The battle for control of Santa Monica was unofficially, but emphatically declared at the February 8 Planning Commission meeting.

“Miramargeddon,” someone called it. Residents vs. City Hall.

It’s overdue. During the six years the revised land use and circulation elements of the General Plan (LUCE) were in the works, residents’ objections to particular projects, the City’s apparently insatiable drive for MORE and the growing gridlock were inevitably met by City officials’ bland assurance that the revised LUCE would solve everything.

Four years ago, the majority of the City Council, the City employees’ unions, the City Manager and Planning Director, a bogus committee chaired by former mayor Judy Abdo and future Council member Terry O’Day and armed with $700,000 from developers and some outright lies killed a residents’ ballot measure that would have limited new commercial developments.

A year and a half ago, the Council suddenly increased LUCE height and massing limits on proposed commercial projects a few minutes before it approved the final draft.

In ten years, the City Hall staff has doubled, though the City population hovered at 85,000 for three decades before inching up to an estimated 90,000 in the first decade of the 21st century. The median income of Santa Monica residents is about $43,000 — with 10.4% of the population and 5.4% of families below the poverty line. According to Jeff Segal’s analysis of the City’s byzantine payroll records, the median income of City employees is about $70,000, and they can retire at age 55 at 2.7% of their best year of pay, multiplied by the number of years they have worked for the city. Thus 30-year employees would retire at 81% of their best year of pay, for the rest of their lives (often 30+ years). And, of course, they can take a second job, at full salary, and qualify for more retirement benefits.

During the current economic crisis, some residents have lost their jobs or suffered a steep decline in income. City employees have not only kept their jobs, they’ve been given raises that residents have paid for via increased City fees and taxes.

The City with 2177 employees – is now the second largest employer in Santa Monica, topped only by Santa Monica College with 2187.

In the last two years, the City’s annual budget has topped half-a billion dollars. But the dramatic increases in City staff and revenue have not been reflected in improvements in residents’ quality of life — perhaps because, as the Transparency Project ’s research shows, five of the seven members of the City Council receive more and larger campaign contributions from non-resident developers and their associates than from residents. Only Council members Kevin McKeown and Bobby Shriver do not take donations contributions from developers.

For more than a year, virtually everything residents have supported has been rejected by the Council, and everything residents have objected to has been approved.

The City recently devoted an entire Council meeting to the concerns of the business community, but has yet to devote even a portion of a Council meeting to plumb the concerns of residents.

City planners and consultants repeatedly boasted that 94 percent of the City – the residential neighborhoods — would not be altered or diminished by LUCE. But, in this very small and virtually built out town, as we have seen again and again, additions or alterations in the commercial areas have repeatedly altered and almost always diminished adjacent residential areas.

While they worked on LUCE, City planners improvised, collaborating with developers on development agreements that generally gave developers what they wanted, in return for negligible or dubious “community benefits.”

Now that LUCE is in place, though the zoning code has not yet been revised to reflect it, when residents criticize proposed projects, they are told that the projects meet LUCE standards and goals, as Alan Epstein of Ocean Avenue LLC, an affiliate of MSD Capital LP, which has conjured the proposed Miramar “revitalization,” said at the Planning Commission meeting.

MSD Capital, LP, which has offices in London, New York and Santa Monica, is owned by Michael and Susan Dell (as in computers) of Texas. They have been described as “among the richest people in the world,” with a fortune estimated at $15 billion.

Miramargeddon. The Dells’ team of “world-class” architects and consultants has spent several years on what they call the ”Miramar Revitalization.” Ironically, the battleground, the block occupied by the Miramar Hotel, was originally the site of Senator John P. Jones’s house. Co-founder of Santa Monica, Jones made his fortune and his name in Nevada silver, and planned to build a railroad between the coast and downtown Los Angeles, but was run over by the very rich Huntingtons’ plans for their Southern Pacific Railroad.

One of the “Big Four” railroad magnates (the others were Crocker, Hopkins and Stanford) who built the transcontinental railroad, Collis Huntington had already laid Southern Pacific tracks down the coast with an eye to developing Southern California’s principal port here. To that end, he bribed officials from L.A. to Washington, but San Pedro was designated the port of Los Angeles. His nephew, Henry, inherited his fortune, became the largest landowner in Southern California and developed the Pacific Electric Railroad to serve and sell the land.

Jones subsequently formed a partnership with Robert Symington Baker, whose original plans had also fallen through, and founded Santa Monica. Jones was content to spend his time entertaining visiting dignitaries until his death in 1912. A local developer, Gilbert Stevenson, opened the Miramar Hotel on the 4-plus acre site and in 1924 announced plans for an 840-room hotel, but his plans came to nothing, and, in 1932, a bank took over the property. In the years that followed, the property changed hands several times, and other buildings were added –- most recently the two-story bungalows along the California Avenue side of the block. The enormous Moreton Bay fig tree, which was planted on the property by Jones and his wife, was designated a City landmark years ago.

In 2004, Dell hired Barry Sholem to run an affiliate of MSD Capital LP and find “high-yield real estate investments.” The former head of Credit Suisse First Boston’s “opportunity funds,” Sholem’s first investment for Dell was his $280 million purchase of the Four Seasons at Wailea, a luxury resort on the island of Maui.

Previously, Sholem led the real estate principal investment area and real estate investment banking on the West Coast for Goldman, Sachs & Co. and had national responsibility for real estate related entry-level investments and acquisitions in the hospitality industry.

In 2006, Ocean Avenue LLC, an affiliate of MSD Capital, LP, purchased the
Miramar. Though it has a long, distinguished history and its guest list over the decades could double for an international Who’s Who, Sholem and his associates have apparently opted not make the historic property the most prestigious hotel on the storied Southern California coast, but to demolish it and replace it with the most “luxurious” hotel.
(www.miramarrevitalization.com).

The “revitalization” includes demolishing virtually everything but the original six-story building at the northeast corner of the block and the fig tree, creating a one-acre “Miramar Garden” at the corner of Wilshire and Ocean, putting in underground parking for 485 cars and 6500 square feet of retail space on Wilshire, tripling food and beverage square footage to 12,000 square feet, possibly building 40 units of affordable housing on a parking lot across Second Street, and constructing a 550,000-square foot F-shaped complex that will include 120 condominiums, and fewer – 265 rather than 295 — but much larger and more “luxurious” guest rooms. One new 10-story, 104-foot-tall building will be located at the corner of Ocean and California Avenue, while a 134-foot, 12- story behemoth of a building with a swimming pool and restaurant on the roof will dominate the eastern half of the block and the area.

Twice the size of the existing hotel, and much taller, the proposed new Miramar, which is about the same size as Santa Monica Place, will create endless traffic problems, as its proposed new entrance will be on Second Street, and the mammoth buildings will cast long shadows every which way and effectively block cherished ocean views of all its neighbors — especially those on its the east and north sides.

In sum, the “revitalization” is, in fact, an enormous commercial project that would wreak havoc in a heretofore serene residential neighborhood.

Until recently, Wilshire was the dividing line between the “dynamic urban environment,” of downtown Santa Monica, but, quite possibly to allow the Miramar’s long-simmering plans to go forward, a while ago, the City quietly moved the line a block north to California Avenue, a serene residential street, with a median lined with trees running down the middle – from Seventh Street to Ocean.

In a perverse touch, the proposed new Miramar entrance on Second Street will permit people on the sidewalk to look through the hotel…to the massive
fig tree.

In a press release, Epstein said, “…our proposed revitalization plan will ensure that the Miramar regains its stature as one of the great coastal resorts in Southern California, while at the same time contributing to the dynamic mixed-use environment that the city hopes to create in downtown Santa Monica.”

Yes. Well, most neighbors of the Miramar have no desire to have “a great coastal resort” in their midst, much less contribute to “the dynamic mixed-use environment that the City hopes to create.“

Miramargeddon. More than 80 people spoke at the Planning Commission meeting. A number of them sported green badges that identified them as “Friends of the Miramar.” The Miramar has given them their own website and identified them as “community leaders…environmental… and housing advocates ” and so on. Beyond saying that the Miramar had long been a “good citizen,” and admiring the “revitalization,” the increase in City revenue it would generate and its cranking up of the north end of the “dynamic mixed use environment,” they didn’t add a lot to the discussion.

The project opponents, who wore red badges saying STOP, had a lot to say, and none of it was good news for the City or Miramar. Two groups of opponents – one with over 700 members, the other with over 200 hundred members – have already organized. Resident Robert Gurfield has created a website (www.savesantamonica.com) that illustrates the flaws in the project, and its gargantuan dimensions. Some neighbors hired a consultant to gauge the impact of the Miramar project on their property values. The consultant estimated a collective loss of over $70 million.

A lawyer representing the Huntley Hotel and writer-producer April Smith who has offices in a building whose 100-plus tenants are in the healing arts, both spoke against the dire impacts the proposed Miramar plan would have on their buildings, which are located directly behind the Miramar on Second Street. A spokesman for the Searise office building on Third at Wilshire reiterated the complaints about the massive Miramar shadow, and the loss of their tenants’ views of Palisades Park and the ocean beyond.

Many speakers’ complaints were more general. They cited all the problems the massive development would cause, but they also railed against what they saw as the City’s betrayal of the residents. Their anger and disillusionment were palpable.

It was 11:30 pm when the final speaker left the podium. The Commissioners decided to continue the meeting and their discussion, to Wednesday, February 22, 7 p.m., City Council chambers, City Hall.