Santa Monica College has offered to pay $8.2 million for the city’s new park at the airport through bond money approved by taxpayers last November.
The catch is that SMC wants permission to build a parking garage underneath the park so it can shuttle students from its airport campus to its main campus on Pico Boulevard.
No matter what happens, SMC will lose its surface parking lot — where thousands of student park and get shuttled to the main campus — to make way for the new park.
It’s up to the City Council to make a decision: Either allow the underground parking garage and accept SMC’s money, or continue on its own plan and potentially leave students finding other places to park in Santa Monica, which could exacerbate an already serious problem in the minds of many nearby residents.
So this week, Q-Line wants to know, “What should the City Council do?”
Call (310) 285-8106 before Friday at 5 p.m. and we’ll print your responses in the weekend edition. Please try to limit your comments to a minute or less. It might help to think first about the wording of your response.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on April 6, 2005. Read the original PDF.