Last night’s City Council hearing on a Development Agreement and Final
EIR for the proposed four-story, 191,982 square foot creative arts and entertainment production facility, 2834 Colorado Avenue Creative Studio,
at Colorado Avenue and Stewart Street demonstrated how muddled our planning and development process has become.

Gridlock has seized all of our major streets, as well as the 10 and PCH and an ever-increasing number of once-serene residential streets. Over 2 million square feet of commercial development projects in the eastern reaches of the City are in the works, but the City has yet to make a comprehensive plan of all the proposed new projects and their impacts. Downtown Santa Monica and the Civic Center are undergoing major changes, but the planners have yet to do specific plans for either of those areas. City staff repeatedly vowed that 94 percent of Santa Monica –- i.e., the residential neighborhoods — would remain unsullied by the changes in the revision of the Land Use and Circulation elements in the General Plan, (LUCE) but, in fact, once sacrosanct neighborhoods are under increasing fire.

Recently, the Council allowed St. John’s hospital, in effect, to violate its 1998 Development Agreement with the City, abandon plans for an on-site underground parking garage and rent parking space in Yahoo Center, thus exacerbating traffic congestion in the area, while simultaneously allowing Yahoo Center owners to go into the big-time parking business.

The primary tenant in the proposed 2834 Colorado development, Lionsgate Films, has been in Santa Monica for some time, and the developer is Jack Walter, a well-known and well-liked Santa Monica resident. It was all quite jovial at the outset. Walter and his architect made the case for the project. A letter was read from Lionsgate vice-president Mike Burns. Over a dozen Lionsgate employees, would-be employees and would-be friends focused exclusively on the project, and were very enthusiastic about it.

A somewhat larger number of residents focused on the excessive size of the project, its architectural shortcomings, its multiple negative impacts on the neighborhood and area traffic, and its less than compelling “public benefits.” A number of people also spoke about the perilous position of the Village Trailer Park, which may be swept away by this latest wave of oversized commercial development.

It opened in the 1940s. It is genuine affordable housing, which this City claims is a top priority. Its residents are, for the most part, older people on small fixed incomes, whose well-being the City claims is a top priority.

There are over 200 healthy trees on the property, some of which are over 100 years old, and a vital part of the City’s much-bruited “urban forest. A species of hawk resides in the trees — surely a wondrous addition. But if
the owner of the property has his way, all that will be razed to make way
for one more mega-commercial development, and its residents will be scattered, with most being forced out of Santa Monica.

City Attorney Marcia Moutrie vetoed a Council discussion of the trailer park, as it was not on the agenda – to the obvious relief of the Council. We think it was a bad call. This latest wave of mega-commercial development is located in the midst of an established residential neighborhood and it will impose irreparable changes on it, including the destruction of the Village Trailer Park and the drastic disruption of the lives of its residents, and those changes and disruptions needed to be discussed, and while the trailer park
was not on the agenda, it was on many residents’ minds, and one of the
stated purposes of the meeting was “to receive” public comments.

Lionsgate and Walter’s popularity notwithstanding, this project will not improve the neighborhood, but diminish it. Hank Koning, an architect and member of the Planning Commission, suggested that it be sent back to the Commission for more changes, before going on to its final approval by the Architectural Review Board. If it was so flawed, why did Koning and his colleagues send it on to the Council? And why did the Council okay it, after
a mind-numbing discussion.

The commission’s primary responsibility is to thoroughly evaluate a project on a broad range of levels – from its design to its impacts on both the community as a whole and its specific location. But Koning’s comments suggested that the commission forwarded this project to the Council prematurely.

There is tangible proof all over Santa Monica that the City’s review of big commercial projects is wildly inconsistent, but Koning’s request suggests that it is also arbitrary and incomplete. That, of course, is no consolation at all to the residents of the neighborhood. Nor is the knowledge that, as we saw last night, the people making the decisions – from the planning staff
to the developer’s architects to the Planning Commission to the City Council – don’t understand the process of planning, much less the concept of cause and effect.

For the record, only four Council members were present last night – Mayor Richard Bloom, Mayor Pro Tem Gleam Davis and members Pam O’Connor and Bob Holbrook.