In December of 2001, SMC bought property at 3171 S. Bundy (Centinela) Drive for a new satellite campus. About $45 million was spent to purchase and renovate the old BAE Aerospace complex, including parking for 600 vehicles. The new campus would be “a means to help reduce traffic on the main campus and meet student parking needs,” said former SMC president Dr. Piedad Robertson at the time.
Four years later, the Bundy campus is at the center of a territorial dispute between residents of the city of Santa Monica, city of Los Angeles and SMC officials just as the campus is opening.
Sunset Park neighbors in Santa Monica concerned about additional traffic demanded that vehicles be restricted from access to Airport Avenue on the back side of the campus. Mar Vista residents demanded locked gates on the Los Angeles side of campus leaving the S. Bundy driveway as the only way in and out.
In a sad demonstration of misplaced loyalty, the SMC Board of Trustees played up to Mar Vista neighbors by suggesting that student vehicles be prohibited from campus parking altogether. Instead, students would park in a nearby Santa Monica city parking lot north of Airport Avenue, which was being used for SMC’s student shuttle service.
The situation became unwieldy when Santa Monica officials notified SMC to move its shuttle to Beach Parking Lot No. 5 off Barnard Way because the present lot would soon close for construction of the new Airport Park.
Want to bet that students driving through the city to and from the beach lots, and then busing back and forth to Bundy is not going to reduce traffic?
Things became even wackier when some Mar Vista residents with way too much time on their hands formed a “parking posse” and started inspecting cars parked on the Bundy campus for student permits. When they found student cars, they whined to college administrators.
A “no left turn” sign was posted at the Bundy driveway so vehicles could only turn right during rush hour. That required cars to circle through Mar Vista residential neighborhoods in order to head north toward the freeway.
Finally, earlier this month, representatives from SMC, Santa Monica and Los Angeles met and negotiated a tentative agreement that opened the back Airport Avenue access to traffic on a “test” basis. Los Angeles City Councilman Bill Rosendahl, citing traffic safety issues, agreed to push for a “half-signal” on Bundy Drive to control the left turns onto the campus. Even though Santa Monica Mayor Pam O’Connor, who wasn’t concerned about anyone’s well-being, mumbled that safe driving was the students’ own responsibility and “we” shouldn’t have to deal with it.
The agreement is subject to approval from Santa Monica City Council, which will vote on it on Tuesday night.
This misadventure proves how mistakes compound. Santa Monica/Malibu voters approved college bonds in both 2001 and 2004, generating $335 million for SMC expansion — even though it was obvious the projects financed by the bonds would increase traffic and parking problems.
Mar Vista activists who complained about everything from noise mitigation to landscaping and lighting fell far short of suggesting practical traffic mitigation as if, when the property was an aerospace facility, it didn’t generate traffic. Lastly, Santa Monica’s ploy of barricading Airport Avenue to campus traffic was petty, especially after many politicians and city staff supported the Bundy project to begin with.
Didn’t some of the very same Renters Rights’ activists who opposed student parking on campus actively promote the bonds that financed the project? And, wasn’t Renters’ Rights co-chair and paid college bond promoter, Denny Zane, hired again by SMC to “sell” the Bundy campus to neighbors in both Santa Monica and LA?
I’ve always opposed projects that increase traffic and parking problems, especially in our residential neighborhoods. And, the specter of three traffic lights within a few hundred yards of each other on S. Bundy Drive is more bad news.
Using innocent students as pawns in the game of political muscle flexing is nasty and mean spirited. Next time, better to shut the door before the herd gets out of the barn and stampedes down the street. (Bill Bauer is a longtime Santa Monica resident and a freelance writer.)
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on November 7, 2005. Read the original PDF.