In their letter of support for the Miramar Hotel’s plans to double its size and substantially increase its height, the “Friends of the Miramar,” who number about 300, say that it will fulfill LUCE’s “vision of downtown Santa Monica as a vibrant mixed use place… enhance our downtown and make a gateway to the City…and make it relevant and competitive.”

At a hearing on the Miramar plans, Kathleen Rawson, who heads Downtown Santa Monica, Inc. (formerly known as the Bayside District), said that the Miramar’s massive proposal, which includes 6400 square feet of new retail space on Wilshire Boulevard, would add some much-needed “excitement” on the northern end of downtown Santa Monica, which has, she alleged, lagged well behind the southern end. A business owner seconded the notion.

The “new” Santa Monica Place (which is about the same size as the proposed “new” Miramar) is the primary basis for escalating action in the southern reaches of downtown. But that’s just the beginning.

Mayor Richard Bloom recently said that the primary purpose of “The Village,” now under construction in the Civic Center, is to house hundreds of new customers for downtown Santa Monica businesses. And, in four years or so, the last station on the Expo Light Rail will start disgorging 400 people every six minutes (or is it 600 people every four minutes?) on Bloomingdale’s doorstep.

At a recent Planning Commission meeting on the Esplanade that will be installed on the west end of Colorado and has been described asa “gateway” to the Santa Monica Pier and the beach, someone said that surely the Esplanade should be reconfigured so as to be a gateway to….yes…. downtown Santa Monica.

Neal Payton, the consultant in charge of preparing the latest downtown specific plan, has wondered out loud whether the last four blocks of Wilshire “need to be that wide.” It’s four lanes.

What Payton seemed to be getting at was that if the west end of Wilshire were reduced to two lanes, the newly widened sidewalks could be the site of all sorts of frivols and revels, i.e. excitement.

It would also create a perpetual traffic jam at what Alan Epstein, chief flack for the Miramar, had previously described as one of the world’s legendary intersections.Wilshire is, he said, a legendary boulevard, running straight .from downtown Los Angeles to the Pacific,
a legendary ocean.

Clearly, the notion that Downtown Santa Monica Inc. is the star of this gloriously eccentric beach town has seized the self-anointed
shapers and movers, but we know residents who’d rather eat glass than go downtown.

In fact, the beach is the real star, the primary fact of Santa Monica. and more beautiful, valuable, interesting and useful than Downtown Santa Monica, Inc. has ever been, or ever will be. But City Hall has always been baffled by the beach (what is it, REALLY?) so it has left it more or less alone – for which we should all be grateful.

But the planners continue to monkey maniacally with Downtown Santa Monica Inc., at the expense of everything else, and have, over the years, produced a masterpiece of congestion, high gridlock, a perfect money mill, perpetual tumult at the heart of Santa Monica.

And it’s growing, shouldering its way south into Ocean Park via the new Santa Monica Place, the Expo Light Rail station, the Esplanade, the $47 million Palisades Garden Walk, complete with a “water feature” across the street from that other water feature, the Pacific Ocean, and the Mega-Village in the Civic Center, with its shops, cafes, and shoppers.

Now, Downtown Santa Monica Inc. is pushing its way north into a hitherto serene residential neighborhood. A while ago, the City quietly extended the downtown border to California Avenue to include the Miramar, which now wants to double its size to 556,000 square feet, add several stories to its new complex, including a roof-top pool and restaurant, along with the new retail installation on Wilshire.
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The Friends of the Miramar believe its immense
proposal will “enhance downtown.” It won’t, of
course, it will simply enlarge it, and make a rather sizable and constant commotion in a previously peaceful residential neighborhood.

At tonight’s City Council meeting, neighborhood conservation districts will be discussed. Former Planning Director Eileen Fogerty spoke frequently of conservation, noting that 94 percent of Santa Monica would be unscathed by plans and planners

But Fogerty is gone, and the scathing is proceeding –in the Civic Center, at the Village Trailer Park, in the Bergamot area and at the Miramar…and it’s time for residents to tell the planners to get back in their boxes.