[su_heading size=”40″ align=”left”]Monster in Disguise[\/su_heading]<\/p>\n
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A street art show involving local clothing companies, vendors, musicians and graffiti artists became the subject of controversy after it was revealed the event was being backed by Maximus Real Estate Partners, the firm behind the infamous \u201cMonster in the Mission\u201d project at 16th and Mission streets.<\/p>\n
The Plaza 16 Coalition and other affordable housing advocates and community members alege that the event, dubbed \u201cMade in the Bay\u201d was little more than a blatant public relations campaign designed to build support for the Monster in the Mission, which is officially known as 1979 Mission.<\/p>\n
Organized by employees of a Maximus-funded LLC called Mission for All, the event took place on March 3 at Mission for All\u2019s headquarters, which is also the proposed site for the project.<\/p>\n
Made in the Bay was heavily promoted through various social media accounts of artists and clothing companies, and various graffiti artists were invited prior to the event to paint murals on the walls next to the Walgreens at 16th and Mission streets.<\/p>\n
Nancy Pili Hernandez, who has coordinated numerous invitational graffiti battles and art festivals in the Mission, said that she heard of the Made in the Bay event and became alarmed when she saw that the event flyer featured a Mission for All logo.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am 100 percent sure that the reason why Maximus chose to start an LLC, and call it Mission for All, and hire local young people from this neighborhood, is to divide and conquer this neighborhood and put up their condo,\u201d Pili Hernandez said. \u201cThe attempt to use locals to convince us that this is a good proposal, is a divide and conquer tactic.\u201d<\/p>\n
It isn\u2019t the first time that Mission for All has been at the center of controversy.<\/p>\n
In early January, Mission Local reported that a teacher and librarian was duped into having her photo featured as part of Mission for All\u2019s $46,000 \u201cI Am Not A Monster\u201d ad campaign at the 16th and Mission Street BART Station.<\/p>\n
Upon learning of Mission for All\u2019s involvement, Pili Hernandez began doing outreach of her own.<\/p>\n
\u201cI began to text and call a bunch of the artists on the list to ask if they understood that participating in this event is cosigning on a condo,\u201d Pili Hernandez told El Tecolote before the March 3 event. \u201cAnd the majority of them had no idea who Mission for All is. They had all been approached by a clothing company called Dying Breed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dying Breed, when asked to comment, stated that they were merely vendors at the event and\u00a0 <\/span>\u201cnot part of that organization.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe have a partner who is employed by Mission for All but that is an entirely separate entity,\u201d their statement read.<\/p>\n El Tecolote contacted the partner who confirmed, on condition of anonymity, that he curated the show, but denied it had any connection to Maximus.<\/p>\n According to Business Entities records from the California Secretary of State, Mission For All, LLC was registered on Nov. 16, 2016 by Christopher Skinnell, a lawyer with Nielsen Merksamer based in San Rafael. On the registration form, Skinnell listed Mission For All\u2019s initial business address as One Maritime Plaza Suite 1900, the same address for Maximus Real Estate Partners.<\/p>\n The Business Entities records show that Mission for All on Oct. 25, 2017 listed one of it\u2019s managers as Larry Del Carlo, who is the former executive director at Mission Housing Development Corporation, the largest affordable housing nonprofit in the city.<\/p>\n Mission for All consultant Gene Royale said that Del Carlo asked him to attend a presentation on the 1979 Mission project, which he was working on, at the Laborers Local 261 Union Hall on March 4, 2015. Royale went, and witnessed angry community members shout down the project.<\/p>\n \u201cI was really disappointed in the community,\u201d Royale said about the experience. \u201c[The] animosity toward a friend of mine who I knew had made tremendous amounts of contributions to the community\u2026 why would you go to something, to hear about something, to argue about something but not allowed anything to be said?\u201d<\/p>\n Royale and Del Carlo met shortly afterward with Maximus\u2019 senior vice president, Bert Polacci, and offered to \u201cput together an organization,\u201d which they named Mission for All.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have a different point of view about how to work in community development issues in the neighborhood,\u201d Royale said, explaining that his job at Mission for All is to train organizers, and \u201cto turn around people\u2019s thinking in the community about this project. I just think there is a deal here to be had. And that I wish my friends, and a lot of our friends, could see it.\u201d<\/p>\n But there are many in the community who are wary of any deal that relies on trusting that Maximus has anything other than profits on its mind.<\/p>\n \u201cArt and culture is such a big part of our community and we gravitate so much toward it, and we\u2019re seeing that developers are capitalizing on that,\u201d said Marilyn Duran, a community organizer with PODER who is also a member of Plaza 16. \u201cThis is just another tactic of a developer\u2014a really big developer\u2014who … is gonna gentrify and gonna displace our community, using the tactic of art and culture to persuade us to agree with the project.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [su_heading size=”40″ align=”left”]Monster in Disguise[\/su_heading] [su_carousel source=”media: 37104,37105,37106″ limit=”65″ link=”lightbox” width=”800″ height=”540″ responsive=”no” items=”1″] A street art show involving local clothing companies, vendors, musicians and graffiti artists became the subject of controversy after it was revealed the event was being backed by Maximus Real Estate Partners, the firm behind the infamous \u201cMonster in the Mission\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":37104,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":false,"newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3929],"tags":[16206,16208,16202,16214,16204,16198,14180,16210,16200,16212,11775],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-37103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-en","tag-bert-polacci","tag-dying-breed","tag-gene-royale","tag-i-am-not-a-monster","tag-larry-del-carlo","tag-made-in-the-bay","tag-marilyn-duran","tag-maximus-real-estate-partners-en","tag-mission-for-all","tag-nancy-pili-en","tag-street-art-en","entry"],"yoast_head":"\n