Some residents still want a contract
SMC — Santa Monica College officials last week said they would be willing to limit development at their new satellite campus near the airport, in the hopes the cities of Santa Monica and Los Angeles would allow reasonable access for staff and students.
SMC’s board of trustees approved a recommendation in which the Bundy Campus master plan, a work in progress, will specifically begin to assess the college’s educational needs in relation to community concerns over added traffic the facility at 3171 South Bundy Dr. might create. The campus opened for the first time last Tuesday. SMC officials hope to expand the campus with another building and hundreds of parking spaces to serve the facilities.
SMC officials said they still need vehicular access to the campus, while Santa Monica and other city officials have indicated they are prepared to limit the access, which is in their jurisdictions’ control. They fear the new campus will generate too much traffic on nearby streets.
Those who have criticized the college’s growth management in the past said SMC’s step is a good one, if it is delivered as promised.
“It sounds like a very positive change in the right direction,” said Santa Monica City Councilman Richard Bloom.
Bloom said staff from Los Angeles City Councilman Bill Rosendahl’s office attended the meeting, which might have played a part in the outcome.
“I think it speaks for itself that someone had to weigh in from Los Angeles before SMC appeared to weigh more seriously the concerns some have,” Bloom said. “Still, I’m thankful that appears to be the case.”
A July 6 SMC staff report said the primary access to the site, which used to be an office building, has historically been through a road east of the main building and south from Airport Avenue. Both SMC and the city of Santa Monica are willing to move that road to the other side of the main building to align it with the Donald Douglas Loop South.
However, before City Hall agrees to the new road alignment, college officials must provide information about their long-range plans for the campus.
Don Girard, executive assistant to SMC’s president, said the new plan would likely erase a 1,000-space parking structure from the drawing board and phase out a 17-year-old shuttle service. It would maintain a 96,000-square-foot instructional building, which already is open, while using the excess parking space to create a separate teaching facility.
When complete, the Bundy campus would have 689 parking spaces, which would be “more than enough” parking for SMC students and staff who would be using the campus, Girard said.
Representatives from an SMC consultant group, Kaku Associates, said the reduced master plan would likely cause 0 to 5 percent growth in overall traffic in the area.
In addition to the new road alignment, a traffic study will be done that will look into the feasibility of allowing cars to use both Bundy and Airport avenues, while restricting cars exiting on Airport Avenue to right-turn only.
The SMC board of trustees also approved staff’s recommendation to create a long-term monitoring program, comprised of the Santa Monica Airport commission and neighborhood groups, meant to ensure the new facility accommodates both the college and the community.
Rosendahl’s constituents, who live in Mar Vista, said at the meeting they were concerned the new campus would bring greater traffic to their neighborhoods along Centinela Avenue.
Santa Monica residents, sharing similar concerns, worried about a traffic boon in an area already fraught with it, along 28th street and areas connecting to Airport Avenue.
Zina Josephs, president of Friends of Sunset Park, a local neighborhood group, said residents of Mar Vista and Santa Monica should ban together in a common goal to keep the new campus in scale, and thus reduce traffic for both neighborhoods.
That could be done by applying pressure on city officials to ensure SMC signs a binding access agreement, in which the college would forfeit vehicular access rights on major streets if it fails to keep its campus at a predetermined scale.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on July 11, 2005. Read the original PDF.