Modern art

Public art or yuppie landscaping? We report; you decide. (Photo: Fredericksen).

Chadmar’s Chuck Lande artfully talks Mammoth’s Council out of art fee

Sure, art may be subjective, but when does a drainage ditch qualify as a work of art.
Answer: When you spend more than $300,000 on it.
Developer Chuck Lande won a $138,662 rebate of a public art fee from Mammoth Lakes Town Council on Wednesday night.
He won the rebate by providing public art on-site at his Snowcreek VI development. The picture (below right) shows the public art project Lande completed … on private property which is not visible from the road.
The rebate will come from the refund of development impact fees paid by Lande for public art in 2004 and 2005.
The Council’s 3-2 vote on the issue overturned a 2-1 vote by the Public Arts Commission to deny Lande’s request.

Background

According to the staff report prepared by Senior Planner Sandra Moberly, “all residential projects with two or more residential units are required to provide public art or pay an in-lieu fee to satisfy their public art requirement. The Snowcreek VI project satisfied this requirement by paying in-lieu fees … at the time building permits were issued.”
Prior to the building permits being issued, the architectural design and site plan for the project were evaluated and approved, and Staff maintains that what Lande built reflects the approved site plan.
Lande says he spent in excess of $300,000 on the design and implementation of a landscaped water feature.
Lande counters that when he wrote his two separate public art mitigation fee checks totaling $138,662, a letter was attached to each check explaining that he planned to submit a request for a refund at a later date.
Planning Commissioner Tony Barrett, who was a Councilmember at the time the public art ordinance was adopted in 2004, said the ordinance allows for consideration of landscaped water features as art.
“The design was absolutely changed to reflect a work of art,” he said.
Problem is, despite Lande’s stated desire to come back and claim his irrigation ditch as art, Staff apparently treated the payment of the fee as the end of the story, and the project was never channeled properly through the Public Arts Commission.
When it was, the Public Arts Commission had a few issues with it.
One of the key issues is that the “water feature” is not visible from a public road, and as Arts Commissioner Noelle Deinken said, “Viewers must trespass on private property and get out of their cars in order to view the pond and stream.”
Lande said it may be on private property, but there is public access.
Though there are no plans to restrict access, however, it is private property, and homeowners have the right to restrict access if they so choose at some later date.
Councilmember Jo Bacon said the waterway didn’t reflect public art so much as good site design.
Councilman Skip Harvey, however, felt the issue was process, or more specifically, a lack of process. In his estimation, the Town didn’t follow through.
Lande said that ultimately, he chose to create the water feature because “we wanted to control what was art as well as what was installed on our property.”
Experience, he said, has taught him that in general, art fees are expensive and what one gets for these art fees is, in a word, bleak.
The Sheet sent reporter Devon Fredericksen to find the art installation on Thursday afternoon. She went to Snowcreek VI and discovered a maze of houses. In between the backsides of the houses is a water course. Though Barrett had told Fredericksen that one could walk along the water course, Fredericksen felt as though she were trespassing.
It also wasn’t clear where the art was. “It looks like a creek,” she said. “Actually, it looks like yuppie landscaping.”
When she returned to the office, she asked whether or not she had gone to the right place. That’s when Lunch had her call Barrett.
Yes, she had been in the right place, and no, it’s not supposed to be called an art installation. “It’s a water feature designated as public art,” said Barrett.
One thing all Councilmembers seemed to agree on is that none of them wanted to take a position of defining what is art and what is not art.
They did however, split by gender when it came to deciding whether or not Lande should be refunded his art fee. In their efforts to uphold the Public Arts Commission’s denial of the request, Councilmembers Bacon and Sugimura were in the minority.
Speaking for the financially strapped municipality, Mayor McCarroll said he hoped Mr. Lande would take a “credit” on future art fees as opposed to getting a check back right now.
Mr. Lande was noncommittal in response. Translation: Neil, I’ll take the check.