As the 1983 iteration of Santa Monica’s state-mandated 20-year General Plan became obsolete in 2003 and the revision will not be finished until 2009, Santa Monica is out of compliance, and in limbo.

In this no-plan land we now inhabit, unprecedented problems proliferate, along with the same old problems.

Most cities of this size have no hospitals. Santa Monica has two first-rate major hospitals, and both are currently in the midst of multi-million-dollar expansions. At the same time, the number of local extended care facilities is in decline. But the City doesn’t know how many such facilities exist, much less how many are needed. As a result, though we have a surfeit of luxury condo complexes, another one, which would displace an extended care facility, is now making its way through the review process.

Surely, City Hall should know precisely what Santa Monica has in the way of vital services and what it needs.

In the same line, City staff is currently shepherding a project through the process that would gut the historic Art Deco NuWilshire movie theater in order to install two chain stores — though we are already up to our eyeballs in chain stores.

On the 1300 block of Wilshire since the 1930s, the Art Deco edifice is that
most valuable resource – an architecturally, historically and culturally significant building that fills a community need, is on the City’s historical resources inventory, and, to top it, is within easy walking distance of hundreds of residents’ homes.

Surely, when a proposal to destroy an irreplaceable community resource arrives in City Hall, alarm bells should go off, red flags should be raised, and staff members should go into action. But, according to senior planner Paul Foley, it’s a simple remodel, no change in use, nothing “radical.”

Turning a great old movie theater into retail stores is not a simple remodel, it’s a crime.

PRUJSM Tribo, LLC, otherwise known as Craig Jones, wants to build a 125-unit market rate apartment complex at 525 Broadway. Last week, the project was found wanting on virtually every count by Planning Commissioners.

Surely, the planning department should have the means to kick flawed proposals back to their makers at the outset rather than devoting its resources to “fixing” them.

These projects are just the latest evidence that the 1983 General Plan was fatally flawed and, though officially defunct, still prevails.

Since 1983, at the behest of City staff, the City Council has made more amendments, additions, deletions and alterations to the zoning code than we can count, but almost all of them have weakened and muddled a code that was weak and muddled from the beginning.

We are adrift – midway between 2003 and 2009, out of compliance, in trouble, improvising madly and making serious mistakes.

The only sensible thing to do is to come to a full stop. Now.

The moment the City began the General Plan revision in 2004, residents began asking that all projects of any size be put on hold until the revision was complete. The City ignored our requests.

As traffic congestion mounted, some residents led by Laurel Roennau, a resident traffic expert, brought some leading traffic experts from UCIrvine and Boulder, Colorado to Santa Mon ica to outline the sophisticated traffic management technology that an increasing number of cities are using. The Planning Commission recommended that the City replace its simplistic technology with more advanced and comprehensive systems. But the City ignored the recommendation and today traffic is worse than ever.

Recently, representatives from the Santa Monica Coalition for a Livable City and all the neighborhood organizations asked City officials and the Planning Commission to recommend to the Council that it declare a moratorium on all projects of any size until the completion of the General Plan revision.

At Tuesday night’s City Council meeting, City staff will finally act, but what it wants is miles short of what we need.

The staff will recommend that the Council approve an interim ordinance, rather than a moratorium, that would put development in the “industrial lands,” not the entire city, on hold until the General Plan revision is complete.

Curiously, the staff report makes a compelling case for a moratorium on the “industrial lands” that should and could be applied to the entire city, and then rejects it for utterly bogus reasons.

According to staff, “…The advantage of a full moratorium is that it allows the community, staff, Planning Commission and City Council full opportunity to understand and plan for current and future market potentials as well as the urbanistic relationship between future land uses, transportation, and economic policies, including both public and private actions. A moratorium would stop the combined unintended effects of current regulations and existing market forces from determining the future of the area. It would create ample time for community consensus and informed policy decisions, assuring that future development brings the greatest community benefit.”

Exactly.

But, according to staff, “The disadvantage of a full moratorium is that the city would forego any opportunities presented by current projects, with unknown effects on the future real estate market…”

In fact, anyone who doesn’t spend the majority of his or her days in City Hall would see this alleged “disadvantage” as a definite advantage.

Clearly, City Hall inhabits a parallel universe.

The actual Santa Monica, the one we inhabit is quite real, while the Santa Monica City Hall oversees is utterly theoretical. Residents not only know that Santa Monica can’t have everything, they don’t want it to have. much less be everything, while City Hall believes that Santa Monica must have and be everything.

That nitwit notion is the source of virtually all the problems that currently dog us.

It’s also the basis for City Hall’s opposition to a full moratorium. It wants the General Plan revision, and it wants all the projects that might be put on hold by a full moratorium. Indeed, here and now, the only thing it doesn’t want is residents challenging its authority.

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