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# Lawyer charges fraud over parking impacts
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/lawyer-charges-fraud-over-parking-impacts/
- Published: 2002-02-05T16:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-23T00:00:13.000Z
- Author: Andrew Fixmer
- Tags: Government & Politics, Pico, #archive-import

*City provided ‘doctored’ info, neighborhood says*

The Santa Monica City Council was given “fraudulent” and “misleading” information about the number of cars a new parking structure would generate when they approved it years ago, the lawyer for a nearby neighborhood said Monday.

“City officials looked at a map in their offices and marked arbitrary intersections,” said Lee Grant, attorney for the Pico Neighborhood Association. “They never counted one car at any of these intersections. The city council was given doctored, fraudulent information.”

Attorneys for the city and the college disagreed, arguing that the court should not take into account data from the most recent study because it wasn’t available when the project was approved.

“Environmental impact studies take a lot of time to prepare and of course things are going to change,” said Cara E. Silver deputy city attorney. “(The city) tried to take into account future improvements but we could only use the information we had at the time. Therefore it would not be appropriate to take into account other studies after the (report) was approved by the city council.”

> “(The city) tried to take into account future improvements but we could only use the information we had at the time.” — — CARA E. SILVER Deputy city attorney

The city report done before the project began found only 750 new vehicles would cross the intersection at Pico Boulevard and Seventeenth Street. But when city officials studied the same intersection in March 2001 for a separate project, they estimated traffic increases would be closer 4,200 cars.

The traffic consultant the city hired for the parking garage project chose not to study more intersections in the Pico neighborhood because many were not through streets and traffic data suggested students traveling to the parking structure would not cross through residential neighborhoods, Silver said.

“According to the study, the traffic paths students are expected to travel would not take them through many residential neighborhoods,” Silver said.

City officials said 39 percent of students are expected to come from the freeway to the west, while an additional 14 percent would arrive from north, traveling through the residential portion of the Pico neighborhood.

Silver said that studies found only small traffic increases at the intersections of Olympic and Pico Boulevard with 17th Street, which therefore meant that intersections with Delaware Avenue and Michigan Avenue to the north would not be affected.

“We found there would be no increase to the south (of Pico) so we assumed the same would go for the intersections at Delaware and Michigan,” Silver said. “Of course if there is no increase at Olympic Boulevard and Pico Boulevard, there wouldn’t be a change north of there too.”

Grant said because the information provided in the original report was incorrect, the entire document should be revoked and a new study done.

Pico residents want the city and the college to include the new data in the new study they’re requesting, and possibly force the college to move the parking garage to another intersection.

“Any new EIR will use the same fraudulent data, and new construction projects would further compound the problem by referencing the same bad information,” Grant said.

However, the parking structure is expected to be fully operational in less than a month because the lawsuit never asked that construction be delayed.

Judge Terry B. Friedman said he would study each side’s arguments and would “expeditiously” make a decision in writing.

“There’s a lot to look over in this case,” said Chris Harding, attorney for the college. “It will take some time to sort through it all.”

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on February 5, 2002.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/020502.pdf?ref=smdp.com)