The Ocean Park Association (OPA) would like to share our values and goals with the community and welcome any and all community members to attend one of our meetings and get involved with the community and the association.
Ocean Park is Santa Monica’s beach community. We actively work to make it a tolerant and welcoming community and welcome people with diverse opinions with open arms. OPA’s Board of Directors are residents of Ocean Park and elected by residents to represent them. Our Board reflects our community’s diversity and works diligently to bring in new voices at every opportunity.
Ocean Park prefers a large and diverse Board of Directors that rotates executive leadership regularly, and to that end, we currently have 14 members and our president and other executive board members average only about two years of service in those roles. We believe everyone should have a voice in shaping the neighborhood and that ideal comes alive with the diversity of views a large Board brings. Each member tends to focus on areas that interest them, which is why we are known for The Main Street 4th of July Parade, proactively supporting LBGTQ+ groups, The Santa Monica Conservancy and those who work to close Main St. to cars several times a year and transform it into a pedestrian plaza neighborhood celebration.
Ocean Park and OPA are made up of a diverse group of people with diverse opinions. We are home to nearly 20,000 Santa Monica residents and there is both significant support and opposition for projects like the Gelson’s redevelopment project from smart, engaged, caring residents.
In cases like this, OPA feels we can best serve the community by 1. raising awareness of such issues with the community at large, 2. general education of their facts and details, and 3. connecting and empowering community members who are passionate about an issue to join together to fight for their beliefs.
This applies to the Gelson’s project and the litany of other issues that we grapple with in our lives, including the Bowlmor redevelopment, Main St rezoning, and the Civic Center, that are currently in the spotlight. For example, for both the Gelson’s project and the Civic, we have consistently shared updates on the debate and shared channels for activism in our meetings and in our twice weekly newsletter that reaches more than 2,000 people.
While some people and organizations have taken umbrage with our position on the Lincoln Center Project (a.k.a. Gelson’s Project), OPA’s stance on Gelson’s project is simple and clear: educate our members, empower community members to take action, and quietly work to influence the project. We spent considerable effort informing our membership on what components of the Gelson’s project we could potentially change during a time when "by right" entitlements were not well understood. We also met with the developer’s team to express our residents’ wants and desires. We asked for neighborhood serving businesses (like the UPS Store) to populate the plaza. We discussed circulation and expressed concern over ingress and egress for all transportation modes as part of our efforts to champion public safety. We asked them to work closely with SMDoT on finding the safest way to support all mobility options. We even reminded them that new funding was coming on-line thanks to The LiNC Project that OPA worked on for years.
Lastly, there seems to be an effort by some community members to create an umbrella neighborhood organization comprising only six of our neighborhood associations, excluding tens of thousands of voices by not including OPA and Downtown residents. We reject exclusion and reject attempts to subvert the voices of residents, as that is not what OPA or Santa Monica is about.
Diversity, Inclusion, and Compassion is what binds us. The people of Ocean Park respect all voices and encourage all to pursue their dreams in making Ocean Park a desirable place to live, work and play. If you live in Ocean Park and want to make a difference, join OPA. We welcome everybody.
For anyone who would like to learn more about what OPA is about first-hand, we strongly encourage any and all Santa Monica residents to:
1. Attend one of our monthly meetings live or virtually on the second Monday of every month. Learn more by visiting here or email contact@opa-sm.org
2. Subscribe to our newsletter by visiting here and clicking "Neighborhood News & Updates."
Sean Besser, President, Ocean Park Association
