Eva Blaisdell, the CEO of Lompoc’s proposed California Space Center, received a Notice of Default from the city for failure to meet deadlines laid out in an agreement with the city.
The city issued Blaisdell a Notice of Default, after the City Council met in closed session on Sept. 15. Blaisdell’s Exclusive Negotiating Agreement with Lompoc lays out a timeline by which she needs to submit specific documents to the city. Several of those items, such as letters of support from key partners and a sealed, CPA-certified financial audit, were missing from Blaisdell’s initial Request for Qualifications submitted to Lompoc at the end of October 2014.
Two months and the first set of deadlines have passed since the negotiating agreement was signed. The city of Lompoc, still missing several items, put Blaisdell on notice. She has a month and a half, the Notice of Default says, to provide what’s missing. If she doesn’t abide by Nov. 2, the city will terminate the negotiating agreement.
What does Lompoc need from Blaisdell? Two letters of reference and her résumé, which Blaisdell was supposed to provide in October of last year. The city wants formal commitments for members of the development team—so far, the negotiation agreement says, Blaisdell has yet to produce one. The city would also like qualifications for those individuals, once they’ve formally committed, and a list of similar projects they’ve worked on in the past five years.
In addition, the city would like to know how those team members funded those projects, what they did on those projects, and contact information for people who worked with them on those projects. They’re also asking for contacts at the governments of LA and Malibu—municipalities which Blaisdell claims to have worked with in the past.
In the negotiating agreement, Blaisdell claims to have sunk $300,000 and a year of her time into the project. She estimates that year to be worth an additional $300,000 in lost consulting revenue.
Bechtel Engineering and the architectural firm Foster and Partners could not confirm that they were still—or ever—involved with the project.
Blaisdell did not respond to a request for comment from the Sun. She maintains a lively social media presence on Twitter and Facebook, with daily updates, including her attending the Republican debates at the Reagan Presidential Library in a California Space Center T-shirt.
On Sept. 17, the day after the Notice of Default was served, she posted a selfie taken with Jeff Zucker, the president of CNN Worldwide News. “I planned to have CNN learn about Lompoc and visit the city,” she captioned. “$$$1,000,000 million dollars free promotion, for the City—my gift—and also Rubio and Trump. Not because they are republicans but because of helping to promote the City of Lompoc.”
Then, she added, “Of course under the current condition I am holding off. But CNN will learn about the outcome. Opportunity lost.”
This article appears in Sep 24 – Oct 1, 2015.