Glendale News Press
LATimes.com
Sept 21 2004

Americana at Brand vote tough to analyze
Yousefian says Armenian Americans favored controversial Town Center
project, but others are disputing that claim.

By Josh Kleinbaum, News-Press

GLENDALE CITY HALL – A week after Glendale’s voters narrowly approved
the Americana at Brand, a controversial shopping mall proposal for
downtown Glendale, supporters and critics are still crunching numbers
to figure out what it all means.

Some are looking especially close at the city’s Armenian-American
population, which could play a decisive role in City Council
elections next April.

Mayor Bob Yousefian, who is up for reelection in April, said about
60% of Glendale’s Armenian Americans supported the Americana on Sept.
14, even though neighborhoods with large Armenian-American
populations largely voted against three measures to approve the
project’s zoning.

Others are not so sure.

“There’s no way of knowing that,” said Ardashes Kassakhian, a
political activist in Glendale’s Armenian-American community. “You
can guesstimate it, but there are no exit votes to verify that.”

Yousefian said he got his numbers from telephone surveys of absentee
voters conducted by the campaign supporting the project. But
developer Rick Caruso, who financed the campaign supporting the
Americana, said he has not seen a breakdown that included how the
Armenian community voted.

“That doesn’t mean it’s wrong, I just haven’t seen it,” Caruso said.

Both campaigns focused heavily on Glendale’s Armenian-American
community. Caruso hired two prominent local political consultants,
Eric Hacopian and Adrin Nazarian, to focus on that segment of the
electorate.

General Growth Properties, which owns the Glendale Galleria and
financed the campaign against the Americana, advertised heavily on
Armenian-language television shows. For months, Vrej Agajanian, host
of ABC TV Live, rallied against the project on the air, although he
insists that he received no money from General Growth.

Both campaigns said they are still analyzing the numbers from the
election. The only statistics available to the public are the voter
breakdown by precinct, which suggest that the Armenian-American
community voted against the project by a slight margin. In
neighborhoods with heavy Armenian-American populations, the majority
of voters consistently voted against the project.

Yousefian attributes that to high Latino and Filipino turnout. He
said voters of those ethnic backgrounds tended to oppose the project.

Harvey Englander, a political strategist hired by General Growth to
run the campaign against the Americana, dismissed that notion, saying
the numbers should be taken at face value.

“It is very clear that those areas of Glendale with larger packets of
Armenians voted in opposition to the Caruso Town Center project,”
Englander said. “If Mr. Yousefian is basing his future political
hopes on the support of the Armenian community, he’s going to find
himself on the short end of the stick.”