CITY HALL — The Hines Development Co. skirted another disappointing bid in front of the City Council Tuesday night despite community members’ concerns that the approval to move forward with a development agreement would eviscerate local control over the process.
The meeting was the City Council’s second look at the former Papermate site at 1681 26th St., which is slated to be developed into a mixed-use “transit village” situated near the incoming Bergamot Station Expo Light Rail stop. The council denied the developer the right to move forward with the project in March on largely aesthetic grounds.
The 6-1 vote, with Councilmember Kevin McKeown against, allows staff to start negotiating with company representatives for extra benefits required for permission to build outside of the zoning code and start looking at the impacts that the 766,000 square feet of development will bring to the already-congested east end of town. Opponents of the project, including McKeown, argued that and other information should already have been in hand prior to the vote, and that pushing it along without that knowledge gave momentum to an otherwise flawed project.
By voting to move the development forward, the council would be saying that the developer is “close enough,” despite continuing concerns over its look, traffic impact and ability to groove with a comprehensive plan for the area that city planners are currently creating, McKeown argued.
The area plan, in particular, will cover the huge swath of development cropping up around the light rail station, and the proposed transit village represents a substantial chunk of that district.
According to a staff report, the project is “one of the most significant land use decisions that the [council] will make, particularly in the implementation of the Bergamot Transit Village, considering the magnitude of the project and the opportunity for influencing the entire district.”
Approving the project, even to enter negotiations, without the area plan in hand, or an environmental impact report to assess the effects of such a large development on the surrounding intersections and streets, could hamstring the council’s future efforts to keep the development in check.
“Once we do that, options for real change in size and impact become difficult,” McKeown said.
The area plan, which City Hall accepted a $652,000 federal grant to complete, won’t be ready until spring 2012, and the environmental report comes with its own set of challenges.
Planning staff represented the request as a catch-22. The float-up is meant to get direction from the City Council on how they want the project to look and feel, so preparing an environmental impact report before knowing exactly what the project will look like could mean paying for something that’s mostly useless.
Process dictates that City Hall chooses a contractor to prepare the environmental document, but that the developer pays for it.
“I don’t know if the applicant would pay for an EIR if the project wasn’t moving forward,” said David Martin, City Hall’s interim planning director.
The objection has already been borne out. Since the March float-up, the developer cut the size of the project by roughly 20 percent, meaning that an EIR created for the project today could be irrelevant as negotiations with planning staff continue.
Still, without an area plan or concept of what the project will do to Santa Monica’s east side, the project remained an ominous mystery to nearly 30 community members that rose to speak against it.
“It is premature and undefined. We have no area-wide plan to guide our determinations,” said Catherine Eldridge, speaking for the Pico Neighborhood Association, which opposes the project.
While opponents cried, “Why so fast?” those in favor of the development felt it couldn’t move quickly enough.
The gargantuan Papermate building lies vacant, and takes up the equivalent of three Downtown blocks. As envisioned, it would be split into five distinct buildings with a mix of offices, housing, retail and green space.
Redeveloping it would not only bring jobs and revenue into the local economy, it would rid Santa Monica of a gigantic eyesore. Furthermore, allowing negotiations to begin equates to opening up the conversation, not outright approval, they argued.
“That’s really what it is. Are you ready to move to the next set of questions, and I think the answer is yes,” said speaker Alison Mavik.
It was that lack of finality that ruled the remainder of the council’s discussion, as members noted that to get more information, including the elusive environmental impact report, they would need to allow the “iterative” process to continue.
Tuesday’s vote was not the end, affirmed Mayor Pro Tem Gleam Davis.
“I know there’s an intense amount of community distrust, and that if we vote yes we’ve greenlighted the project,” Davis said. “We have shown that we’re capable of saying no when it doesn’t meet our internal standards.”
ashley@www.smdp.com
Editor's note: A previous version of this story said the developer of the Papermate site said the proposed project was reduced by 40 percent from an earlier proposal.
