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Blackstone Tries to Hide Its Attacks North County Master Planned Community
By Chris Emami | 10/08/09 | 07:27 PM EDT | 4 Comments
On Wednesday, the San Diego Union Tribune and North County Times ran full page ads, attacking the master planned community in North San Diego County. Identified as a paid political advertisement funded by the Golden Door Spa, these ads on the good name of the spa and purported to be locally generated. Turns out, the Golden Door hasn’t been locally own since Deborah Szekely in 1998.
The current owners, the Blackstone Group, acquired Wyndham International and its assets including the Golden Door Spa, in 2005 (1). When Blackstone bought Wyndam, it did what it usually does, sold off at least half of the assets, and renamed the rest LXR Luxury. I’m guessing they hung onto the Golden Door Spa, because it is a recognized name.
In the paid political advertisements (2) that ran on Wednesday, October 7, the Golden Door Spa is listed as the company paying for the advertisements. The Blackstone Group has cleverly been hiding their activities with fronts like this as they have waged a covert war in North County.
The first attempt was in 2005 by a group called Save Our Valley. This group got exposed as a shell group when P.O. Box 1644 Fallbrook, CA used for return mail from a flyer (3) and to register the website, tracked back to Keith Battle, a longtime North County politico. Keith has worked with Nancy Chase, the developer of the Gregory Canyon. She first surfaced in 2006 to oppose the widening of Deer Springs Road on behalf of the Golden Door (4). Save Our Valley has since disappeared. The website’s registered owner has changed and if you Google the website, www.saveourvalley.us you’ll see it has been dismantled.
Blackstone didn’t make the same mistake the next time, when I it appears they created Citizens Against Stonegate Traffic (CAST). They used “Whois Privacy Protection Service, Inc.” to hide the Administrative Contact (5) and only the address is to the privacy protection company in Bellevue, Washington. The exact same privacy protection company is listed as the Administrative Contact (6) for Good Planning Now www.goodplanningnow.com. They also did a very expensive mass mailing (7). Maybe these weren’t funded by Blackstone, but if these groups are spontaneous and funded by community members, there is no reason to hide who owns and operates these websites. I’m also skeptical about how Richard Coffman of the Coalition for Wildfire Safety could afford to send out a professionally produced mass mailing to over 20,000 people (8) has also been sending emails to people in our community offering free bus rides to the Planning Commission hearing on October 9th. I’d be interested to know who’s footing the bill for all of this.
Now, Blackstone has taken out very expensive political advertisements in the North County Times and the San Diego Union Tribune. This time, they’re not trying to create a front group, since they already have those up and running. They’re hiding behind the Golden Door’s name to try to gain sympathy. If you search the website referred to in the advertisement www.voiceofdoom.com, the owner is a guy named Lee Stitzenberger (9). A quick Goole seaerch shows he’s a political consultant and CEO of the Dolphin Group in Los Angeles http://dolphingroup.org. Past clients include Altria (the renamed cigarette company Philip Morris), Wal-Mart, Mariott, and numerous political campaigns. Of most interest is his role as campaign manager for Proposition 188, a counter to California’s strict workplace anti-smoking ban AB 13 (10). Funded by Philip Morris and Big Tobacco, in 1994 this effort ultimately failed, but Stitzenberger and his strategy were subject to LA Times articles back in 1994. He also worked to fight Santa Monica’s living wage ordinance and is supposedly famous for Willie Horton ads that helped George H.W. Bush defeat Michael Dukakis in 1988.
This Astroturfing strategy is not new, but Blackstone has cleverly been able to keep it hidden from the local newspapers. Now that Blackstone has just acquired all of the Anheiser-Busch parks, including San Diego Sea World, it will be interesting to see if they employ the same tactics in Point Loma, Mission Beach, and Pacific Beach.
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Comments
What is NOT mentioned by this author is that the residents of Twin Oaks Valley are up in arms and have been fighting to stop this project, regardless of its name and the particular scenarios they are pushing.
The residents, whether within the boundaries of San Marcos or the County of San Diego, all want to prevent this project. They have valid reasons. They attend meetings. Twin Oaks Valley Property Owner's Association, Twin Oaks Valley Sponsor Group, Deer Springs Fire Protection meetings, as well as the many thousands of hours studying the versions of the EIR (Environmental Impact Report), making written comments to it, attending many other important meetings,and keeping in constant contact with the Department of Planning and Land Use.
The author failed to mention issues that the PUBLIC, the individual people, addressed, that eventually were completely dropped.
Issues like "Shelter In Place" - the much-touted concept that was to take the place of actual evacuation measures and try to get around the very real possibility that thousands of people will be stuck up on that hill, with wildfire advancing in 15 minutes from bottom to top of the mountain.
Real people created "Liar, Liar, County's On Fire", and even authored a book about the very real dangers.
Water, or lack thereof. The developer stated he would be using reclaimed water, gray water, for irrigation, so that they would not be using such massive amounts of our water (We are already in a Stage Two Water Alert). He also stated that they would use reclaimed water during construction. These were comments made during one of the many Twin Oaks Valley Sponsor Group meetings that the developer and his staff attended, as well as representatives from the San Diego Department of Planning and Land Use. The original questions were raised because of the State Law that requires projects of more than 500 units to have sufficient water available for existing, planned, and future water use. There is not sufficient water and steps must be taken, but nothing has been done about it.
To pull the focus away from all of the many thousands of people that have invested their own time and money to prevent harm from coming to others. is shocking. One must wonder what makes the author of this article focus on the Blackstone Group, rather than the people that have spoken and are still speaking. One wonders...
Twin Oaks Valley resident
- reply
|What is NOT mentioned by this author is that the residents of Twin Oaks Valley are up in arms and have been fighting to stop this project, regardless of its name and the particular scenarios they are pushing.
The residents, whether within the boundaries of San Marcos or the County of San Diego, all want to prevent this project. They have valid reasons. They attend meetings. Twin Oaks Valley Property Owner's Association, Twin Oaks Valley Sponsor Group, Deer Springs Fire Protection meetings, as well as the many thousands of hours studying the versions of the EIR (Environmental Impact Report), making written comments to it, attending many other important meetings,and keeping in constant contact with the Department of Planning and Land Use.
The author failed to mention issues that the PUBLIC, the individual people, addressed, that eventually were completely dropped.
Issues like "Shelter In Place" - the much-touted concept that was to take the place of actual evacuation measures and try to get around the very real possibility that thousands of people will be stuck up on that hill, with wildfire advancing in 15 minutes from bottom to top of the mountain.
Real people created "Liar, Liar, County's On Fire", and even authored a book about the very real dangers.
Water, or lack thereof. The developer stated he would be using reclaimed water, gray water, for irrigation, so that they would not be using such massive amounts of our water (We are already in a Stage Two Water Alert). He also stated that they would use reclaimed water during construction. These were comments made during one of the many Twin Oaks Valley Sponsor Group meetings that the developer and his staff attended, as well as representatives from the San Diego Department of Planning and Land Use. The original questions were raised because of the State Law that requires projects of more than 500 units to have sufficient water available for existing, planned, and future water use. There is not sufficient water and steps must be taken, but nothing has been done about it.
To pull the focus away from all of the many thousands of people that have invested their own time and money to prevent harm from coming to others. is shocking. One must wonder what makes the author of this article focus on the Blackstone Group, rather than the people that have spoken and are still speaking. One wonders...
Twin Oaks Valley resident
- reply
|- reply
|It is sad to see a young journalist so utterly confused!
Perhaps you should consider climbing down from your righteous white horse and spend a couple of weeks talking with people in the adjacent communities and find out what THEY think about this project. Oh, and don't forget to investigate the blatant corruption at the elected official (Supervisorial) level connected therewith.
Subsequently, perhaps you should study the topography of the area and look at the potential fire risks with which we who live here are highly concerned.
Then, once you've seen the light, perhaps you'll crawl back into your own county and attempt to do some valued work there; you have contributed nothing here.
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