Task force sent to the street for downtown’s answers
A team of consultants urged Santa Monica officials and residents Sunday to think about the small places downtown that can be improved.
Approximately 50 Santa Monica city officials, activists and residents attended the Third Street Promenade Uses Task Force meeting on how downtown Santa Monica can be better redesigned to remain a viable economic center.
They were told by consultants from Project for Public Spaces, a New York City-based firm hired by the city to help guide the redesign efforts, that Santa Monica needs to liven itself up by focusing on creating small workable public spaces. The city is paying the consultants $54,000 to assess the downtown.
Workable spaces should be social and attract people, be highly accessible, have multiple and complimentary uses and activities, and be comfortable and beautiful, the consultants said.
Task force members were shown a photo montage of other cities around the world to illustrate what works and how Santa Monica measures up.
35F,“We’re designing our communities around parking and traffic instead of creating the public spaces we all want,” said Fred Kant, president of the consulting firm. “When you concentrate on small spaces, you create places that work for people that use them but also for the pedestrians that are just passing by.”
“We’re designing our communities around parking and traffic instead of creating the public spaces we all want.” — — FRED KANT, PRESIDENT, Project for Public Spaces
To illustrate their point, the crowd was split into five teams and sent to specific spots throughout the downtown to look for the characteristics that make a space “workable” and to figure out how the space could be improved.
The groups were sent to their assigned locations and returned to the meeting an hour later to report on their findings, which the consultants will include in their final report on how to improve the downtown.
Kant urged the groups to think about what should be done and let the bureaucrats work out how to accomplish it later.
Many of the groups reported that areas of downtown didn’t draw pedestrians or felt disconnected from the rest of the city. They recommended the city redesign parts of Second Street and Ocean Avenue to make them more pedestrian friendly, make the Promenade more accessible to the streets on either side of it, and incorporate more vending carts and food merchants.
While the groups were assessing their assigned spots downtown, one task was to ask residents what they thought about the area and what could be improved.
In Palisades Park, near the intersection of Broadway and Ocean boulevards, a woman who declined to give her name said she like to go jogging in the park in the morning, but she said the park felt too dangerous to use at night.
“If it seemed a little safer, I would stop and use it more,” the woman said.
Jim, a homeless man who gave only his first name, said he thought the park was a great place to sit.
“But it needs to be cleaned up a little better,” he said, “and the bathrooms could be nicer.”
CUTLINE: Santa Monica Mayor Mike Feinstein, center, guides a group of residents and city officials Sunday on how the city could better redesign Second Street.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on November 18, 2002. Read the original PDF.