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# Downtown design: Santa Monica’s $200,000 question
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/downtown-design-santa-monicas-200-000-question/
- Published: 2004-05-14T15:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-23T04:18:10.000Z
- Author: John Wood
- Tags: Government & Politics, Downtown, #archive-import

*Interim law governing new buildings extended three years*

COUNCIL CHAMBERS — A debate over the size and shape of new buildings in downtown Santa Monica might last another three years, even after City Hall paid a consultant nearly $200,000 to study the issue.

Some want narrower streets downtown that allow for wider sidewalks, and taller buildings with courtyard patios. Others think the area is already too dense and want City Hall to set stricter parameters on what developers can build.

The City Council this week voted 4-2 to extend until March of 2007 an interim ordinance governing new buildings downtown. More public input needs to be heard before a formal plan is drafted, council members said.

“We’re getting many poor designs,” said City Councilman Ken Genser. “We’re getting an uninteresting downtown which isn’t pleasantly scaled.”

Genser said it likely will be at least a couple of years before officials can listen to public comment and craft an ordinance that fits the land-use plan for all of Santa Monica. But others want to see the process move quicker.

“I’m going to see what we can do to speed this thing up,” said City Councilman Herb Katz, who voted against extending the interim ordinance. “I think it’s too long... We could work on it now and get it done.”

Katz criticized the parameters set in the interim ordinance and said developers are sometimes stuck in bureaucracy for 12 to 14 months or longer. “It’s hard to work with. It’s such a low threshold,” Katz said. “If we’re going to wait three years, we’re going to still have people waiting too long, and they’re not going to come in. And especially small businesses... We can’t screw around with small business. They haven’t got the money or the time.”

As well as a desire to make the approval process easier for local business owners, City Hall is required by the state to provide more housing downtown. Developers have long reminded officials of that commitment through legal pressure.

At the Tuesday night City Council meeting, Mayor Richard Bloom and top planning officials said even though the interim ordinance lasts until March of 2007, they intend to work diligently toward drafting new standards more quickly.

At issue are a series of mixed-use and residential developments along Fifth, Sixth and Seventh streets, as well as various other projects downtown. The interim ordinance governing downtown projects dates back to 2002.

Since then, City Hall hired the Roma Design Group, a consulting firm, to come up with a better design for downtown. For $193,000, the consultants recommended narrowing streets and widening sidewalks, and letting developers build higher in exchange for courtyard patios. The idea was to slow down vehicle traffic and increase pedestrian traffic to make downtown more like a traditional European-style walking city.

Those recommendations have been met with mixed reactions. Architects and developers wonder if it’s wise to push courtyards — which can be a bonus in some buildings. Others say the taller buildings threaten to turn downtown streets into shadowy canyons that don’t fit in within a California beach community.

“They want to build 65-feet high buildings with these air shafts in the middle called a courtyard,” said Ellen Brennan, a local activist who organized a group against the Roma recommendations.

Another consultant suggestion was to bypass some of the public review process for projects that are 30,000 square feet or less and meet certain criteria. That suggestion was adamantly opposed by many residents and officials, who said public input is a crucial step for any project in Santa Monica.

Developers apparently agree. Chris Harding, a land use attorney who represents Howard Jacobs, a developer who owns many downtown properties, said public review shouldn’t be cut out — though he suggested it could be sped up.

Harding added that some projects are approved in just a couple of months, while others take a year or longer to be approved by City Hall.

“I think the standards need work. What it means in the near term is people who want to pursue projects will have to muddle through, in a situation with a lack of clarity,” Harding said. “There is no consensus between staff, (the Architectural Review Board) and the Planning Commission as far as what they want to see in terms of design... none of that is resolved, and so people who want to do a project have to make difficult decisions about what they want to do, in terms of design.”

What happens next will depend on how diligently City Council members work toward finding suitable standards, Harding said. It also will depend on how much stock they place in the group of activists Brennan belongs to, which wants to steer away from the notion that downtown should be more densely developed.

“It’s not a residential neighborhood. It’s a place where you can concentrate more density — residentially and commercially,” Harding said. “I think the critical question is, ‘Is the city going to rethink that?’ and if they do, ‘Where are they going to put the additional housing which the state will require of them as part of state housing policy?’”

Brennan said her group — which includes planning commissioners Darrell Clarke and Arlene Hopkins — coalesced at a recent meeting of neighborhood leaders and in the last week has attracted a lot of attention.

“Everything that’s happened, happened in the last week,” she said. “I have never experienced such rage and resolve... We’re just thinking moment to moment. This is creating itself while we’re sitting here.”

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on May 14, 2004.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/051404.pdf?ref=smdp.com)