MY WRITE — The New Year has arrived. Because of the holidays, not much has happened in the last few weeks, but that’s all going to change quickly.
We have a new City Council and we’ll have a new City Manager later in the year. The major challenge facing them is development. With the Miramar Hotel rebuild, a new 15 floor Wyndham Hotel and condo project near the Santa Monica Pier and 22 floor Frank Gehry-designed hotel/condo project at Ocean Avenue and Santa Monica Boulevard pending, expect action on these major developments after two years gestation.
There’s also the 12 floor Plaza at Santa Monica projected for 2.5 acres of city-owned property at Fourth and Fifth Streets at Arizona Avenue with entertainment plazas, offices, retail space, commercial work space, 48 affordable apartment units managed by Community Corporation of Santa Monica, a 225 room unionized hotel and 1,200 underground parking spaces.
Specific plans for an enlarged and upscale Bergamot Station Arts Center will be unveiled this year. Watch this add pressure to reduce heights and densities all over town.
This may also be the year thatResidocracy.orgcirculates another ballot measure petition to limit building heights, citywide. In addition to a likely three floor maximum height for residential neighborhoods, the initiative could also stipulate a four-floor maximum height limit on major boulevards and an 84-foot maximum height (or seven floors) for future Downtown developments.
This should receive overwhelming voter approval. The only questions are about the height limitations to be specified in the referendum and when Residocracy will begin gathering signatures to qualify it for the ballot in a future election.
Although not showcase developments, there are a couple dozen mid-level projects in the pipeline, mostly in the Downtown area and along Lincoln and Wilshire Boulevards. These five to seven floor, 50 to 100 unit developments will add thousands of new apartments and tens of thousands of new car trips. They’ll contribute significantly to traffic congestion as well as exacerbate the demand for water, gas, electricity, solid and liquid (sewage) waste management.
So far, City Hall shows no indication of slowing down the tsunami of pending mid-level developments because they’re housing projects with limited “neighborhood-serving” retail space. With developers eager to meet politician’s demands for more low income housing units in order to get their projects approved, stopping the flood may prove difficult.
Another trend is the emergence of politically ambitious, mostly young agitators who don’t live in Santa Monica with an agenda to lobby for additional bicycle infrastructure, encourage bus ridership and more pedestrian-friendly streets.
The coalition’s goal is to influence the political process. There’s concern that coalition members look at residents and those who oppose their ideology as “behind the times” oldsters. The young-verses-old situation reared its ugly head during the recent election when coalition leaders embarked on a youth voter registration drive to bolster a young, pro-bicycle voter base to elect pro-alternative transit, pro-development candidates.
This loose knit coalition is made up of local bicycling supporters as well as individuals involved in the Southern California Streets Initiative (SCSI), a non-profit, transit lobbying group that publishes the Los Angeles-centric “Streetsblog” and “Santa Monica Next” pro-bicycle/bus/pedestrian propaganda websites. Many of two dozen speakers endorsing a proposed seven floor, 262-unit apartment development at 500 Broadway at an October 14 council hearing were from this coalition.
The pro-development bicycle coalition views the transportation amenities promised by developers in projects as a big plus. In return for endorsing developments such as the now defunct Hines/Bergamot Transit Village project and pending Plaza at Santa Monica, they’ve received backing and support from key developers and their lobbyists.
Because of in-common interests, individuals associated with SCSI have also pursued funding and working relationships with established and powerful Downtown entities such as the Santa Monica Chamber of Commerce and Downtown Santa Monica, Inc. The Chamber supported the coalition’s pre-election youth voter registration efforts and just recently, bicycle and mass transit cheerleader Juan Matute was appointed to Downtown Santa Monica, Inc’s Board of Directors.
In their quest for real political clout, the SCSI/bicycle coalition is going to try to get at least one of its own on the Planning Commission. Three seats will be open this year. I’m betting that they’ll also run candidate(s) for council in 2016 as they strengthen their fiscal alliance with the development/business community. I say, “Welcome to the fray.”
Also coming up this year is the Lincoln Boulevard Beautification Plan. Making this busy street (with over 40,000 car trips a day) more pedestrian friendly is a major goal. We should see specific proposals by year-end. The way the transportation planners work in this city, expect a potpourri of planted medians, more crosswalks and traffic lights, bus lanes (already approved but on hold) and other traffic jamming street alterations.
And, when Lincoln traffic goes gridlock 12 hours a day, then what? 40,000 vehicles aren’t just going to vanish into thin air. They’ll be clogging residential side streets in both Sunset and Ocean Parks.
By mid-summer, we should have council approval of the final updates to the post LUCE (Land Use and Circulation Element) zoning codes. If codes are promulgated that aren’t neighborhood compatible or scaled back in terms of overly large projects, more than a couple of council persons will be targeted for retirement in 2016.
People are getting increasingly angry and frustrated. Therefore, I see one heck of a knock down, drag out year in Santa Monica politics. Buckle up.
Bill can be reached atMr.bilbau@gmail.com
So in your 9th paragraph we see that if a person is pro bike/bus/pedestrian, chances are that person is a young outside agitator. Wow.
Could these out-of-town pro-development organizations be the creation of the developers and their lobbyists, rather than just being supported by them? The only thing the developers can do to promote bike riding is to reduce the parking for their projects, a real cost-saving for developers.
Regarding the medians: People in the crosswalks step out from behind the plantings on the medians into the on-coming traffic lane, a particular problem at night on Wilshire Blvd.. The space given to the medians could have been used to improve the bike lanes.
The demand for housing in Santa Monica is virtually infinite. I know a slew of architects here who firmly believe in adaptive reuse. The whole of Europe is pretty much adaptive reuse. If you fill Santa Monica with thousands of more apartments and condos, you will have put only a dent in demand and will have lost all reason for anyone wanting to live in Santa Monica. You don’t deal with bad traffic by increasing it exponentially.
I’m one of those younger people, and I live here. Montana and 4th, and I really like all the traffic calming measures already implemented. I like being able to walk or bike throughout most of the city. I like crosswalks, bike lanes and sharrows. My family dropped down to one car because this is an easy city to get around in (and we both work). We walk to the Comic Shop on Lincoln, the Promenade, the Pier, the Beach, and to the shops on Montana. We bike down to Main Street and over to Ocean Park. I feel pretty comfortable with my son being able to visit friends around the corner without me having to be a helicopter parent and walk him. I like that my older inlaws can come and actually cross the streets because the traffic is slower, and crosswalks plentiful.
What I don’t get is how anyone can expect to live in a metro area with over 10 million people and expect there not to be traffic. It simply defies logic. As many people live in LA county as in South Carolina and Tennessee combined (approx). Perhaps its sad nostalgia for a time long past, but its not remotely reasonable. Santa Monica and the Westside in general is the most desirable real estate in the metro. People want to live on the beaches and they’ll pay for it. The city is either going to continue being a place where the middle class has a decent chance to live, or because of the limited amount of housing stock will price everyone out.
Unless the number of housing units is expanded, and greatly so, I’d expect to see lots of Ellis Act notices going out in the coming years. So look out Wilmont neighborhood, and any other area with a lot of old rent controlled buildings. Taking a loss for a year or so, in order to sell those old apartments for $800+ a pop will start to look a lot more enticing. Then there’ll be nothing but the really wealthy (or investors sitting on empty units). So we can either grow, acknowledging that most of the building stock in this town is too old to be functionally usable. So the fantasy of adaptive reuse is just that, a fantasy. Or we can try to fight the growth and enjoy seeing the most vulnerable kicked out because those will be the first buildings converted.
But being illogical and economically illiterate pays the bills, right Bill? If you don’t like people (your neighbors), this is the wrong place to live man.