By Elissa Royal Santa Monica
Macerich’s proposal to replace the downtown mall includes three 21-story condo buildings, one eight-story apartment building, and one eight-story office building. How many more cars would that add to downtown traffic every day? Maybe 2,000?
Prohibiting the skyscrapers won’t necessarily eliminate the additional cars. If Macerich is denied permission to build the towers, its architects could redesign the project to go horizontal instead of vertical — replacing much of the planned park space with smaller buildings, while keeping the same total number of residential units and offices.
Less than four years ago, the city decided not to allow Target to open a store next to Toys R Us. Although many residents argued for the store, the opponents won because it would create too many traffic problems. At least Target would provide a valuable service to many city residents. You can’t make that argument for luxury condos.
So we in Santa Monica have two big decisions to make: (a) how high should we allow buildings near the beach, and (b) how much more traffic congestion are we willing to tolerate downtown?
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on December 8, 2004. Read the original PDF.