he found a $4,000 contribution from 4320 Imperial Inc.
Imperial Inc, like 3600 Torrance Management’s contract with the City of Redondo Beach, lists Mohammad Pournamdari as its agent.
Pournamdari’s ties to civic government dates back to 2005, when then-Hawthorne City Councilman Louis Velez voted to approve his city’s use of eminent domain to acquire a parking lot for $500,000 next to a closed motel owned by Pournamdari. According to a Daily Breeze story, Velez then voted to sell the land to Pournamdari. At the time, Velez was renting a house owned by Pournamdari family. In 2008, Velez pled guilty to felony conflict of interest charges stemming from his vote.
Colin found that Pournamdari also contributed to Aspel and District 1 Councilman Jeff Ginsburg during their 2013 campaigns.
“It concerns me that Aspel and Ginsburg and now Horvath, have all taken money from this man, and nobody was saying anything about this man’s proposed hotel and the change in zoning of that parcel from industrial to, eventually, commercial,” Colin said. “I’ve got grave, grave concerns about Horvath as a candidate, and having been on the council for two terms, I saw [money’s influence] then and don’t want to see it again.”
Last week, following a Beach Reporter story about Pournamdari, Horvath returned the $4,000 donation. In a press release sent out after returning the money, Horvath said, “Though the contributor faced no similar charges, I refuse to accept any monies tainted by questions of integrity and public trust.”
In an interview, Horvath said that he had no contact with Pournamdari prior to receiving the donation and has not met him prior to returning the check. He said he simply didn’t consider looking into his donor’s background when he accepted the contribution.
“We were just excited to have someone that was a Redondo Beach resident that was wealthy and wanted to donate. It didn’t cross my mind,” he said. “To be honest with you, if i had known he was in any way related to an ongoing project in the city, I wouldn’t have taken a donation from him. I’m just not interested in that sense of impropriety.”
But according to Pournamdari, “I called the City Clerk, I got a list of the qualified candidates, I called him, learned his views and saw that he was the closest to mine.”
Horvath subsequently acknowledged that he had met the developer at Pournamdari’s Redondo Beach house. “We spoke for probably about five, ten minutes, and after talking with him, he wrote me a check. I didn’t know how much he was writing it for. I said ‘Thank you,’ and I left.”
Horvath said he reached out to the developer for a donation after being made aware of him.
The connection between Horvath and Pournamdari was Redondo Beach Mayor Steve Aspel.
“Pournamdari called me and asked me who to support [in District 3], so I said ‘pick one of the three: Sam Kartounian, Sandy Marchese or Christian Horvath.’ I told him I’m sitting it out,” Aspel said, telling Pournamdari to exclude Measure B opponent and Brand ally Candace Allen Nafissi. “I did tell him, when he called me in 2013, to support Jeff Ginsburg as well.”
In 2013, Aspel and Ginsburg took $6,500 and $2,500, respectively, from Pournamdari and his brother Hamid, who donated under their own names, rather than through a related LLC.
Aspel’s CA 460 form, which lists donations greater than $100, shows that he received $3,000 of that money from Mohamad Pournamdari on June 13, 2013.
However, an Aspel CA 497 form, reporting donations greater than $1,000 within 24 hours of receiving them, shows that the funds were actually received on May 9, 2013, five days before the mayoral runoff election pitting Aspel against District 5 Councilman Matt Kilroy.
Aspel said that the date on the 460 form was a typing error. He said he did all of the work on those filings himself and said followed the law by reporting the check within 24 hours of receiving it. He said that he had no knowledge of Pournamdari’s past. He said he had spoken to the developer by phone and never met him face-to-face.
“I’ve spoken to him three times in my life,” Aspel said. “He’s never called me once about any property he has,” Aspel said. “No one had any idea that Pournamdari owned that property. He’s never acted out of order.”
Brand countered, “The whole thing stinks to high heaven, that a developer who owns the land behind the AES plant has donated $5,000 to the mayor and $2,000 to the District 1 councilman, and they supported staff moving forward to rezone his property. They could have at least disclosed that,” Brand said.
Aspel said knowledge of Pournamdari’s history may affect his participation in future council discussions about the proposed hotel property. “Knowing his history in Hawthorne, having taken his money for my campaign, I might recuse myself from the discussion.” He said he would ask City Attorney Michael Webb for his recommendation. He added that City Council members “don’t check our 460s every time we take a vote.”
“If it had happened now, if he wanted to give me money for reelection, I wouldn’t take it,” Aspel said. “Had I had any idea, any inkling that there was something going on in Hawthorne, then common sense would dictate you don’t take the contribution.”
Aspel says that for now, discussions of a hotel should be tabled.
“Until we get everything settled down on the task force, I’d rather not even talk about a hotel there,” he said.
Pournamdari insisted his campaign contributions were not improper. “You want to make the city better and you donate to the campaign of your choice. That’s how democracy works,” he said. “You donate to the candidates of your choice and that doesn’t mean that you do anything improper. I respect [Aspel and Ginsburg] both and see them both as fine politicians.”
Horvath now acknowledges that he has met Pournamdari prior to his returning the campaign funds, saying that any other timeline “is illogical.”
“Something that was innocuous and a simple donation has turned into something that is dirty and tawdry,” Horvath said. “[Pournamdari’s past] didn’t click with anybody until Nafissi’s supporters started doing their own digging, and I’m glad that they did, because they at least pointed out that there was something weird there and that the money should go back to them.”
“I want to make sure that there’s nothing weird going on here,” Horvath said. “It’s been turned into something tawdry and it’s not.” ER
