To the Editor:
I am responding to Rebecca Bakalian Hachikian’s letter to the editor regarding the sale of the Diocesan air rights in last week’s Mirror-Spectator (8/18/18). She mentioned my father’s name, Yervant Alexanian, along with Haik Kavookjian and Dadour Dadourian as one of the community leaders and questions how he/they would respond to the sale/lease of Diocesan property.
As his daughter, I feel the need to respond.
I also read the long overdue report disseminated by the Diocesan Council regarding the sale/lease of the Diocesan land with great interest. Simply put there was absolutely no clarification of the so-called “misinformation” which was causing the community’s widespread, broad based backlash against “the project.” Actually, the community at large pushed back against the project based on their understanding of it. There were, however, contradictions as Ms. Hachikian states.
One of them, according to the report, was that the delegates “overwhelmingly” supported “the project” at the May delegate’s assembly but the reality is that discussion of the plan to sell the Diocese wasn’t on the agenda and was discussed at the end of the meeting when several of the delegates had already left as Ms. Hachikian stated. It’s my understanding that there’s also some confusion amongst the delegates as to what they were supporting since they weren’t given any written information about “the project”. Another contradiction, as she stated was that the sale of the land was in fact already decided upon by the Diocesan Council and the Board of Trustees and if the community hadn’t pushed back, the contract would have been signed this summer without consulting with the delegates.
Do those who are pushing “the project” to sell/lease the Diocesan land realize that the builders of a 32-story-high-rise can sell the building to Turks or Azeris or can rent/sell the apartments to the aforementioned who can wreak havoc on those Armenians attending church or working at the complex? No contract can prevent any ethnic groups from renting or buying property since there are strong laws preventing this kind of discrimination.
