Tough Choices
By Frank Gruber
For public meeting junkies, Thursday evening presents a tough choice:
attend the unveiling of Marcerich's proposal to remake Santa Monica
Place, or the meeting in Cheviot Hills about the route of the Expo Line?
The Macerich meeting takes place in the mall, on the first floor (space
#189 - Macy's wing) from six to eight. The developer along with city
staff will present the new plans to redesign the mall as an open-air
shopping center, connected to the Promenade and the local grid of streets.
The Expo Line meeting takes place in the gym of the Vista del Mar Child
& Family Services center, 3200 Motor Avenue, from 6:30 to 8:30.
Current thinking is that the terminus of the Expo Line will be located
at the current Sears auto center, between 4th and 5th along Colorado,
cattycorner from Santa Monica Place, so the two projects are related.
(For more information about Phase 2 of Expo, go here [http://www.buildexpo.org/phase2.htm]
Although I'm tempted to attend the Expo meeting by the prospect of
watching a NIMBY explosion -- local residents going crazy over the prospect
of trains using a railroad right of way through part of their neighborhood
-- I'll probably choose the meeting and the issue that is literally
closer to home -- Santa Monica Place.
There I will shed a figurative tear for the 400 units of housing that
won't be built, but that's all. I always believed [http://www.surfsantamonica.com/ssm_site/the_lookout/columns/FrankGruber/FG-2005/01_2005/01_17_04_Follow_the_Money.htm]
that the big plans for the site were farfetched, given the cost, to
the City's redevelopment agency, of digging a giant hole for underground
parking. The financing might have worked, but it would have involved
the agency making a huge commitment of future tax revenues to pay off
the bonds.
That's a strategy suburban fringe cities use to attract sales tax revenues,
or L.A. uses in downtown L.A. to trigger mega-projects like L.A. Live,
but it's not Santa Monica's style. Not these days at least, as opposed
to 30 years ago when the City put Santa Monica Place together and built
the parking decks for the developer.
Today the City Council for political reasons doesn't want to appear
to subsidize business, so it needs to make its subsidies look indirect
and generalized, e.g., by building more downtown parking structures
not tied to a specific development. That these unneeded parking spaces
undercut the rationale for building Expo seems not to occur to anyone
in City Hall.
But that's an irony we don't need to get to in this column. It's ironic
enough that while Santa Monicans -- even most of our local NIMBYs --
are impatient to get Expo to 4th and Broadway, to get those commuters
out of their cars, we turned our collective back on a basic premise
of progressive urban planning -- transit-oriented development. Four
hundred residences across the street from a light rail station would
be just what the good urbanism doctor would order.
But that doesn't mean apartments and condos won't be built there --
in ten or 20 years. One of the virtues of the new plan is that it begins
to unscramble the super-block the redevelopment agency assembled in
the 70s to build Santa Monica Place. In the future the various separate
properties -- the two department stores, the two parking decks, the
pieces of the mall -- will be separately developable, and the site can
evolve organically, rather than convulsively.
The controversy over the Expo route -- whether to pass through the
southwest edge of Cheviot Hills west of Motor (for about half a mile
on the old railroad right of way) or to run the trolleys around Cheviot
Hills on the busy boulevards of Venice and Sepulveda -- comes down to
one word: speed. The longer route will add about five minutes to a trip
going past Cheviot in either direction.
Those minutes are precious if Expo is to be successful, because trip
time is nearly everything when it comes to presenting mass transit as
an alternative to driving. Comfort is important, as is price, but time
is how most people with choices evaluate their transit options.
Whether my wife, for example, will use Expo to commute to her job at
USC, or whether moviegoers and shoppers from Culver City and places
east will use Expo to reach the Promenade, will depend on how long the
trip takes versus driving, and five minutes will be crucial.
Meanwhile, the hysteria gripping Cheviot Hills is -- hysterical. It's
the whole litany of NIMBY fears -- more traffic congestion, crime and
graffiti, danger to schools, not to mention declining property values.
None of which have ever been associated particularly with light rail,
except, in many instances, in inversely.
If you haven't seen the Expo right of way through Cheviot yourself,
you may not be aware of how big it is. At places it's 200 feet wide.
It's been used for railroading for a century or so. I recommend taking
a look at the "Light Rail for Cheviot" website [http://www.lightrailforcheviot.org/coppermine/index.php];
there is not much commentary, but the pictures and maps are great.
And you might want to attend yet another meeting. Monday evening, Mar.
19, the City of Santa Monica will host a public meeting (at the Virginia
Ave. Park community room, from 6:45 to 8:30) to discuss the development
of a bicycle and pedestrian path on the portion of the Expo right of
way that is within Santa Monica, from the eastern limit of the City
to 17th Street. The plan for this bikeway is that it will extend all
the way to downtown L.A. along the Expo right of way in coordination
with the light rail line.
Someday residents of Cheviot Hills could ride their bikes along the
tracks to tram stops at either Overland or National and hop aboard.
But that would kill their property values, I'm sure.
________________________________
Since I'm on the subject of public meetings, I may as well mention
that Eileen Fogerty, Santa Monica's Director of Planning and Development,
has announced three neighborhood workshops as part of the next stage
for updating the land use and circulation elements of the City's general
plan. The workshops are to discuss possibilities for "placemaking,"
or, as the City defines the term, "The integration of planning
and people to create a place that is ideal in which to play, work and
live."
Here is the schedule:
Pico Area: Mon., Mar. 26, 7:00 - 9:00 p.m., Virginia Ave. Park, Thelma
Terry Room.
Wilmont/Mid-City Areas: Wed., Mar. 28, 7:00 - 9:00 p.m., Lincoln Middle
School cafeteria.
Ocean Park/Sunset Park Areas: Thurs., Apr. 5, 7:00 - 9:00 p.m., Olympic
High School cafeteria (721 Ocean Park Blvd.). |
