This week, Surf Santa Monica’s fantasy historian Frank Gruber turns the clock back to 1994.

He writes, “The advice I would give the anti-RIFTers is to study the 1994 campaign that defeated the anti-Civic Center plan initiative that a group of residents similar to the group that has promoted RIFT put on the ballot. They tried to make the vote turn on the issue of the 24,000 daily car trips they said the plan would engender.

“Everyone expected the initiative to pass — it was promoted by the popular Tom Hayden, who was on the same ballot running for governor in the Democratic primary — but the pro-plan City Council countered by having copies of the actual Civic Center plan distributed to every voter as part of the voting materials.

“The campaign against the initiative stressed the benefits the plan would bring to the city. The voters were smart enough to understand that, and voted down the initiative in a 60 to 40 landslide…”

Actually, when the Cold War ended, RAND predicted that its income would decline (it didn’t), and proposed building the largest commercial development in the history of Santa Monica on its 13+ acres across Main Street from City Hall. That was the genesis of and rationale for the original Civic Center Specific Plan.

But, on the advice of its consultants, RAND promoted its mega-commercial development as a “public safety” measure, and won the support of the influential Police Officers Union, which covered the town with door hangers.

RAND’s $250,000 campaign included photos of dingy corners of
Its own property, which, it claimed, would be cleaned up, if the plan were approved. But, of course, RAND could have cleaned them any rime as it owned them.

The sponsors of the initiative who opposed the plan made a great case but they had only $6000 to spend on their campaign and couldn’t overcome the
RAND/City alliance.

The voters weren’t “smart.” They were bamboozled.

In the tradition, Gruber writes later in his column, “The fact is that RIFT won’t do anything about traffic…” Does he really think that reducing commercial development From, on average, 320,000 square
Feet a year to 75.000 square feet annually will not reduce traffic?