Another chapter in the debate over how much development can be tolerated in the face of increasing traffic and parking demands will play out Tuesday night in City Hall.
The City Council will hear the neighbors’ appeal of a recent Planning Commission’s unanimous approval of the Unitarian Universalist Community Church’s conditional use permit for expansion and a parking variance.
The Unitarian Universalist Community Church, at the corner of 18th Street and Arizona Avenue, was granted approval this past July to build a two-story addition and other new space to an existing “educational” facility, as well as increase space and seating capacity in their main sanctuary, remodel an adjacent single-family residence at 1248 18th St. and add two parking places. The requirement for 12 additional on-site parking spaces as required by code was waived by the granting of a variance.
Because of its long-time, legal nonconforming use over the last 70 years, the church has ignored parking needs. So, it now provides only one parking space when, by today’s standards, it should have approximately 85 parking spaces as required by city code.
Traffic and lack of on-street parking is a major quality-of-life issue for neighbors who view this proposal as the “straw that broke the camel’s back.” Myopic plan-ning and unregulated growth has created heavy traffic and severe parking shortages resulting from expanded Santa Monica Boulevard car dealerships, two major hospitals on Arizona Avenue, the Wilshire Boulevard commercial corridor and a flock of nearby “underparked” medical buildings and convalescent homes.
Maybe the city planning staff and plan-ning commissioners think bad planning should beget even more bad planning. Amazingly, staff concluded that 4,237 square feet of new space wouldn’t increase usage, traffic or parking demand. It’s this kind of sloppy work and faulty reasoning that has created and perpetuated citywide problems to begin with.
Any development that increases traffic and street parking problems, especially in residential neighborhoods, is clearly not in the best interest of the community. If this were a theater or another nonprofit, let alone a commercial business, this expansion would be dead as a doornail — but this is a church with a “noble cause of human spirituality.”
Aren’t the city of Santa Monica and Santa Monica College still fighting about street access at the Santa Monica Airport because of traffic concerns arising from Sunset Park neighbors’ complaints? Didn’t this lead to road restrictions from SMC’s new Bundy campus via Airport Avenue and Donald Douglas Loop South and a nasty, mean-spirited spat?
Isn’t this a situation wherein concerns about traffic are taking precedence over the “noble cause” of education?
This church operates seven days a week with its own activities as well as meetings, seminars and events held by outside organizations, nonprofits and even commercial businesses that lease space. This constant activity draws upwards of 100 attendees who congest neighborhood traffic and gobble up street parking day and night.
The church’s “Sunday morning only” agreement to use parking space at UCLA- Santa Monica Hospital could be terminated at any time, and there’s no contingency to mitigate parking or traffic issues aside from asking parishioners and guests to take the bus.
This issue is simply one of good urban planning and neighborhood livability. However, supporters cite the church’s positive contributions to the community, inspirational roll, social activism supporting homeless, social justice, and other favorite City Hall causes as reason to reject the appeal.
This is not about history or mission, community service, whether renovation is necessary or how lovely the architect’s designs are. Almost everything contributes positively to the community, so by what standard do we measure the worthiness of that contribution and how much community livability do we trade off? And if we’re injecting “purpose” into planning codes, aren’t we creating a double standard that is arbitrary and unfair?
I’m concerned when governing bodies like the Planning Commission demand that a project’s tenants negotiate labor union contracts as a condition for approval. We’re on thin ice when personal agendas override good urban design, public safety and livability issues.
This appeal is about quality of life for hundreds of Santa Monica families and how detrimental even this modest expansion will be for neighbors.
Hopefully, the City Council will decide on what’s most important to the future of our city’s livability: Good and fair plan-ning, or the arbitrary personal agenda of politicians and bureaucrats. (Bill Bauer is a longtime Santa Monica resident and a freelance writer.)
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on November 21, 2005. Read the original PDF.