DOWNEY — A controversial renovation project for the Rives Mansion cleared a major hurdle on Tuesday, surviving an appeal to the city council over a retail café set to be built on the property.

Downey’s Planning Commission initially approved plans to refurbish and convert the historic residential home into nine commercial office spaces and construct a 1,200 square foot coffee shop and juice bar early last month.

Almost immediately the project garnered pushback, specifically over the location of the proposed coffee shop. Many of Downey’s historical conservation groups and supporters have voiced concerns that the café’s placement may be obstructive, therefore damaging the site’s historic value.

Mansion owners Arturo Concha and Erika De La Teja looked visibly frustrated and exasperated, with the appeal coming as the most recent speed bump in what has already proved to be a long and tedious process.

Concha said that the process has been “uphill” for his family, adding that the coffee shop was needed in order to make the project feasible.

“It’s been really a struggle,” said Concha. “We purchased the property in December of 2017… we’ve been working on this project for almost two years now. We’ve approached the city with different concepts…financially, we’ve put so much money it’s put a hardship, even on us. The city has asked for everything in the book in this property. We came out of Planning Commission thinking we won with 101 conditions. With 101 conditions we won? It was horrific for us.”

“I understand the historical value of the property; we are okay with meeting all the historical components of the property…but to add another 50 conditions to our business use was very harmful to us.”

Resident feedback proved to be a mixed bag at the meeting, with several community members coming out in support and opposition. However, with Mayor Rick Rodriguez still on medical absence and Alex Saab abstaining due to the proximity of his law office to the mansion, the difficult decision would ultimately fall on the remaining three council members. What’s more, if they were to overturn the Commission’s decision, they would need to do it unanimously.

Councilman Sean Ashton – who called for the review of the plans initially – came out in opposition.

“It’s not a personal thing for me to do this; it’s just something that I felt that there was enough of an issue with the Planning Commission’s decision where this needed to be brought forth here,” said Ashton. “There is no perfect situation. I guess the perfect situation for me would have been if code enforcement would have taken care of the issues that were happening with the Rives Mansion before [ the Concha family] even got involved with all this mess…I personally don’t know if I could ever be happy with having a coffee shop there, I’m going to be honest with you. I do feel there is an issue with having that in that site…I just know that having it up front is not anything I can support.”

However, it soon became clear that the council would not get the unanimous vote it needed, with Frometa commenting that the project was “not the best solution, but it is the best-case scenario.”

“We want to make decisions that are reasonable,” said Frometa. “Collectively, we have watched this property go from decay to despair, to being an eyesore in this community. We all want to preserve it; we all want to preserve the historical presence of this particular building...We are not in a position to buy this property and restore it; the city is not in that position.”

“We either let it go, and it will continue to fall into disrepair and at some point, it will be bulldozed, or we are here to decide ‘do we affirm the Planning Commission’s decision.’”

Pacheco also came out in support of the project.

“It is a tough decision,” said Pacheco. “I also want to maintain the Rives Mansion and the beauty of the Rives Mansion…I know that the Planning Commission spent many long hours trying to figure out the location of this juice bar / coffee bar, and many different alternatives as to what can be done. I also am in support of the Planning Commission’s decision, because I believe that the mansion should be maintained, and I believe this would add an extra benefit to the residents of our city.”

The final vote came to 2-1.

After the decision, De La Teja said that there was some relief, however there was “still a long road ahead.”