to limit development
Downtown today is filled with the sounds and sights of construction. Outside the Daily Press, hundreds of pebbles cover the eastbound side of Broadway as large, diesel-powered trucks transport piles of dirt and concrete to the dump. In the alley, drivers are sitting frustrated, blocked by bulldozers and semis carrying heavy steel beams.
On Fourth Street near Colorado Avenue, a mixed-use development is being built. On Broadway at Sixth Street, two more condo projects are going up. On Colorado traffic is diverted because of a sewer project. On the same street City Hall is building a new Big Blue Bus facility.
A lot is happening in a very small space. If this isn’t bad enough, imagine what it will be like when Santa Monica Place begins its transformation at roughly the same time that work will begin to replace the California Incline and the Santa Monica Pier bridge. Throw in The Village housing project at the Civic Center and it becomes clear that Santa Monica is booming, but is that healthy? Are we experiencing development fatigue?
While each project will provide community benefits in the form of safer bridges, a better sewer system, more housing and added tax revenue that will fund services residents rely on, there comes a point when too much activity threatens to destroy the quality of life in Santa Monica. And it’s not just in downtown. In surrounding neighborhoods peace and quiet is disturbed by condo projects and home remodels. It has become so extreme that it seems nearly everyone has felt the impact.
Buildings are torn down, affecting air quality. Construction creates congestion as boulevards are closed and traffic rerouted to tiny side streets.
That is part of the reason why the Santa Monica Coalition for a Livable City is circulating a petition to put on the ballot an initiative that would strictly limit commercial development in the city to 75,000 square feet a year.
With projects sprouting up around town seemingly like wildflowers, City Hall needs to tend the garden, but putting a strict cap on development is not the way to go either. Residents and city officials are in the middle of updating the Land Use and Circulation Element, a planning document that will dictate how land is developed for the next 20 years or more. The Daily Press feels that SMCLC and its supporters, while certainly well intended, should let Planning Director Eileen Fogarty and her staff finish what the community has started. Through this process, which has been extensive and inclusive, we can better regulate development and put a stop to the madness we’ve all experienced over the past three years, the origins of which should be examined by the City Council to see why so many projects were approved in succession.
The council showed some acknowledgment of the impact development is having on the community when it voted Tuesday night in favor of an ordinance to limit development within a 500-foot radius of another project but it needs to go further to take into account the type of neighborhood, the history of development in that area and the size of the projects before creating such a buffer zone.
That approach by city planners, along with an updated LUCE that takes into account the true impacts of development, should ensure that order will be restored.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on February 28, 2008. Read the original PDF.