By MY WRITE By Bill Bauer
In the next few weeks, the City Council will decide on revisions to city zoning codes that could alter every multi-family neighborhoods in Santa Monica, forever. One big red flag is the elimination of public comment on the future of our neighborhoods.
Proposed text amendments would permanently define new building standards for downtown and multi-family residential neighborhoods throughout the city. Amendments will permanently update and change city codes, and replace numerous interim codes expiring in June.
According to city staff, the new design and development guidelines for downtown are designed to “represent community values with respect to design, quality and livability and create clearer standards while achieving a more efficient and predictable review process for applicants (developers).”
Among the standards being proposed are changes in allowable building height. Depending on the project’s location, some maximum heights will be lower, others will be slightly higher and five floors will be permitted. Front and side setbacks are required on upper floors to reduce perceived size and better define a project as an individual structure. Ground floors are to be pedestrian-oriented. That’s the good part.
Proposed changes mandate a courtyard connected to the sidewalk and open skyward except for projects on the Third Street Promenade. Courtyards could be residential gardens, gathering spaces or house commercial uses like restaurant dining. The problem is that if we require every new building to have a courtyard, except by variance, aren’t we just creating another cookie-cutter standard?
And it gets worse.
Proposed code changes reduce the public comment threshold back to 30,000 square feet from the interim 7,500-square-foot threshold. Unfortunately, with residential components calculated at 50 percent of actual square footage, this means only the largest projects downtown would be subject to public review.
In a nutshell, “achieving a predictable review process” means that when a development meets the new codes, it would be administratively approved by staff. The need for public comment through the Architectural Review Board and Plan-ning Commission would be substantially reduced. The ARB, for example, would only review projects that didn’t meet code or that required variances or special permits One goal of the new codes is “limiting vehicular access... and reducing the number of vehicles downtown will greatly enhance the quality of life and pedestrian -oriented atmosphere.”
Here we go again. I can’t believe City Hall is still chewing on the “get ’em out of their car” rag. You can bet the highly paid consultants and city staffers behind this gem haven’t stood on a corner for 20 or 25 minutes waiting for a crowded bus.
For example, one proposal calls for narrowing Sixth and Seventh streets by 12 feet and widening the sidewalks. This dovetails with City Hall’s desire to make it harder and more inconvenient to drive downtown. And, it meshes with easing parking requirements to “reduce auto dependency and parking demand... and encourage transit, walking, bicycling and alternative modes of transportation.”
In the meantime, those of us who are tired of being victims of the city’s unpleasant behavior modification experiments will be patronizing Westwood, Century City and the Grove, where vehicles are welcome and parking is plentiful.
Suggested code revisions for multi-family developments in the R2, R3 and R4 residential neighborhoods propose to make condos and apartment buildings more neighborhood friendly. Yet one nightmarish recommendation requires mandatory rooftop decks that are set back and screened from neighboring buildings.
Roof decks are consistently a major source of public complaint about noise and privacy.
And the required screening effectively adds additional height to the building. Being that they’re definitely not “neighborhood friendly,” mandatory roof decks should really be prohibited.
And, as with the proposed downtown standards, multi-family buildings meeting new design criteria will be exempt from public review. And affordable housing projects can still be built higher and denser than non-affordable projects.
The Planning Department views public comment as annoying, expensive and time consuming. As with the recent proposal to eliminate Conditional Use Permits for Bayside alcohol applications (also under consideration by the City Council), these latest code revisions continue an ongoing, deliberate and systematic pattern of activity that silences the public’s voice.
These revisions need a great deal of City Council scrutiny. In an election year, wholesale removal of the public review will not fly nor will the implementation of poorly conceived design and development standards.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on March 26, 2004. Read the original PDF.