Tag Archives: Santa Monica Coalition for a Livable City

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.

Aside from Me and 10 Other Candidates, who Lost that City Council Election?

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In my previous post, I wrote about what interests in Santa Monica politics “won” when Tony Vazquez won the fourth seat on the Santa Monica City Council in last November’s election. If, as I maintained, the winners were Santa Monicans for Renters Rights (SMRR), labor (as represented by Unite Here), and those who want to close Santa Monica Airport, who lost?

It may be logically impossible, but the losers were both developers and the anti-development faction.

Although I didn’t enjoy losing the election, to me it was at least positive for the city that Tony Vazquez won, because he was not a hero or villain for either the developers or the anti-development faction. Neither Santa Monicans United for a Responsible Future (SMURF), the developer’s PAC, nor the Santa Monica Coalition for a Livable City (SMCLC), the city’s leading anti-development group, endorsed Vazquez. Nor did Santa Monicans for Responsible Growth (SMRG), the anti-development PAC put together by the Huntley Hotel.

In fact, the election showed that development is not the deciding issue in Santa Monica that so many people seem to think is. The candidate who finished in fifth place, 1,100 votes behind Vazquez and almost 3,000 votes ahead of Richard McKinnon in sixth place, was Shari Davis. Although SMURF had endorsed her, her political base was in the education community and she had little history one way or another in Santa Monica land use politics.

Or consider that the two leading candidates, Ted Winterer and Terry O’Day, each received about the same number of votes (17,714 for Winterer and 17,122 for O’Day); both candidates had SMRR’s endorsement, but on the growth/anti-growth equation, they were portrayed as polar opposites, Winterer being seen as anti-development and O’Day as being pro-development. (I’m making no judgment here about the reality of their respective and comparative views on development, only on the perception.)

Now that we have the results of the new Residents Survey, none of this should be surprising. Santa Monicans have a broad understanding of the issues and appreciate how local government works. It shouldn’t be a shock that they elected two incumbents, one former council member, and one planning commissioner.

But “losing” the election meant different things for the developers and for those who oppose development.

The developers lost not because they failed to elect Shari Davis, who, as I said before had not participated much in development politics, but because their heavy-handed involvement in the election cost them in terms of credibility and trust. By spending nearly half a million dollars, much more than any candidates or other groups spent, they offended many voters and enraged the anti-development faction. Their campaign has made it harder now for Terry O’Day and Gleam Davis to vote in favor of any development, particularly any projects proposed by developers who contributed to the SMURF campaign, because the anti-development side will accuse them of being influenced by the campaign support.

On the other hand, the anti-development faction lost any claim that they represent the majority of residents, because the election showed how few voters cast their votes based upon an anti-development platform.

The anti-development faction, in the form of the SMCLC and SMRG, supported only two candidates in the election, Winterer and Planning Commissioner Richard McKinnon. McKinnon, by virtue of the support he received from SMRG, was the first non-SMRR candidate in Santa Monica history with anti-development support who received significant financial backing. He finished with 8,039 votes.

One educated guess I’ve heard is that in this election the endorsements from SMRR and Unite Here counted for about 10,000 votes. While Winterer and O’Day have support from different factions within SMRR who may have voted for one and not for the other (some SMRR voters are strongly anti-development, and some are what in Santa Monica passes for pro-development), it’s reasonable to estimate that they each picked up about 7,000 votes on their own.

Both Winterer and McKinnon have appeal beyond the anti-development faction, but from the numbers it’s reasonable to say that 7,000 is probably a good estimate of the number of voters (including SMRR voters who voted for Winterer and not for O’Day) who cast their vote primarily on the anti-development issue.

The total number of voters this year in Santa Monica was 47,945. Do the math – we’re talking 15 to 20 percent of voters. While no candidate this year came close to receiving the votes of a majority (because many voters don’t bother to vote in the local election, and because many who do vote don’t cast votes for all four seats), it’s clear that no one can win election to the council who runs exclusively or even primarily on an anti-development platform.

That being said, 7,000 votes is nothing to sneeze at, and in 2008 the anti-commercial development RIFT initiative received 18,410 votes, about 36% of the votes cast. That number is consistent with the finding in the Residents Survey that 43% of Santa Monicans consider the amount of development to be a serious issue. (Although I have to ask, who would say the amount of development isn’t a serious issue? Not me.)

Anti-development residents comprise an important voting bloc in Santa Monica. But the agenda for the majority of Santa Monica residents is much broader than any one issue. Can we keep things in perspective?

Thanks for reading.

Track Records and Traffic Engineers

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The other shoe has dropped, and we won’t be seeing Jeff Tumlin at any public meetings in Santa Monica. It’s too bad, because Tumlin had an ability to help people see the forest instead of the trees when it came to managing traffic. Simply put, what Tumlin was telling us, and which a lot of Santa Monicans came to understand during the LUCE process, was that if you want to reduce the amount of traffic, you need to address your policies to the amount of traffic, and that you can’t control traffic indirectly by trying to prohibit development, because in a growing region ultimately development is going to happen.

A couple of days ago I was talking to a friend, a Santa Monica resident who is active in the city and her neighborhood but not particularly involved in the politics of land-use. She had, however, been following the Tumlin controversy, and she told me that people she was talking to from the anti-Tumlin side were saying that his “theories” about reducing traffic through reducing parking and increasing density and access to alternative forms of transportation had never been proved, and that “real” traffic engineers scoffed at the theories because there was no “track record.”

I was kind of stunned. You mean, traffic engineers are bragging about their track records? Who else do they want to blame for the transportation and quality of life disasters of the past half-century? To be blunt, traffic engineers were presented with a problem of how to facilitate movement in a growing region, and they blew it.

Ever since the ’20s Southern Californians have been complaining about traffic. The solution from traffic engineers and other planners (okay, the traffic engineers weren’t working alone) was always to solve the problem by (i) increasing road capacity (meaning freeways and six and eight lane “boulevards” with vestigial sidewalks), (ii) dispersing development (sprawl), and (iii) requiring parking everywhere. On the short run, when the concrete was fresh, these policies could help some people get around in their cars (while impoverishing the urban core, but that’s another story), but on the not-so-long term the result not only was our long regional traffic nightmare, but also some of the ugliest urban vistas in creation, elephantine carbon-footprints, and a world where millions need to drive to the gym to get the exercise equivalent of a good walk.

So let’s get this straight: now that there’s no room to build more freeways or to widen the boulevards, now that we’ve reached the limits of sprawl, and now that we can’t build an 800 square-foot apartment without building 700 square feet of parking, the traffic engineers are saying that people who want to try another approach don’t have a track record?

I should say at this point that what Tumlin proposes has by now gone beyond the theoretical stage (and didn’t originate with him anyway, as he would tell you in second). Nonetheless, let’s assume, like the intelligent design folks say about Darwinism, that we’re just talking about theory, and let’s acknowledge that in the history of urban planning, like in the history of everything else, there have been some disastrous theories.

But does that mean we have to keep banging our heads with something that didn’t work?

What Jeff Tumlin proposes for Santa Monica isn’t for the benefit of developers. It’s for the benefit of us.

Thanks for reading.

Apparently History Matters

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In its open letter denouncing Jeff Tumlin, the Santa Monica Coalition for a Livable City (SMCLC) not only objected to his use of the term “NIMBY” to describe the anti-development faction of Santa Monica politics, but also took issue with the statement in his bio that, “[f]or decades, Santa Monica politics had been dominated by NIMBYs…”

The SMCLC claimed that Tumlin was “dead wrong” about this, explaining that:

The development history of Santa Monica is one of rapid growth, with over nine million square feet of new development added during the period Mr. Tumlin cites. (Which greatly exceeded our 1984 General Plan.) No one can reasonably say that “NIMBYs” have stopped development in Santa Monica or “dominated” Santa Monica politics.

So history is not bunk after all; it’s important. Who is right, Jeff Tumlin or the SMCLC? I’d say there is some truth in both statements, but overall, both sides choose the trees they want to look at and miss the forest.

Has, as the SMCLC says, the development history of Santa Monica been “one of rapid growth?” Certainly from a perspective going back to 1875, or even 1940, the answer is yes, but Santa Monica’s growth since 1960, especially compared to that of the surrounding region, has not been rapid. Santa Monica’s population is roughly the same now as it was 50 years ago, while the population of Los Angeles during that time increased about 60%.

During those years, though, Santa Monica’s economy evolved from manufacturing-based (in the ’50s, Douglas Aircraft alone employed about 20,000 workers) to offices, and offices generally generate more employees per acre than factories. Santa Monica became even more of a jobs center. But again, the development of the formerly empty areas surrounding Santa Monica was much more “rapid.” (Think Century City, Westwood, and the Sepulveda, Wilshire and Olympic corridors — much more and faster development there than in Santa Monica.)

True, as the SMCLC says, Santa Monica approved 9 million square feet of office development (when the 1984 plan had predicted 4.5 million), but it wasn’t “during the period Mr. Tumlin cites” – it was in the ’80s, 25 years ago, not in the period he’s referring to (the period before the City hired his firm to work on the LUCE).

It was in reaction to those approvals in the late ’80s that a specifically anti-development faction appeared in Santa Monica politics, but it’s important to remember that when Santa Monicans for Renters Rights (SMRR) took power in 1981 it immediately “confronted the Growth Machine” (as described by William Fulton in the first chapter of his The Reluctant Metropolis). SMRR instituted a moratorium over development and ultimately enacted major down-zonings. It’s hard to overestimate the benefits the city gained from these actions. That’s why I say that in Santa Monica we’re all anti-development — I don’t know anyone in Santa Monica politics who doesn’t believe those down-zonings were successful.

All the subsequent fighting between the anti-development faction that emerged in the late ’80s and the traditional progressive wing of SMRR and other elements in Santa Monica politics that see the need for and benefits that can be obtained from development has to do with whether one believes that the down-zoned limits on development provide a good basic framework for development or if one believes that they are only a starting point for further reductions in allowable development.

Which brings us to the SMCLC’s question: can anyone “reasonably say that ‘NIMBYs’ have stopped development in Santa Monica or ‘dominated’ Santa Monica politics”?

My answer is yes and no.

The fact is, hard as it is to believe, that since construction of the Water Garden, the last of those 9,000,000 square feet, only one significant new office development has been built in Santa Monica; that was the Lantana project on Olympic (which totaled about 250,000 square feet of new development).

In the mid-90s Santa Monica began to experience growth in the housing sector, mostly downtown, but one can’t entirely attribute that growth to decisions made locally. The City lost a lawsuit in the early ’90s over its housing policies: the courts found that they were too restrictive. California also passed laws requiring cities to make the building of housing easier. As a result, the City had to liberalize its housing policies, regardless of local politics (although many Santa Monicans believe this was good policy anyway). Since then Santa Monica has seen considerable housing development, nearly all of it in commercial zones.

But housing development in Santa Monica (in commercial zones) has not been as controversial as commercial development; even the SMCLC’s signature piece of proposed legislation, the “Residents Initiative to Fight Traffic” (later known as Measure T), did not limit residential projects.

As I see it, for 20 years Santa Monica has followed, in the big picture, sensible development policies: it has drastically reduced office development (which contributes the most to traffic congestion) and it has given the housing sector some time to catch up to the over-building of offices.

While Jeff Tumlin was incorrect to write that “NIMBYs” dominated Santa Monica politics (especially not “for decades”), those in the anti-development faction don’t comprehend how successful they have been. I find myself often telling my anti-development friends (and yes, I have them) that they should cheer up: they’ve won most of the battles.

But they don’t feel cheerful. That’s because the pendulum swings. The anti-development wave hit its high-water mark in 1999, when, with the election of Richard Bloom to City Council there was for the first time a majority on City Council from SMRR’s anti-development wing. For a brief period the anti-development faction “dominated,” but the anti-development majority began to fragment in 2001 when Ken Genser voted in favor of Target. The wave crested in 2003 when Michael Feinstein cast the decisive vote not to reappoint Kelly Olsen to the Planning Commission and by the middle of the decade most of the anti-development council members had found that a strict anti-development stance didn’t work. The LUCE process began in 2004 and for six years dominated land use politics. Now a backlog of projects fills the pipeline, and the anti-development faction feels beleaguered.

Let’s hope that everyone will stop calling each other names and start talking to each other about a Santa Monica version of “bipartisan” solutions. Growth and change are going to happen, and we need to channel those energies into productive results that are good for everyone.

Thanks for reading.

The Other N-Word

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When he used “NIMBY” to describe the opponents of development in Santa Monica Jeff Tumlin violated consultant rule number one – don’t embarrass your employers – but his doing so at least brings up a question, one that I have wondered about for years, which is what should one call the political faction that most consistently opposes development in Santa Monica?

I’ll confess that when I was writing my Lookout column, I used words like NIMBY and “no-growther” that I knew riled up people who ­– after all – believed in good faith that they were being reasonable when they opposed every project that came down the pike. I even invented a term, “Santa Monicans Fearful of Change,” that may have been technically accurate, but which wasn’t nice at all.

There are people in town, with whom I’m probably in agreement about the issues 90% of the time, who are still mad at me.

But at the same time I found it hard to be political friends with people who described the Planning Commission when I was on it as being “rubber stampers” for developers. Planning staff were also rubber stampers, or worse, and of course the plans being stamped were always those of a “greedy” developer.

To this day, it’s absurd that people accuse the likes of Pam O’Connor and Terry O’Day, who have long and consistent records regarding their views about land use and how cities should develop, views that are, by the way, consistent with an overwhelming amount of research and thinking about urban and environmental problems, of being corrupted by the fact that some developers support their candidacies when they run for office.

It’s one thing to mock the fervency by which a group of your opponents believes in their case, it’s quite another to call people you disagree with corrupt.

But advocates from all sides in Santa Monica development politics, and I’ll include myself, are guilty of using intemperate language to describe political opponents. As for me, I have resolved in the future to use nothing more provocative than the adjective “anti-development” to describe the faction of Santa Monica politics represented by the Santa Monica Coalition for a Livable City. (Not that anyone who is not in that faction is necessarily “pro-development;” we’re all slow-growthers in Santa Monica.)

I don’t know, however, if “anti-development” will satisfy anyone. The anti-development faction likes to be referred to simply as the “residents,” and they speak of themselves in that manner – they are the residents and this is what they want (or don’t want). They get help for this from local news media, which habitually refer to any group that opposes something as the “residents,” as in the typical headline that begins “Residents Oppose…” It’s like the word “some” doesn’t exist in their word processors. There are many meetings of the City Council or the Planning Commission where half (or more) the speakers who live in Santa Monica are in favor of something, but our media typically refer only to the opposition as “the residents.”

But we all like conflict, the more elemental the better. The press likes to depict development issues, which typically involve complex social and economic issues and an equally complex cast of characters, as a zero sum game between the developer and the “residents.” No one else counts.

Take this as you will – as someone who, as a columnist, did my share of over-simplifying the views of people I disagreed with, I’m only a poor sinner who has now discovered the gospel, that it’s not only sticks and stones that break bones.

Thanks for reading.