Monthly Archives: May 2013

Fact: for 20 Years There has been Little Development in Santa Monica

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I’m still thinking about that big meeting a week ago Monday on downtown development.

When planning staffer Francie Stefan was describing, in remarks before the microphone was opened to the public, the process to write a specific plan for downtown she observed that there had been no office buildings constructed in downtown Santa Monica for 20 years.

When I heard that I thought to myself, it’s not only downtown, but there’s been little office development anywhere in Santa Monica since the Water Garden went up about 20 years ago. Since then the 194,000-square foot expansion of Lantana on Olympic Boulevard has been the only significant new office development. Yes, there have been rebuilds of existing buildings, such as with Agensys, but very little else.

Contrary to what everyone seems to believe, for 20 years there has been hardly any commercial development in Santa Monica and barely enough housing development to make a dent in the huge housing deficit on the entire Westside.

Sure, you see a lot of construction, but think about what it is — other than housing (with a little retail on the ground floors) the construction has been mostly to replace older buildings. There has been little net new commercial development.

The biggest private projects have been the new buildings for St. John’s and UCLA Santa Monica hospitals, but those mostly replaced buildings destroyed or damaged in the Northridge Earthquake. (In fact, when completed the new St. John’s will be smaller than what it was before the earthquake.) The re-do of Santa Monica Place was just that, a re-do. No large new hotels have been built since the Loew’s and Le Merigot — the new Shore Hotel on Ocean Avenue replaced (and expanded somewhat on) two old hotels. Apple replaced Borders. RAND replaced its old buildings with a new building of about the same size (300,000 square feet) — even though under the 1993 Civic Center Specific Plan the think tank could have built another 200,000.

There have also been public projects like the new public safety headquarters, and of course the biggest construction project in years is now underway — bringing the Expo line to Santa Monica.

To the extent that traffic congestion has increased at certain times and in certain directions over the past 10 years relates much more to economic growth over the entire 405 corridor than any purported “massive overdevelopment” in Santa Monica (although certainly the time and place of the congestion relates to the commuting pattern into the city).

City Council and planning staff have not sold the city to developers.

We all benefit from the overall thoughtful and careful approach to development that Santa Monica has had for 30 years. Sure, it could have been even more thoughtful and careful — if the 9 million square feet of office development approved in the ’80s had been split 50-50 between offices and housing, we’d all be better off. But we’re not going to fix that imbalance by preventing housing development now.

Fortunately, housing is where the development market is now in Santa Monica. The development agreement projects proposed not only for downtown but throughout the city are mainly for housing, including the condo developments associated with the hotel projects and the affordable housing tied to them. I know it is hard to persuade people of this, but new housing in Santa Monica has only a small impact, and possibly a net positive impact, on traffic congestion. Increasing the number of housing units by 10% (5,000 units) as the LUCE contemplates will not affect traffic significantly.

To solve transportation problems and make good use of our investments in transit, we need more housing near jobs. Council Member Kevin McKeown expressed this succinctly in yesterday’s Daily Press: “The number one antidote to the ‘commute and pollute’ problem is proximity. Putting worker-affordable housing near jobs makes the use of mass transit more likely, and in some cases can mean walking or biking to work.”

The housing market is a continuum that runs in Santa Monica from luxury condos to SROs for people who would otherwise be homeless: from Ocean Avenue condos to Step Up on Second, and everything in between.  We need housing at all income levels, because at every point along the continuum housing is fungible: a shortage of housing will turn middle-class housing into upper-class housing and working-class housing into middle-class housing, and so on.

Put another way, if we want Santa Monica’s empty-nesters to sell their houses to the next generation of families, and if we want those empty-nesters to stay in Santa Monica, we need to build condos for them to buy or apartments for them to rent. It’s easy to say that the high-end market for housing will take care of itself, and certainly no one will go homeless directly if there isn’t a condo to buy at the Miramar or in the Frank Gehry tower, but developers can’t build any kind of housing unless they have permission to do so.

Thanks for reading. (By the way, you may not hear from me for a while — I’ll be on vacation until the beginning of June.)

Downtown Development: The Train has Left the Station and is Arriving Soon

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I left Monday night’s public meeting about downtown development standards around 9:00 and so I didn’t hear all the comments, but I’ve been thinking a lot about what I heard.

The open mic format provided a chance for people to vent, but that’s okay. No, I don’t believe that the people there who vented were particularly representative of Santa Monicans, but neither were they people who are naturally angry who can be dismissed as Tea Partiers. We’re talking normally calm and friendly folks. These are people who have good lives — they have jobs, or they’re retired, and houses or nice apartments, and they don’t usually have much to complain about.

It struck me how many of them bracketed their passionate complaints about change in Santa Monica with equally passionate declarations about how much they love it here. Many of the most emotional speakers seemed angry about being angry, as if it was infuriating to them to have to get angry in the first place.

Also, when you delve into what they were saying, you find that they’re more discerning than their blanket denunciations of development would have you expect. Since, as I discussed in my previous post, I’m in favor of more development downtown but I haven’t made up my mind about high-rises, I was pleased to hear many of the anti-development speakers say they would be okay with development up to 84 feet high so long as the same rules were applied to everyone.

And of course there were various speakers, such as Mike Feinstein and Phil Brock, who brought up important arguments that need to be made in the community discussion about whether to reverse the 30-year ban against tall towers.

Yet it’s hard to avoid a little cynicism. When I lined up to enter the meeting there was Huntley Hotel lobbyist Sue Burnside checking in those members of the “community” who she had mobilized. Ms. Burnside, who last year bragged online that on the Huntley’s behalf she had organized phony community groups, might want to try a little discretion. It’s the better part of something. (Later when the Huntley’s lawyer from Latham & Watkins spoke I wondered if her firm’s real estate department should charge double to oppose a project to compensate for the cognitive dissonance this must cause. I hope they don’t all need counseling when this is over.)

It was also hard not to be cynical about some of the homegrown commentary. There were the representatives of Santa Monica Coalition For Livable City (SMCLC) charging that city staff was in cahoots with developers to build tall towers in downtown Santa Monica. Back in 2005 SMCLC made the same claims with respect to the towers proposed for Santa Monica Place. SMCLC sued the City to get access to all the city’s emails and correspondence with the developers to show this conspiracy. They even got their legal fees paid. But SMCLC made not one email public. Evidently they found nothing to back up their allegations.

Now it’s the same thing. Staff, consultants, people who are educated and conscientious, and who are like flight attendants who have to keeping smiling no matter what their customers do or say, are nothing but pawns of developers. Staff bashing is repugnant because the staff can’t respond in kind, and unfortunately in Santa Monica they don’t get backed up by the politicians who hire them, or even by senior administrators.

Which brings me to that pounding refrain of “we need to take back our city!,” as if a few harried staff, or their devious consultants, or the venal city council members above them and even their greedy developer overlords, are responsible for bringing ten million people to Los Angeles and making them affluent enough to drive millions of cars.

I also sensed political desperation. The election in November showed that even with substantial funding (from the Huntley) an anti-development candidate cannot win without a SMRR endorsement, yet SMRR has many constituencies besides the anti-development faction, most of which support jobs and housing and other goals that require economic development.

The anti-development faction in Santa Monica politics knows that relatively few people in the city care about what happens downtown (as opposed to their neighborhoods). City Council Member Ted Winterer, a favorite of the anti-development side, recently told The Lookout that his wish list would include reversing the 2001 decision not to build a Target downtown, certainly a signal that he’s not going to let fears about traffic stop him from approving projects that are good for the city. Even Daily Press columnist Bill Bauer, usually a staunch supporter of the anti-development faction, has written in favor of both the Miramar and Gehry hotel/condo towers.

When it comes to development downtown, the anti-development speakers are trying to stop a train that has left the station (and is arriving at Fourth and Colorado in 2016).

Thanks for reading.

Density and Building Heights are Not the Same Thing

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Between 2004 and 2010 Santa Monica updated the land use and circulation elements (LUCE) of its general plan, but the LUCE didn’t include downtown. Instead, downtown has been the subject of a separate, “specific plan” process.

As the same time, property owners on three important Ocean Avenue sites have announced or indicated plans to develop high-rise hotel and apartment/condominium projects. (The three projects are the Miramar Hotel renovation, the project Frank Gehry is designing for the corner of Ocean Avenue and Santa Monica Blvd., and the replacement of the Wyndham Hotel (formerly the Holiday Inn) at Ocean Avenue at Colorado.)

The three projects would not conform to current downtown zoning, but the downtown specific plan being developed anticipates eight “opportunity sites,” including these three sites, where various development standards, including heights, would be flexible.

These plans have been controversial. Opponents of the specific plan, as it has been developing, say that it would allow too much in the way of density and height. To allow for an airing of views, the Planning Department has scheduled a special “Town Hall” meeting of the Planning Commission, for tonight (Monday, May 6), from 6 to 9 PM at the Civic Auditorium’s east wing.

The two issues of density and height are often lumped together but are separate. The former should not be a problem downtown, while the latter deserves a robust community discussion.

Regarding density, the amount of new development, as well as the kind of development, proposed for downtown, even on the opportunity sites, is generally consistent with the direction downtown has taken quite successfully for almost 20 years, since the mid-’90s when the City Council adopted the last major revision of downtown zoning. If you look at the list of development projects that The Lookout published last week, you will see that they are all for hotels or housing, either apartments or condominiums (with ground floor stores).

For a long time the City has encouraged residential development downtown because there was a consensus, among even development skeptics like the late Ken Genser, that building housing instead of commercial development downtown helped with traffic, kept development pressures out of neighborhoods, and created a real community in Santa Monica’s core. Santa Monica also needs housing, particularly affordable and workforce housing, and nearly all of the housing downtown has been rental apartments, much of it deed-restricted affordable.

The City has also favored hotels, especially downtown, because they are consistent with Santa Monica’s character as a travel destination, they generate considerable revenue for the City and local businesses, and they, like housing, don’t generate as much traffic as other commercial uses.

The proposed amount of development in the list of projects, as measured by “floor-to-area-ratio”, also is generally consistent with the standards downtown.

The amount of net new development, after taking to account the existing development that will be replaced, is also significantly less than the total development. For instance, downtown apartment projects typically replace existing commercial uses, which likely generate as much or more traffic as the residential developments that replace them.

One also needs to keep the context in mind. Santa Monica already has about 50,000 housing units and more than 3,500 hotel rooms. Even cumulatively, and even if they all get built, the apartment and hotel rooms being proposed for downtown are not going to have significant impacts on traffic. Downtown, with all its transit resources, is the best place to locate development, and downtown traffic is not caused by the housing that’s been built there.

But height is different. Santa Monica needs to have a deep and wide-ranging public conversation before the City changes policies that were adopted 30 years ago to prohibit more high-rises.

For a long time I have opposed high-rise development here. For one, places that don’t have heavy rail transportation infrastructure can’t handle the transportation needs generated by large floor plate skyscrapers: without subways, you get the auto-sewers of Bunker Hill in downtown L.A. I also never liked the “tower in a park” modernist urban design philosophy that isolated so many high-rises from the public on the street. Unfortunately Santa Monica has a number of examples of that from the ’60 and ’70s.

In downtowns and other areas where there is sufficient demand, I have always liked the traditional urban design standards of five and six story buildings — the kind of cities that were built in the pre-elevator era. For this reason I opposed the 22-story towers proposed almost 10 years ago for Santa Monica Place.

But I have been rethinking this, at least in certain circumstances. The reason is that a few years ago I visited Vancouver, where they have created a format for urban development that relies a lot on skinny residential towers to provide the density they want while at the same time making the streets more open to air and sunlight and view corridors than what would be the case if development were concentrated in low-rise buildings. Vancouver solved the “tower in a park” problem by putting the towers above low-rise bases that connect with the street, while also providing for good quality public open spaces.

As I said, I have not yet decided whether to support breaking Santa Monica’s 30-year rule against high-rises to allow the three Ocean Avenue projects. The keys are keeping the amount of development (density) more or less the same, but also the quality of design. Urban planning is often about numbers, but aesthetics are important, too. These projects are going to change the skyline overlooking the beach, and they need to look good.

Like a lot of people in Santa Monica I started thinking more positively about the high-rises when I saw Frank Gehry’s preliminary models for the Ocean and Santa Monica Boulevard project. I was unimpressed by the work at the Miramar, but Gehry’s proposal reminded me that beauty can have value all on its own. I’m going to reserve my judgment until I see a better model that would show how all three projects would work (or not work) in concert.

See you tomorrow night, and thanks for reading.

Fear, and Fear Itself — More on the Santa Monica Airport

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I don’t know Sunset Park resident Beverly Palmer, but she is my new hero. Ms. Palmer spoke at the City Council hearing Tuesday night on the airport, and she told the council that “fear should not govern [its] actions.”

This was in response to what might charitably be called “institutional cautiousness” in the staff report for the hearing, which discouraged any big ideas for the future reuse of the airport land by invoking fear of various “collateral consequences.” What these might be were “difficult to predict,” but nonetheless included “very likely increased density and traffic.” And if people might counter that by proposing a low density use, such as a park, then it was the fear that there wouldn’t be enough money to build it because Santa Monicans wouldn’t want to pay for a park near Los Angeles, and then that would mean development, and then that would mean . . . .  You get the idea.

It was Ms. Palmer’s remarks that prompted Mayor Pam O’Connor, when she concluded debate Tuesday night, to remind everyone that the airport land is owned and controlled by us, the residents of Santa Monica, and that we have the power to make good decisions (subject, of course, to the 800-pound gorilla known as the Federal Aviation Administration).

The FAA. I won’t make any predictions about what the FAA will or can do, but my knees aren’t shaking either. The staff report says that the “FAA condones no closures and allows or suffers them only on very rare occasions,” but this sentence came two lines after staff noted that the number of “public use landing facilities in the country” had declined from 7,192 in 1969 to 5,178 in 2009. Apparently “very rare occasions” for the FAA means more than 2000 times in 40 years.

But there were two kinds of fear on display Tuesday night: fake fear, or, as FDR might have called it, “fear itself,” and real fear, genuine fear, and I want to say something about the latter.

There were real people there Tuesday night fearful of losing their jobs and businesses, and it does not diminish my desire to turn the airport into a park to acknowledge their fears. Other than to say — call it a bromide but it’s true — that the individuals involved have high levels of skills and that they will be able to move on, I have nothing concrete to say to encourage them. I do want the airport to close and its aviation businesses to move elsewhere and it would be hypocritical for me to say anything different.

Call me heartless, but it’s important to put what they fear into historical and economic context. Fifty years ago Douglas Aircraft employed tens of thousands of workers at the airport, but the City declined to expand the airport and its runway, which would have meant people losing their homes. Douglas and thousands of jobs moved to Long Beach. Santa Monica lost its largest employer and the company that was in many ways crucial to the city’s identity for decades. The attempt now to close the airport is the continuation of a process that goes back more than half a century.

Moreover, and I hope I’m not being too History 101 about it, but in every modern society like ours, change happens and people’s lives get disrupted.

This is particularly true about business. A few years ago Broadway Deli closed after 20 years on the Promenade: the owners’ lease expired and they couldn’t pay the higher rents the property owner wanted. They lost their business — in fact they were victims of the success they themselves had helped foster downtown — and their workers lost their jobs.

But the success of the Promenade is a good thing, higher rents notwithstanding.

Just last week I heard from a young videogame designer friend who lives here that the company he worked for in Santa Monica, Sony, was moving to Playa Vista because they needed to expand and couldn’t find enough space here. My friend was looking at a much worse commute, and I felt sorry for him, but at the same time, does Santa Monica need more office parks?

The Clock Tower Building downtown just sold to an Italian firm that owns and operates historic buildings like the Flatiron Building in New York. According to the L.A. Times, the rents in the glamorous building are the highest in the region. It’s a great story of the value of historic renovation and the value of urban revival, but for me it was bittersweet. My office was in the building in less swanky days, from after the earthquake in 1994 until 2001. That’s when the property owners kicked all the tenants out so that they could start their historic rehab.

Back then it wasn’t so hard to find office space in Santa Monica, and I found a new place (but not one with an 11th-floor ocean view!). It worked out okay for me, but I keep thinking about this young couple from Ethiopia who ran an espresso bar on the ground floor. I wonder where they ended up.

Change is often bad and there are many reasons to fear it, but fear is not an emotion that’s helpful when you’re trying to think clearly and make change better.

Thanks for reading.