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I had a date yesterday to review former Centre City Development Corp. President Nancy Graham’s e-mails, which were finally being made public after nearly three months of waiting.
On July 24, I requested every e-mail that Graham sent after April 1, about the time that questions were first raised about her previous business relationship with an affiliate of a developer who had a project pending downtown. She later resigned and CCDC scrapped the $409-million hotel and condominium project at 7th Avenue and Market Street downtown.
CCDC produced some e-mails in early September. Then a new law firm, Los Angeles-based Kane Ballmer Berkman, took over as CCDC’s counsel. Upon taking over, the firm’s attorney, Gus Lamanna, told me that the remaining e-mails wouldn’t be released and denied my request. CCDC Chairman Fred Maas, however, said the e-mails should be released, which led to my date yesterday.
Three boxes waited. Several stacks of e-mails were included. They were nearly illegible — they included every bit of HTML coding and formatting. Short e-mails stretched into multiple pages. Each line turned into a jumble of long strings of code with an occasional sentence imbedded deep within.
I protested the move to Maas and Derek Danziger, CCDC’s spokesman. Danziger agreed that the e-mails were illegible. “There’s no way you should have to sit and read through stuff like that,” Danziger said.
Danziger promised a quick turnaround in producing the e-mails in a digestible format. We’ll have more updates as they come.