Wouldn’t you think that somewhere in this town you’d find someone on a board, commission, task force, city staff or even a City Council person that had one iota of common sense?
Acouple of weeks ago, I ranted about the new main library — a $23 million remodel that became a $72 million totally new library. This might make sense if those in charge would have moved the new library to the Civic Center and sold or leased the current library property to pay for it.
That idea was rejected by a whole slew of stubborn, unimaginative, narrowly focused decision makers. So, the City Council cut funds from a slew of other projects to pay for the new building — sort of robbing Peter to pay Paul.
The City Council on Tuesday night paved the way for a new 75,000-square-foot, 45-foot tall development at Second Street and Colorado Boulevard. Four years ago, the project was submitted for administrative approval and denied. It was appealed to the Planning Commission which also denied the project. It was then appealed to the City Council.
The City Council apparently wasn’t very concerned about the project’s negative impacts which mostly had to do with the additional traffic the development would generate. Despite staff’s recommendation of denial because of incompatibility with the new downtown and the presence of a prohibited McDonalds within the new structure, the Council voted to lay groundwork for approval anyway.
The developer was told to rework the traffic circulation element and resubmit it for approval. The Council also was willing to grant several discretionary approvals to get around the current development restrictions in that area.
They’d consider a special development review permit because the project is over the permitted 30,000-square-foot threshold for the site. And, they also asked for a text amendment that would permit a fast food outlet at that location, as well as extended operating hours.
It seems that in congested downtown Santa Monica, there’s always room for even more development and the traffic it brings. Heaping even more traffic into the downtown area makes no sense, but some Council members have other things on their minds. Can you say, “social agenda?”
News reports say Councilwoman Pam O'Connor voted yes because “It (McDonalds) serves the city’s hotel workers and provides social benefits to those with low incomes.” Councilman Mike Feinstein was the lone dissenting vote against the project because it “had not included housing rather than office space.”
I like everything about Santa Monica College’s proposed Madison Theater except its location behind Madison School between 10th and 11th streets, near Arizona Avenue. A multi-family residential neighborhood is not appropriate for an almost round-the-clock arts venue to house student productions, opera, a children’s theater, a semi-professional stage company, community concerts, lectures and cultural events.
Like the library, the Madison campus theater should also be in the Civic Center. Imagine a performing arts center with two theaters, surrounded by major thoroughfares, plenty of parking, a half-dozen bus lines, near freeway ramps and the high school. It could also revitalize the moribund Civic Auditorium — an under utilized, multi-million dollar financial drain.
A joint venture between SMC and the city would breathe new life into the heart of town. A state-of-the-art 500 seat Madison playhouse adjacent to a renovated and reinvigorated Santa Monica Civic Center could be the crown jewel of the community.
There’s an uneasy relationship between the college and the city. Inflexible minds apparently are unwilling to embrace the concept of our Civic Center as a place of art and culture, let alone of working together. Both the new library and the Madison theater will be built, but in separate, send-rate locations.
The city’s “visionaries” see the future Civic Center as a mundane mishmash of housing projects, a soccer field and small lawns with nothing to draw people in the evenings and on weekends. There’s no art, no culture, no library, no theater and no heartbeat. We’re all much poorer because of this.
The center of our city will remain empty and lifeless. The only people there will be the few hundred mostly low-income persons lucky enough to get one of between 300 and 600 “voter-based rental units” proposed for the site.
The future Civic Center, like the statues of Saddam Hussein that dot Baghdad, is a monument to misguided and shortsighted personal agendas, lack of common sense and political self-interest. (Bill Bauer is a longtime Santa Monica resident and a freelance writer.)
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on April 11, 2003. Read the original PDF.