The City Planning Department is currently planning: (1) the proposed EXPO Light rail line — its maintenance yard, the route through the city, three stations, the areas adjacent to the stations and the “gateway to Santa Monica” at the end of the line; (2) the construction of over two million square feet of new commercial projects in the Bergamont station area; (3) major additions to the Civic Center – the mega-housing project that is called “The Village” and combines $2 milllion “luxury condos” with affordable housing units and some retail, the $47 million six-acre “Palisades Garden Walk” park, the adjacent $25 million “Town Square” in front of City Hall, the $45 million rehab of the Civic Auditorium; (4) the next “new downtown,” which includes a mammoth parking structure on Second Street, a new AMC movie complex that replaces a parking structure but has no parking of its own, “something exciting” at Fifth and Arizona, a massive remake and expansion of the historic Miramar hotel, the reduction of the grand old office building at Seventh and Wilshire to a hotel, with a wholly undistinguished addition; and (5) the replacement of the California Incline. Etcetera!

On being named Deputy Mayor for Special Projects, Kate Vernez said she was thrilled to play a role in ”this unprecedented era of civic improvements.”

We’re more wary than thrilled. The number and size of the projects is “unprecedented,” but there’s virtually no evidence to date that these projects – singly or as a group – will “improve” this gloriously idiosyncratic beach town.

At the beginning of the LUCE process, residents’ surveys and questionnaires indicated that we wanted to restore and repair the small scale beach town, which had been fractured by a two-decade commercial development binge. .

City Hall disagreed, and spent seven years revising the land use and circulation elements of the General Plan (LUCE). Literally at the last minute, architects Gwynne Pugh and Hank Koning, who were then members of the Planning Commission, but have since resigned owing to possible conflicts of interest, persuaded the Council to increase mandated height and mass limits for commercial buildings – thus blowing seven years’ work on a very controversial question in ten minutes.

That was more than a year ago.

Since then, the Planners refer frequently to the LUCE when presenting a new project, but the zoning code, the official, working version of the often lofty LUCE, has yet to be written. Earlier this week, we were told that it wouldn’t be ready until sometime next year, June perhaps, which, by the City clock, probably means December, 2012, or some time in 2013,

The City has been awarded a federal grant to do a Bergamot area plan, which would show us where all the proposed new buildings are slated to go and what their impacts – as a whole and individually — on the area and the adjacent residential neighborhoods would be. Obviously, the plan should precede the approval of any of the projects, but the planners apparently disagree. Construction of the very large Agensys building on Stewart, south of Olympic, is already underway, and the Lionsgate HQ, at Colorado and Stewart, has been approved.

When residents ask about the state of the area plan, as they are wont to do, the planners tend to change the subject. By now, it seems to be a point of honor that they neither talk about, nor acknowledge that the area plan should precede individual project approvals.

Residents have asked repeatedly that the Bergamot area plan be given top priority, but the requests has been ignored, as have critiques of individual projects. Five of the seven Council members — Mayor Richard Bloom, Mayor Pro Tem Gleam Davis, Bob Holbrook, Terry O’Day and Pam O’Connor — have taken campaign contributions from developers, and they stopped pretending to listen to residents’ ideas or demands some time ago.

There are more planners than ever, and they all have impressive, if incomprehensible titles, but apparently no one is in charge of planning the planning process, much less establishing priorities.

It’s as if a tornado were gathering size and speed and heading this way, and the professionals are too busy creating lovely power-point presentations to notice the rising commotion.

If you don’t believe it, check out the comments of residents of Santa Monica Canyon and Pacific Palisades on the draft-EIR for the California Incline reconstruction, which we’ve posted.

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