THE FATE OF SANTA MONICA’S CIVIC Center will be sealed tomorrow night when City Council moves closer to approving a 325 unit apartment/condo complex, euphemistically referred to as “The Village,” across from City Hall.
Council is expected to approve design concepts and authorize negotiations for a development agreement with private mega-developer, Related Companies of California and Community Corporation of Santa Monica, the city-affiliated developer of most of Santa Monica’s public housing.
There is so much wrong with this, I hardly know where to start.
This “something for everybody" project will feature 165 market-rate luxury condominiums — each expected to sell in the $2 million dollar range (thus generating $330 million to pay for the project). It wouldn’t be Santa Monica without affordable housing, so 160 mixed-use apartments are also included. The specter of affordable rental units — as opposed to affordable ownership housing -— is par for the course.
In a community where tall buildings are reviled by most residents, the developers have already received permission to build 10 feet above the existing 56 foot height limit set by code.
The proposed conceptual design includes six buildings (43.7 percent of the construction will have a 65-foot height), public and private open spaces and 655 subterranean parking spaces —all on 3.3 acres. The Village’s density is 100 units or at least 200 persons per acre. It’s extremely crowded even by Santa Monica standards which already is among the dens-est communities in California with about 10,000 residents per square mile. Three Santa Monica architectural firms - — Moore, Ruble and Yudell, Koning- Eizenberg, and Pugh+Scarpa -— are designing “The Village." Based on preliminary drawings, the buildings will be industrial, Berlin-bunker, butt-ugly shipping containers stacked upon each other.
What would you expect? MR&Y is the firm that designed the new Santa Monica Library and new Civic Center parking structure. Pugh+Scarpa designed the controversial CCSM public housing project on the 1400 block of Broadway and “Colorado Court” at Fifth Street and Colorado Avenue. It’s a shame. Because in downtown Los Angeles, the Related Companies’ architect, Frank Gehry’s proposal for the massive Grand Avenue project is literally breathtak-ing. (Los Angeles Times, June 12, 2007) Despite over a dozen years of planning, numerous design committees loaded with City Hall stooges and endless workshops, the entire Civic Center still is an unmitigated disaster and textbook bad urban plan-ning. It’s a classic case of a great opportunity squandered by too much input, too many egos and no vision whatsoever.
Imagine what could have been. Beautiful green spaces? A cultural center for the entire community with a renovated Civic Auditorium, an art gallery and Santa Monica College’s new performing arts center? The new City Library would’ve been a welcome addition.
However, unimaginative planners and myopic politicians didn’t want a library in the Civic Center. College and City egos made sure SMC’s new "Performing Arts Center and Music Academy of Santa Monica College” (Madison Theater) would languish in a residential Siberia well away from the downtown area.
The boneheaded plan to turn the Civic Auditorium’s present 1,100 car surface parking lot into a future soccer field insures that the historic venue won’t be viable for plays, concerts and shows. Eventually, the venue’s closest parking will be at the new Civic Center garage — a 1/4-mile away.
With the development agreement, 1/4 of the 13-acre site will become a housing project. It’ll be walled off from other neighborhoods by RAND’s headquarters, government buildings, a freeway and Ocean Avenue hotels — an isolated residential island at all times.
“Future Tenements” or “The Outpost” are more fitting names for this boondoggle that’s putting us one step closer to turning our Civic Center into another unattractive and pointless place to pass through.
“The Village” is on the fast-track, thus setting the stage for accelerated growth and buildings with increased size, scale, density and mass throughout the community — along with more traffic, and a deteriorating quality of life. Because, it’s proceeding without benefit of a cohesive citywide plan, this “Village of the Crammed” will bury any chance of a low key, humanistic Santa Monica for our children.
Peggy Clifford, former editor of the Santa Monica Mirror, recently posted on her blog: santamonicadispatch.com, “To go forward with a project of this size, scope and significance in advance of the completion of the General Plan Revision is not simply irresponsible, it’s anti-planning at its most reckless and reprehensible.”
And, bodes poorly for our future.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on June 18, 2007. Read the original PDF.