Letter to the Editor: Developer Upset by Racist Attacks by Rancho Neighborhood

Last week, following another marathon public hearing, the Burbank City Council voted unanimously to approve our 40-unit SB35 condominium project in the Rancho. The project was our third and largest proposal for this site over the last 3 years (more on that below…).

On Sunday morning, as we were enjoying the company of our families like many others, we received an email containing a racist personal attack from a Rancho community member. It read as follows: “You aren’t welcome here. This is why the fu@%ing Turks killed your families.”

This message is clearly hate speech. This kind of attack is despicable and has no place in this community or any other. It is especially hurtful to us as Armenians because, as you may know, 1.5 million of our ancestors were murdered by the Ottoman Empire between 1915-1924 in the Armenian Genocide. It was clearly intended as a racist attack, and we have reported this incident to the Burbank Police Department.

Unfortunately, this message is consistent with a pattern of ongoing verbal harassment and abuse that we have had to endure from many in the Rancho community over the last few years. Neighbors have stopped their cars in the middle of the road to get out and berate us with profanity-laced tirades. Others scream at us during our business hours as they ride or walk by our property. 

The common theme in these exchanges has always been “you don’t belong here.” As recently as last week’s Council meeting, some Rancho residents cursed at us inside the chambers of City Hall.  On our way out, others followed behind us yelling “you pieces of sh?!, you don’t belong here.” 

We have always suspected that many of these exchanges included some degree of racial motivation, but the email we received this weekend has confirmed it. It is one thing to oppose our work on legal grounds, but completely another to make hateful and racist personal attacks.

I am concerned not just for our safety, but for the safety of our customers visiting our small business in Burbank, the contractors and tradesmen that will be working on the condominium project, and the eventual new residents of our project in the Rancho.

This is all despite the fact that we approached the Rancho 3 years ago with arms outstretched. Our first proposal was an ultra low-density garden office project designed to look like a barn. We met with many Rancho residents and equine professionals. We sought the input of Ms. Emily Gabel-Luddy and Ms. Nori Walla, accepted leaders of the Rancho neighborhood. We met with them many times and even went on a horseback ride together to better understand the equestrian way of life. We proposed to incorporate an equine use into the project – either a horse triage room or a water station with a hitching post. The Rancho leaders’ response was that they had no further comment and communication was cut off.

We then proposed a low density SB35 townhouse project, a mini version of the Pickwick development currently under construction. The city council approved the project in July 2023 but the Rancho leaders sued despite legal claims that lacked substantial merit. Their intent was to delay and cause us further expense. To protect our investment we were compelled to pursue the maximum density afforded by state law and, about a year ago, we decided to turn to the 40-unit project that was recently approved. 

For almost three years, Rancho leaders and members have been searching for a way to get rid of us. Notwithstanding the fact that they had the opportunity to purchase this property when it was on the public market for two years before we came into the picture. First, they asked the city to invoke eminent domain and take our property. Then, they solicited state officials to use taxpayer funds to buy us out (spoiler alert: they were never able to put an offer together). They left no stone unturned in search of a reason to have the city council deny our project. Our site has been scrutinized more than almost any other in the city, and it remains clear that we have followed the letter of the law at every step.

Yet despite their personal knowledge of overwhelming factual and legal evidence to the contrary, Rancho leaders continue to insist that we are somehow usurping their neighborhood. They urge their neighbors to continue to “FIGHT” to cancel any type of development, providing them with false hope with respect to an unattainable desired outcome.

There has also been inflammatory rhetoric aimed at city staff and city council questioning their professionalism and motives. Burbank and Rancho leaders must take a more active role to dispel misinformation, which we feel has been weaponized to incite this kind of disgusting behavior. I hope we can all agree that this type of hateful rhetoric, whether racial or not, has no place in our community. I thank the leaders that have taken proactive steps to address the situation and I hope others will follow. Without a willingness to call out the untruths and subsequent bad acts, these harmful attitudes and behaviors will certainly continue to spread.

Garen Gozumian
Butterfly Gardens LLC