Officials looking into whether adequate power exists downtown
The web of wires supplying power to downtown street lights and shops alike may not be enough to support the large developments dominating the Third Street Promenade, officials say.
As small boutique shops and restaurants are combined into larger spaces for national retailers, the power grid supporting downtown is increasingly being taxed. Now officials want to know if possibly expanding street lights downtown would overwhelm the electricity network.
“Before, we only looked into making sure we had enough power to light up the trees,” said Santa Monica City Councilman Herb Katz. “Whether we do or don’t have problems, I don’t think we know for sure yet. But we’re probably already operating at the upper edge.”
Southern California Edison, which owns the power lines in Santa Monica, has continued to update the network and run new lines when it is needed, said Mark Olsen, a company spokesman.
“As far as I understand it, there’s no problem with the system,” he said. “But when there is a new load on the system, there can be new lines added to serve a building. But our system in general can handle the electrical needs (of downtown).”
The question of the power grid’s capacity arose when Winterlit, the Promenade’s holiday decoration scheme, had difficulty drawing the needed power for an overhead canopy of lights.
Now that some officials are looking into expanding the amount of street lighting downtown, they want a better idea of how much more capacity will be needed from the grid and how much it would cost to update it.
But Olsen said even though upgrades can be expensive, it’s a problem that can be easily solved.
“If they want to put in more lights and they are having capacity problems, it would be something that could be coordinated,” Olsen said. “Sometimes people think there’s not enough electricity or a system to supply all of it, but we do. We have enough electricity and a large enough network to supply the entire downtown.”
However, some retailers are finding electrical limitations in their stores. A national retailer, undergoing renovations on the 1200 block of the Promenade, has added new power lines and transformers to support the lights it needs, said the project’s architect, David Hibbert.
Local architects say it’s a problem that’s likely to become more common as power demands along the Promenade rise.
“It’s not that the grid is inadequate, it’s that it was built in certain places where the demand for power wasn’t as high,” Hibbert said.
“These retailers all have these standards based on new shopping malls, and they are moving into areas of the Promenade that weren’t built for that.”
“These retailers all have these standards based on new shopping malls, and they are moving into areas of the Promenade that weren’t built for that.” — – DAVID HIBBERT Architect
Another dilemma for larger retailers is that shops along the Promenade go from property line to property line, leaving little space for the new power lines and transformers, Hibbert said.
Large new retailers opening shops downtown — such as Victoria’s Secret, United Colors of Benetton’s and Circuit City — may all run up against the electrical limits of their buildings.
“It’s a situation where people have standards that sometimes don’t mesh well with the older buildings that are there,” the architect said.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on January 27, 2003. Read the original PDF.