Given the gloriously idiosyncratic character of the town and the bureaucratic mindset that rules City Hall, it was inevitable.

Santa Monica is one of those small, storied places that’s on a first-name basis with the world. Like the ocean, which is its primary reason for being, it’s constant, but never still, forever becoming. And that’s why we live here.

As William Faulkner said, “The past isn’t dead. It isn’t even past.”

This gorgeous arena’s past is present, and palpable, and prelude and portent. And that’s why we love it.

An icon itself, Santa Monica has always been fertile ground for icons of every stripe. Shirley Temple and Frank Gehry. RAND and the Z Boys.

It has no tolerance for standard issue stuff, and there’s the rub.

City Hall has long seen this quintessential Southern California beach town, which was founded in 1875, not as what it is, but as what it wants it to be — means not end, an eight-square-mile hunk of Silly Putty that can be endlessly pulled and poked to serve City Hall’ s hopelessly mundane and mercantile ambitions. And that’s why we don’t love City Hall.

In the 1960s, the City turned Third Street into a pleasant pedestrian mall with a Woolworth’s, a JC Penney s and a lot of local stores, including nearly a dozen small bookstores. In the 1970s, over the objections of many residents, it cleared two city blocks in downtown Santa Monica to make way for Santa Monica Place.

In the late 1980s, the pedestrian mall was replaced by the Third Street Promenade and the unique local stops were replaced by the same chain stores that dominate all the other west side shopping centers.

The Southern California hierarchy of places is headed by Los Angeles and the beach towns, followed by everyplace else.

But, incomprehensibly, City Hall had set about to reduce this extraordinary beach town to an ordinary “regional commercial hub.”

In addition to being an alien presence, Third Street is a very expensive enterprise. Millions for the remodel, $15 million for the imaginary “transit mall,” millions for promotion; more millions on parking structures. The Council recently okayed paying $45 million for a 52,000 square foot parcel near Third Street on which a new parking structure will rise. .

The beach, Main Street, the Pier and Pico are all more compelling than Third Street; and they are authentic, integral parts of this beach town.

But even as City Hall ordered “ambassadors.” for Third Street, the Pier, which was built in 1909 and is a major landmark, was struggling to find funding for its 2010 Twilight Dance Series, Main Street businesses had to beg for basic services, Pico’s portion of the “urban forest” was virtually barren of actual trees, and, while the beach boasts a new $31 million public beach club, thanks to Wallis Annenberg, the City has encumbered it and the beach with a surfeit of rules and regulations.

If traffic jams are the measure, then the opening of the new Santa Monica Place was a smash hit. But if its ultra-expensive shops and stores continue to attract throngs, will Bayside spend more millions to compete? If past is precedent, and it is, of course, it will.

Curiously, City Hall’s self-anointed retail experts and their corps of consultants have overlooked a seismic shift in residents’ buying habits.

Every day, countless residents leave Santa Monica, head for Costco in Venice, Target in Culver City, Home Depot in Playa Vista and so on. Not so long ago, Santa Monica was virtually self-sufficient — with remarkably few chain stores and a great many independent businesses. That independence and diversity are among the casualties of City Hall’s clumsy effort to tame this spirited old town.

The revision of the land use and circulation elements of the General Plan (JUMBO LUCE) codifies what it calls “the community’s vision” for our town for the next two decades. At its heart is a key “policy goal: intensified urban form.”

Not my “community.” Not my “vision.” Not my “goal.”

Are they yours?

Probably not.

Perhaps we should all follow the lead of one angry resident: “Vote for anyone but the incumbents.”

Is this a City Hall and the downtown property owners, who co-manage the downtown area, seem bent on elevating and separating it from the rest of Santa Monica.
Santa Monica Loses Its Balance

Given the gloriously idiosyncratic character of the town and the bureaucratic mindset that rules City Hall, it was inevitable.

Santa Monica is one of those small, storied places that’s on a first-name basis with the world. Like the ocean, which is its primary reason for being, it’s constant, but never still, forever becoming. And that’s why we live here.