But before it got to that, he told everyone, he wanted them to eat. Falk accepted that for the next few hours he would be the recipient of the developer’s frustrations. O’Brien was roughly the color of those grapes when he walked in with some aides, and Mr. He laid the spread on a conference room table and cut the bread into slices and put down little cheese spreaders and surrounded it with the grapes. He went to a deli and bought baguettes, a wheel of Brie and bunches of red grapes. Falk had once taken a course on negotiation at Harvard, where he learned that people are supposed to be more reasonable when they bargain over food. Falk observed at the City Council meetings, residents said things like “too aggressive,” “not respectful,” “embarrassment,” “outraged,” “audacity,” “very urban,” “deeply upset,” “unsightly,” “monstrosity,” “inconceivable,” “simply outrageous,” “vehemently opposed,” “sheer scope,” “very wrong,” “blocking views,” “does not conform,” “property values will be destroyed,” and “will allow more crime to be committed.”

In letters to elected officials, and at the open microphone that Mr. Zoning rules allowed it, but neighbors seemed to feel that if their opposition was vehement enough, it could keep the Terraces unbuilt. The project, which the developer called the Terraces of Lafayette, would be the biggest development in the suburb’s history. Falk took his usual spot by the fire exit to watch several dozen of his fellow Lafayetters absolutely lose their minds.Ī developer had proposed putting 315 apartments on a choice parcel along Deer Hill Road - close to a Bay Area Rapid Transit station, and smack in the view of a bunch of high-dollar properties. Locals tended to react to new building projects with suspicion or even hostility, and over a series of Mondays in 20, Mr. With a population of just 25,000, Lafayette was wealthy because it was a small town next to a big town, and it maintained its status by keeping the big town out.

Falk was the city manager - basically the chief executive - of Lafayette, a wealthy suburb in the San Francisco Bay Area that is notoriously antagonistic to development. The City Council of Lafayette, Calif., met the public two Mondays a month, and Steve Falk liked to sit off by himself, near the fire exit of the auditorium, so that he could observe from the widest possible vantage.

Golden gates conor dougherty