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# Don’t need that kind of space of downtown
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/dont-need-that-kind-of-space-of-downtown-editor/
- Published: 2006-03-13T16:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-23T17:21:15.000Z
- Author: Guest Author
- Tags: Opinion, Downtown, #archive-import

*By Kevin McKeown Santa Monica City Council*

In arguing for a parking plan predicated on significantly more commercial development downtown (SMDP, March 10, page 4), the Daily Press seems willing to ignore the concerns for quality of life repeatedly voiced by its own readership.

To adopt the 1,712-space parking proposal, the City Council on behalf of the community would have to sign off on a “Statement of Overriding Considerations” justifying a whole list of unmitigable environmental damages, to provide parking for 500,000 square feet of new downtown commercial development. The description of a smaller downtown parking project for 1,000 fewer cars as “environmentally superior” wasn’t mine; that’s what the official Environmental Impact Report says.

We just added nearby parking capacity with the Main Library. Do we need 1,712 more new parking spaces, and the local street traffic of regional shoppers’ cars coming to fill them? If Santa Monica Place is redeveloped, it would include its own parking on site. So will the Civic Center plan.

No, those extra 1,000 spaces in new free-standing structures are the camel’s nose under the tent for a half million square feet of hitherto undiscussed additional commercial development downtown. Who thinks we need that?

We’re not talking new housing, either; sorry. Housing or mixed-use projects also include their own parking on site. No, those proposed new parking structures are for the kind of development Santa Monicans have been most vocal against: more offices or more stores, with more traffic and more congestion.

My proposal for the environmentally superior option, expanding existing structures but not building new ones, doesn’t ignore the needs of our valued existing downtown merchants. It provides more than 700 new, additional parking spaces for them and their employees. The extra 1,000 parking spaces for future commercial overdevelopment are what I can’t in conscience sign off on.

I’m glad the Daily Press chose to editorialize on this. Maybe it will awaken more Santa Monica residents to what could be about to happen to our downtown if someone doesn’t stand up and say “no.”

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on March 13, 2006.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/031306.pdf?ref=smdp.com)