A court-ordered receiver who took over operations for East Palo Alto's biggest landlord earlier this month has hired a new property management company to oversee about 1,800 units in the city.
Pacific Palisades-based receiver Dave Wald brought in Investors' Property Services, of Foothill Ranch, last week and booted existing property manager Woodland Park Management, an arm of Palo Alto-based Page Mill Properties. A San Mateo County Superior Court judge appointed Wald as receiver earlier this month after Page Mill failed to make a $50 million balloon payment to Wells Fargo Bank a few weeks earlier.
Page Mill still owns the properties, but it remains unclear whether they will ultimately revert to the bank.
The company has had a fraught relationship with East Palo Alto since it began buying buildings on the city's west side in 2006. There are about 10 active lawsuits between the two, mostly related to rent hikes, which city officials believe violate a decades-old rent control law. Page Mill says the increases were lawful.
At a meeting Tuesday afternoon, Wald, Robert Warren — president of the new property management company — and Wells Fargo Bank officials met with city employees, Mayor Ruben Abrica, police Chief Ron Davis and others.
Both the new receiver and property manager seemed willing to collaborate with the city — a far cry from the municipality's troubled relationship with Page Mill.
"My intention is not to produce a lot of heat," Wald said. In cases like this, "you want safe housing, and you want housing that people will want to rent. ... Ultimately, I want this as quickly as it can to become a boring property."
Wald noted that he had continued to pursue some of Page Mill's lawsuits because he hadn't been able to analyze them yet ahead of pending deadlines for filing legal documents.
However, "I don't have any interest in advancing 12 lawsuits," Wald said. "We'd be surprised if you didn't see a lot of this stuff dissipate."
Investors' Property Services has brought in some of its own supervisors and has hired a number of Woodland Park employees to help with the transition, Warren said.
"Our job is to provide the services to the residents that any landlord would provide," he added after the meeting.
City officials emphasized that they hope to work cooperatively with the new managers and assure the safety and quality of life of thousands of tenants.
"It appears that Page Mill Properties has been operating as sort of a machine that has determined to crush us," Mayor Abrica said. "In our own history in East Palo Alto, we will fight very hard for our existence. At the same time, we're realistic people who know that we have to work with people."
Two Page Mill spokesmen did not respond to an e-mail requesting comment late Tuesday afternoon.
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