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THE WOLVES OF CAFA
Like hungry wolves running down a buffalo in Yellowstone, environmental lawyers for the Community Alliance for Fairground Accountability (CAFA) are running down the Santa Cruz County Fairground outside of Watsonville. Naturally, wolves do not take on healthy prey, only vulnerable ones. So too, do the environmental lawyers of CAFA, which is a good indication that our fairground is vulnerable.
The Santa Cruz County Fairground was not always vulnerable. For over 125 years it was part of a large community of county fairgrounds sponsored by the great State of California. The fairground was the open space in which the citizens of Santa Cruz County could meet friends and neighbors, ride horses, race cars, show off animals and art, listen to music, get married, celebrate quinceañeras, eat fun foods, remember history, flirt with each other, ride scary rides, and so on, all under the benevolent protection of the State!
But the State of California is not so great anymore, and so must turn its fairgrounds loose to fend for themselves in the real world of hungry wolves. To survive, each county fairground must somehow find a way to pay for itself, and many are having an extremely difficult time of it, including our neighbors in Monterey, San Benito, and Santa Clara counties. When a fairground cannot fend for itself, it will likely be consumed by another entity, as witnessed by the Madera County Fairground, which is now being consumed by a 30-acre shopping center anchored by Lowe’s.
Our Santa Cruz County Fairground, which is directed and managed by entrepreneurial members of the community, is showing that it can survive by hosting attractions throughout the year. CAFA does not like these attractions, and so has employed environmental lawyers to hound the fairgrounds with California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) lawsuits. Thus the County of Santa Cruz is now in a clear and present danger of losing its fairground to the deep pockets of CAFA and their environmental lawyers.
As a friend of the Santa Cruz County Fairground, I ask the following of CAFA and its lawyers:
1. For what reason did CAFA member Max Kelley develop a mansion on Rancho Brazil Lane (Google Maps), which is a scant watermelon toss from the fairground? Being a successful developer, surely Mr. Kelley knows the first law of real estate: “Location, location, and location!” Did the realtor who sold Kelley the property fail to notify him that the fairgrounds a mere watermelon toss away might produce an occasional noise and smell? Or did Mr. Kelley have another agenda in mind when he developed this property?
2. As the wealthy founder of West Marine, CAFA member Randy Repass surely must know how to buy low and sell high. How much higher would Mr. Repass’s holdings in the hills above the Santa Cruz County Fairground be valued should the fairground become the home of a Lowe’s Superstore?
3. Were not the honorable Gary Patton and Jonathan Wittwer, the environmental lawyers retained by CAFA to hound the fairground with CEQA lawsuits, the same lawyers who became famous– or infamous– for preventing development in Santa Cruz County? Are these lawyers now accepting money from developer Kelley? What will the 253,137 residents of Santa Cruz do for open space if these lawyers succeed in hounding their fairground to ground with CEQA lawsuits filed on behalf of a few rich property owners?
Some will say our Santa Cruz County Fairground is too big to be taken down. They do not see the vulnerability of a State-protected institution being forced to fend for itself. But you can bet the wolves of CAFA see the vulnerability!
Michael Olson
GM KSCO / KOMY
