Excerpt:

If you don’t already have whiplash from the last few weeks of Alameda Point developments, the next month might just do it: the Oakland Chinatown Chamber of Commerce and Asian Health Services are not happy about the SunCal initiative going to the ballot without a completed environmental impact report they say is required under a lawsuit settlement agreement, and they say they may sue.

“We’ll probably have to file a writ within 30 days of the City Council’s action on Tuesday,” said Oakland attorney Alan S. Yee, referring to a 3-2 council vote to hold a special election on February 2, 2010.

...

Yee said the second amendment to the agreement, adopted when hedge fund D.E. Shaw entered the picture in 2008, added the option for SunCal to get its land plan approved at the ballot rather than through Council. The amendment scrapped part of the original entitlements language - Section 3.2.5 for those playing along at home - and replaced it with language allowing SunCal to pursue entitlements by initiative as well as through the more common application process.

Yee cited this as evidence that “the city was aware of the initiative process and that SunCal was planning to do this.” Highsmith countered that the amendment simply allowed SunCal to seek an exemption to Measure A.