Santa Monica City Council summarily rejected the appeal by a group of neighborhood citizens on Tuesday night that would have required Texas developer Trammel Crow to obtain an Environmental Impact Report before beginning risky excavation at 301 Ocean Avenue, barely 100 feet from the decaying bluffs adjoining Palisades Park. That decision is the latest action by city officials in this controversial development project that will have dire consequences for the majority of Santa Monica citizens. Many believe that if this project is completed, it will signal the end of the Santa Monica lifestyle that we now enjoy.

Kaid Benfield, writing for Natural Resources Defense Council, the nation’s most effective environmental group, expressed it perfectly when he wrote, “One of the things I like best about Santa Monica is its scale. It has plenty of density, using land efficiently and promoting walking and transit use, but it is human-scaled. Our office is typical, with a two-story facade and another story set back and added behind that. Yes, there are high-rises here and there in Santa Monica, but more mid-rises than high-rises, and plenty of individual houses that feel like, well, normal houses. It doesn’t feel like a place dominated by large buildings. It feels like a place for people.”

That is what is endangered now; a place for people. A competition to preserve our lifestyle began in 1979 when rent control was voted in by a huge majority but it is now being won by big money interests from outside the city. There is a majority on the City Council that is making the kind of decisions that would be expected of lobbyists for oversized and upscale development, but not of the elected representatives of a population with a median household income of $71,796. The way Trammel Crow has shepherded their plans through the city’s departments illustrates a disastrous breakdown in governmental representation of its citizenry and how the power of money can be exercised to circumvent the will of the people.

In August, the Planning Commission made a decision that negated the requirement of an Environmental Impact Report before the developer could demolish the 47-unit apartment complex and begin construction of a condominium complex in its place. A group of citizens in the surrounding neighborhood exercised a legal right and appealed the finding. By law, the City Council has the authority to hear such an appeal. However, the appellant group was never notified through its named contact person that the hearing had been put on the City Council meeting agenda for November 9. A notice of the hearing, printed on colored card stock, was mailed to residents within a 500 foot radius of 301 Ocean Avenue, but those arrived during the pre-election deluge of campaign mailers most of which were also printed on card stock.
The named contact person, Titus Wapato, was not aware of the meeting date until he received an envelope in the regular mail on Friday, November 5, after all city offices had closed for the weekend. The envelope contained a 117 page report prepared by Planning Department staff that recommended that City Council deny the appeal. Wapato asserts that receiving the information in that manner, at that late date deprived the neighborhood of any reasonable opportunity to analyze the Planning staff report and prepare a report that would use the group’s research to rebut the staff’s opinion that is based on information submitted by the developer.

Wapato sent email messages to each of the Council members individually and sent fax copies of a letter requesting a continuance of the hearing to allow them time to prepare the group’s response. The messages were sent during the weekend so they would be received on Monday morning, November 8. Planning Manager Amanda Schacter responded by email at 12:56 on Tuesday November 9 that they had determined to proceed with the hearing at 6:30 that evening.

Sixteen members of the appellant group went to City Hall to attend the meeting and to register their indignation at being deprived of a fair hearing but were denied entrance to City Council chambers because of overcrowding caused by a taxi driver demonstration. Wapato addressed the council simply to reiterate the impossibility of receiving a fair and impartial hearing under the existing circumstances. The council sided with the developer by a 6-0 vote. Councilman Kevin McKeown abstained saying he could not in good conscience vote to deny the appeal and that the council had not been presented enough information to support the appeal.

As has been the case throughout the twisting course of events the debate was deflected away from the most important points and centered on less important points that were less controversial. Instead of delving into the dangers of massive excavation less than 100 feet from deteriorating cliffs in an area that city maps already designate as an earthquake hazard the debate was steered into whether Spanish Revival plans were better than more modern architecture, when neither of them are harmonious with a neighborhood that consists primarily of interior garden apartments. The geological impacts are just one facet of the entire environmental impact of this project. Other impacts that will affect traffic, the population diversity, the economy of the city and the region, and the scale and character of future development all need to be explored, and that can only be done with a full Environmental Impact Report. If that is not required, then every Santa Monica citizen loses an important safeguard.

This Dallas, Texas development company wants to build condominiums that will be priced up to $5,000,000. It is clear that a household with an annual income of $71,796 will not be buying that condo. It is equally clear that any Santa Monica resident who can afford a five million dollar home is not likely to leave his 5,000 square foot house to buy a condo. That only leaves out of town buyers, and so begins the subtle shift in the population that is the goal of these big money interests.

What is most ominous is that each individual action by the developer has been disguised to look harmless at worst and beneficial to the city at best. They have presented the destruction of 47 good and affordable family housing units and replacing them with 20 luxury condominiums as a good thing. One wonders how, in a city that is trying very hard to present itself as a model of environmental sustainability, it can be a good thing to destroy a good, green, wood frame and stucco residence with solar panels on the roof and replace it with a steel and concrete monolith.

This saga first became public in January 2008 when Trammel Crow unveiled plans for a 73,800 square foot structure at a design review meeting hosted for the developer by the Santa Monica Planning Department. The 47 units presently at 301 Ocean Avenue are only 37,989 square feet, which is harmonious with the rest of the neighborhood. That design was described by neighborhood residents as being more suitable for a prison than a residential building in Santa Monica.

Next they began the process to evict the tenants from the building by using the California Ellis Act to remove the apartments from the rental market. They tried to get tenants to move out voluntarily by offering them slightly higher relocation allowances than are required by law, but the move out agreement contained provision amounting to a waiver of their free speech rights and would deny them the right to speak out against any project Trammel Crow might have in Santa Monica. Most tenants were outraged by that clause and not only rejected the offer but forwarded it to the Rent Control Board and the City Attorney’s office for ruling on its legality. The Rent Control Board attorney took the position that if tenants wanted to waive their rights there was nothing they could do. The City Attorney’s office did not even respond for nearly a year, and then only when a City Council member requested clarification.

In January 2009, the building was determined by the Landmarks Commission to be eligible for designation as a Santa Monica Landmark because of its association with Clo Hoover who was Santa Monica’s first woman mayor and a pioneer advocate for women’s participation in government. Hoover was also instrumental in preserving the Santa Monica pier and in other decisions that contributed to the preservation of our lifestyle. The City Council reversed the designation in June 2009. That episode and its tangled web of obfuscation will be illuminated in a separate article that is another illustration of how big money influence can be used to inflict the will of the few on the lives of the majority.

In future articles we will show how the facts surrounding the 301 Ocean Development have been skewed to benefit the developer, and to illustrate how these tactics are the forerunners of the way future developments will be pushed through City Hall regardless of their detrimental effects on the city.