SANTA ANA : Ace Muffler Decision Criticized, Defended

In voting 6 to 1 this week to begin condemnation proceedings against Ace Muffler, the Santa Ana City Council showed a “total lack of respect for the business community, arrogance and gross negligence,” Councilman John Acosta charged Thursday.

Noting that Ace Muffler had been given assurances by individual council members and the city manager as recently as February that the city had abandoned its effort to force the East 1st Street automotive shop to relocate, “the council (members) look like fools (by) saying one thing, and then doing something else.”

Acosta also decried the city’s failure to notify the shop’s owners of the impending action, which was not listed on the agenda of the Redevelopment Agency’s meeting Tuesday.

The councilman’s comments came during a press conference called by Mayor Daniel E. Griset to give officials the chance to explain why they made the unpopular decision.

Supported by council member Patricia McGuigan, the city’s two deputy managers, the city attorney and its chief real estate officer, Griset said the council “anguished” over the decision. However, having been threatened by a lawsuit if it does not proceed with the development of a shopping center on the site occupied by Ace Muffler, the city had no choice but to initiate condemnation proceedings, he said.

City Atty. Edward Cooper had advised the council that the city would lose between $1.5 million and $3 million if Urbatec, the Santa Monica-based development company under contract to build the shopping center, sued for breach of contract, Griset said.

Griset also announced that the owners of Ace Muffler, a family headed by Mexican emigre Miguel Armando Pulido, had been offered $465,100 for the shop and land. Additionally, the Pulidos would receive a $250,000 “windfall,” Griset said, in the form of land on which Ace could relocate.

The question of fairness to Ace Muffler must be balanced against the “greater good to the community,” he said. “If the city loses millions of dollars in a lawsuit, the taxpayers will have to pay,” Griset said.

Pulido, who learned of the council’s eminent domain vote from a Times reporter Tuesday night, said Griset personally visited his shop in February to tell him that the city would not attempt a takeover of the muffler shop. “He told me I could sleep easy now, that there would not e any eminent domain,” Pulido said.