Council denies strip mall plan, with reservations
SUNSET PARK — After hearing from nearly four dozen residents and merchants divided over the future of a popular Santa Monica strip mall, elected leaders late Tuesday agreed to fashion an admittedly imperfect solution.
The Santa Monica City Council voted unanimously to keep open a narrow and often back-logged driveway into a mall off of Ocean Park Boulevard. The council’s decision went against the wishes of the mall’s owner and some residents’ concerns that the driveway puts pedestrians in peril.
Claire Heron, who bought the mall at 2901 Ocean Park Blvd. three years ago, had asked for permission to close the driveway to create an outdoor patio. She suggested that traffic be directed onto 29th and 30th streets, where cars could access the mall’s rear lot and underground parking.
“My goal is to make the place safer, cleaner and greener,” said Heron, adding nearby residents would experience only a slight increase in traffic. “Our only intent is to improve the safety and the pedestrian environment of our property and our block.”
Tenants of the bustling mall include many popular restaurants, a video store, martial arts center, printing shop and several other merchants. The mall is frequented daily by hundreds of Sunset Park residents and workers from the Santa Monica Business Park across the street. Its parking lots and nearby metered spaces often are full, particularly at midday.
Eileen Hecht, a consultant hired by Heron, said the community benefit of closing the driveway and opening an outdoor patio would outweigh any negative impacts.
“Is it most beneficial to prevent a small number of additional cars from driving a few feet down 30th Street?” asked Hecht, former chairwoman of the city’s Architectural Review Board. “Or is it more beneficial to the general public you represent to ensure the safety of the hundreds of pedestrians on the sidewalk and in the plaza that must share the mid-block driveway with cars?
“We could not find one other development in the city that contains a driveway that bisects a pedestrian plaza,” she added. “Why are there no others? Because it’s poor planning and it creates a hazard.”
A majority of the 41 Santa Monica residents and merchants who addressed the council on Tuesday echoed those concerns.
“I’ve seen children playing in the runway of the cars,” said Matthew Zangara, an elderly man who’s lived in an apartment on Ocean Park Boulevard for 27 years. “It scares you to watch the cars that turn in fast off of Ocean Park Boulevard and into this driveway. Sometimes they’re coming both ways in that driveway.”
Several other residents said directing traffic into the nearby residential neighborhood would violate City Hall policy, which attempts to curb commercial traffic on side streets. Many of the residents also said Heron has been unwilling to keep a tire shredder on a current entrance to the mall off of 29th Street that was designed to quell traffic.
“She is, therefore, coming to this council with unclean hands and deserves no consideration,” said Rhysa Davis, a resident of 30th Street.
As part of denying Heron’s plans, the City Council instructed staffers to pursue various ways of making the driveway safer, including installing better-marked crosswalks, as well as possibly moving bulky signs and removing on-street parking to increase visibility.
The council also directed staffers to reinstall the tire shredder at the 29th Street entrance, which will limit traffic to one direction. No new entrance will be made at 30th Street, which has never had direct access to the mall.
“Good, bad or indifferent, I was on the council in 1989 when we passed this” project, City Councilman Herb Katz said. “It was not an ideal development even then, but we listened to the neighbors, we went through a lot of torturous hearings and time on it — similar to this — and it was agreed that 30th Street would stay closed... The driveway isn’t ideal … but it can be mitigated to a point where it’s watched and helped without hindering the residents.”
City Councilman Richard Bloom said despite a poor design, the mall is clearly a community asset.
“It’s pedestrian friendly. It has outdoor dining. The businesses there are neighborhood serving. There’s dry cleaners and a local, non-chain video store. The dog wash,” Bloom said. “There’s a mix of businesses there that really is the type of mix we like to see.”
Though merchants at the popular strip mall had hoped the changes would help reinvigorate the already popular mall, at least one business owner said he was resigned to the fact that Heron’s request had been denied.
Standing at the counter of Galaxy Video Wednesday afternoon, Kay Hojat, 58, said he was thankful to have had his say before the Santa Monica City Council. Hojat, who lives in the Pico neighborhood, immigrated to the United States from Iran five years ago and bought the independent video store eight months ago.
“It’s very interesting for me, the discussion and they decided,” Hojat said. “I told my family, it’s the first step of democracy in this country.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on February 10, 2005. Read the original PDF.