AT THEIR LAST MEETING, CITY COUNCIL endorsed a long list of planning guidelines for redevelopment in the mid-city neighborhoods. Word up: Be prepared for more development, density, traffic and congestion The neighborhoods affected are the light manufacturing studio district (LMSD) and Industrial Conservation District (M-1 zone) bounded by the Santa Monica Freeway on the South, Broadway on the North, Lincoln Boulevard on the West and Santa Monica’s eastern border at Centinela Avenue. City planners refer to them as “industrial lands.” They’re anything but. Maybe, that’s the problem.
While there is still some “light manufacturing” in the area, these neighborhoods are a mix of smaller retail businesses, newer condominium complexes and a couple of the city’s largest office complexes. Mostly, they’re filled with decades old smaller apartment buildings occupied by longtime residents, seniors and middle-and lower-income renters.
I’ve written numerous times about how tenants in aging, low-rise, multifam-ily buildings are being evicted by speculators and developers, eager to turn limited income generating rent controlled apartments into highly profitable million dollar condos.
The area’s current building codes allow enough height and density to make new projects well worthwhile for real estate speculators. Existing low and mid income tenants are victimized and driven out. Neither our politicians or city planners seem to care much about the loss of existing low and middle income housing let alone shown much interest in preserving and protecting it. And, City Hall’s vision of this area’s future proves it.
The newly approved “industrial land” guidelines are part of the ongoing update of the city’s General Plan and contain everything but the kitchen sink — including development of light rail/transit stations, workforce housing, live/work “artists” studios and expansion of creative and entertainment related uses.
After seeing the city’s disastrous urban plan for our Civic Center — including the 325 unit apartment/condo complex, inappropriately called "The Village" -- one gets chills thinking about an “industrial lands” neighborhood 25 years from now.
The guidelines seem to be based on “Smart Growth” principles that suggest concentrating multi-floor, multifamily housing with reduced parking in commercial/industrial areas, downtown and along transit corridors. This includes traffic-congesting, pedestrian-friendly streets with wider sidewalks, narrower traffic lanes, bus and bicycle lanes, curb bumpouts and traffic islands.
This mindset is supported by local developers and their employees, activist environmentalists and bike/transit advocates who expect us to give up the yard and family car and learn to love density.
Meaningless catch-phrases such as, "sustainable development that serves the economy, the community, and the environment” and "create compact, pedestrian and bike-friendly neighborhood villages located along transit corridors” are impractical and unrealistic.
According to the L.A. Times, (June 30, 2007), “In Southern California, the new, denser transit-based housing projects could actually lead to more congestion rather than less." Statistics gathered by the Southern California Association of Governments show that job centers are moving away from transit lines rather than toward them." Studies indicate that housing near transit does not reduce the use of cars or guarantee residents will even use transit or bikes. Residents changing job locations go back to their private vehicles, so nothing is gained.
Even worse, "Neighborhood serving retail integrated into these projects draws many more motor vehicles into the area, putting an additional traffic burden where relief had been promised.” Hmmm. Someone should tell our city planners. But, they’re so locked into "Utopian ideals,” it would be like whistling “Dixie."
Nevertheless, staff informed City Council that the former, three-plus acre, Fisher Lumber property (purchased a couple of years ago by the city with promises that it would be used solely for expansion of Memorial Park) was ideal for all kinds of development schemes.
“The area capitalizes on the potential for a Midtown Light Rail Transit station at Olympic Boulevard or Colorado,” could provide an “enhanced pedestrian environment connecting medical campuses and Santa Monica College, provide a “joint-use potential with SMMUSD School District” and/or “create a mixed-use, vital, urban neighborhood surrounding the (transit) station. Other possibilities include “expanded park facilities including parking and even expansion over the I-10/Santa Monica Freeway." Medical campuses? Santa Monica College expansion? A new high school? The only thing left out was the public housing -- but you know that’s coming, too.
Peggy Clifford recently posted on her santamonicadispatch.com blog, “The planners want to turn something — an enlarged Memorial Park — into everything: housing and retail and a transit station with parking, even some sort of partnership with the School District. In fact, turning something into everything seems to be the one and only ‘guiding principle’ for the entire General Plan revision.”
Despite scads of public meetings, residents are still being ignored in a grand rush to develop and congest. As I’ve been saying all along, “There goes the neighborhood.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on November 26, 2007. Read the original PDF.