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E-WIRE PRESS RELEASE E-WIRE PRESS RELEASE E-WIRE PRESS RELEASE |
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE |
STOP! Washington Mutual Bank Coalition Launches Campaign Targeting Bank's Local Customers, According to Rally to Save Ahmanson Ranch |
Unprecedented Outreach by Hundreds of Volunteers at 25 Local
Branches Will Inform Customers of Washington Mutual's Plans to Build
Massive Luxury Housing Project in Santa Monica Mountains |
STUDIO CITY, CALIFORNIA, Apr. 10 -/E-Wire/--
Marking a new chapter in the campaign to prevent Seattle-based Washington Mutual Bank (NYSE:WM) from building a "new city' in the Santa Monica Mountains, Rally to Save Ahmanson Ranch elevated their campaign to a new level on Saturday morning by launching an initiative targeted at a key component of the corporate giant -- its Southern California customers.
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Washington Mutual's home mortgage and consumer banking customers and its 272 branches in Los Angeles and Ventura Counties are the reasons why Washington Mutual is California and the nation's largest home lender. Accordingly, by targeting this educational campaign at Washington Mutual customers in LA and Ventura County, Rally to Save Ahmanson Ranch is focusing energy on a program of customer education in one the company's largest customer bases.
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"We all know about Washington Mutual's expensive attempt to mislead the public and hide the true impacts of their development,' said actor and director Rob Reiner during the morning rally. Reiner, Co-chair of Rally to Save Ahmanson Ranch continued, "However, today we will be directly informingand empowering people that Washington Mutual can't ignore. Their customers are soon going to know that in Southern California, free checking comes with a price -- congested roads, dirty air and polluted water.'
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Washington Mutual acquired Ahmanson Ranch in 1998 following the bank's $10 billion purchase of HF Ahmanson & Co. and its Home Savings unit. The take-over, and that of American Savings and Great Western Financial, resulted in Washington Mutual becoming California's second largest bank. While not a core element of the savings & loan business, the Ahmanson Ranch housing development nonetheless was embraced by the Seattle bank, and has been aggressively pushed ever since.
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Speaking to the frustration and anger felt by many local residents over Ahmanson's proposed development, Los Angeles City Councilman Dennis Zine asked, "How would people in Seattle feel if HF Ahmanson & Co. had purchased Washington Mutual in 1998 -- instead of the other way around -- and an Irwindale, CA-based bank was now trying to build a new city of 10,000 people on a pristine stretch of open space in King or Snohomish County, Washington? Given that both our cities face similar traffic congestion and open space challenges, I'm sure residents and elected officials in Seattle would much as we have here in LA.'
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The Ahmanson Ranch development has been aggressively opposed by a broad-based coalition of local homeowners and environmental groups years before its title was transferred to Washington Mutual. One of the opponent's strongest cases against the development is its inadequate traffic mitigation funding. With a modern freeway interchange costing $30 million, local residents have been particularly angered that Washington Mutual has agreed to only spend a paltry $3.68 million on road and freeway improvements to offset the impact of 45,000 new daily vehicle trips on local roads.
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Los Angeles Board of Supervisors Chairman Zev Yaroslavsky who represents all of the area in LA County that will be impacted by the development, also joined the morning rally in Studio City. "If this project was located a couple miles south and west of its current location, LA County staff would look at the traffic and environmental mitigation figures the developer is supporting and laugh them right out of the office. Unfortunately, for LA residents here in the Valley, if this project gets built as currently planned, the joke will be on us.'
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Following the morning rally in Studio City, the gathering of residents, students and environmental and community activists dispersed to 25 branches in the San Fernando Valley and Ventura County to begin distributing informational material. As they left, Rally to Save Ahmanson Ranch Executive Director Tsilah Burman reminded them of their work's importance and said, "Remember, this is just the beginning of an intensive campaign that we will continue until we reach every Washington Mutual customer in Southern California and inform them of this disastrous development!'
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/SOURCE:
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Rally to Save Ahmanson Ranch |
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04-10-2002 |
/CONTACT:
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Mike Monasmith,
(310) 312 8083,
(323) 356 5637 mobile |
| /WEB SITE: |
http://http://www.ahmanson.org
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