RAND Report Rankles Some Council Members

By Teresa Rochester and Jorge Casuso

Swift and sharp was the reaction of city officials to a draft report on the environmental impacts of the RAND Corporation's proposed new headquarters released last Friday.

Officials fear the internationally renowned non-profit think tank will leave the area it has called home for more than 50 years, paving the way for a large company or companies to move into to the proposed 308,869 square foot building.

The basis of the fear is a proposed land use change that will broaden what is acceptable on the 3.68-acre parcel of prime real estate to include general office space. Currently the land, nestled in the curve on Main Street across from the County Court House, is zoned only for institutions such as RAND, a hospital or a school.

"We made the deal because we wanted to keep RAND as an institutional use," said Councilman Michael Feinstein, referring to the city's $53 million purchase of the other 11.3 acres of RAND property. "If they had developed the site for speculation, we would have bought the whole site.

"We made a deal to help them stay on site," said Feinstein, who helped spearhead the transaction. "It doesn't fit the logic of the deal we made in the first place."

"They want a long period of time to develop the building and not have it be for RAND but for any office space," said Mayor Ken Genser. "This sounds like they just want to go for real estate development. I think that's inappropriate."

RAND spokeswoman Iao Katagiri countered that the council members' fears that RAND is packing up are unfounded, adding that "we wouldn't be going through this headache if we didn't intend to stay.

"We don't mean it (the proposed change in use) to signal that we don't intend to stay," Katagiri said. "It's trying to demonstrate to our governing board that we are going about this in a business like manner, that we are covering our bases.

"It's a hypothetical study because our board was concerned we were going to make this big investment and there wasn't any exit strategy," Katagiri said. "If it [the draft Environmental Impact Report] studied some non-RAND use we could at some point in the future, if we need to sell the building or share the building, be allowed to do that."

Some council members also oppose the scale of the proposed six-story structure -- which resembles twin slices of glass and concrete shaped like a football -- saying it is too massive for its surroundings and does not include enough public space.

Officials note that the proposed building is larger and completely different in design than the other buildings along Main Street that make up the Civic Center area. So different in fact, that the city hired a design firm to come up with an alternate design for the building.

"I think what RAND seems to be preparing is clearly not in the spirit of the Civic Center Specific Plan," Genser said. "It's a single huge volume rather than a broken-up, stepped-back plan. It's the biggest building here. It reduces public space outside."

Katagiri notes that the design proposed in the Draft EIR has since been altered to answer some of the concerns expressed by city officials.

City officials are eager to move ahead with the relocation of RAND's headquarters in order to develop a plan for the city-owned land.

In mid-April, RAND turned over ownership of 11.3 acres of its prime property. The purchase, which took five months of intense negotiations, was approved by the City Council in late October. The civic center property, which sits between City Hall and the ocean, is expected to be used for parkland and affordable housing.

Discussions as to what will go on the city's new land will begin once the approval process - which involves trips before the Planning Commission, Architectural Review Board and City Council -- for RAND's new headquarters is completed.

The new headquarters for RAND, which has offices in Pittsburgh, PA, Washington D.C. and the Netherlands, will be 4.7 percent larger than the existing facility, which was constructed at the dawn of the Cold War more than 50 years ago.

While RAND's 1,044 member staff is not expected to increase, the larger facility would allow for an improved working environment and advanced technology that is too costly to support in the older building, which will be demolished once employees move into the new facility.

The draft EIR prepared by consultants for the city not only studies the impact of the proposed new headquarters with RAND as its occupant but also an alternate scenario that envisions the building, with its proposed 825 to 1,020 subterranean parking spaces, as general office space. The report finds that while both options would cause impacts on the surrounding area, the building as general office space would have the greater impact.

"There are a number of impacts in the EIR," said Deputy City Planner Andrew Agle. "Some of the biggest end up in the traffic."

Agle said that traffic would only increase slightly if RAND occupies the building because it currently employees and encourages a number of strategies to keep car trips down, such as carpooling and telecommuting. A large business or several small businesses on the site may not encourage such measures, thus increasing car trips.

Specifically the draft found that:

· The proposed project would have significant impact at two to six intersections, including PCH and the California Incline, Fourth Street and the Eastbound I-10 on-ramp, and Fourth Street and Ocean Park Boulevard.

The report found that if RAND occupies the building, car trips will increase by about 20 trips during peak morning hours and 10 car trips during peak evening hours. If the building is used for general office space, approximate car trips would total about 458 during peak morning hours and 426 trips in the evening.

The EIR recommends a number of mitigation measures to lessen any impact. They include a series of intersection modifications and the addition of various turn lanes on the affected streets.

·Regardless of who occupies the developed site, the project would generate significant neighborhood traffic impacts on fourth Street south of Pico Boulevard even after mitigation measures are in place.

·The project proposes to amend the Civic Center Specific Plan to remove the requirement that the development provide an internal public courtyard open to the public during business hours. The proposed project does call for a courtyard to be used by employees. "This is likely because of the often sensitive and confidential nature of much of RAND's research work," the report states.

The draft EIR recommends either amending the specific plan or allowing the courtyard to be open to the public.

·The new development may improve views because the current RAND building would be demolished and the proposed building would not have any adverse significant impacts on any identified scenic views of importance within the city.

The draft EIR also features an alternative building design applauded by critics who say RAND's proposed glass and concrete conception is too big to fit into the area.

"It's kind of an office park design instead of a more pedestrian friendly, human-scaled series of spaces envisioned in the specific plan," said Genser of RAND's design. "The city commissioned a design to show that other things are possible."

Hired by the city, Ventura-based ROMA Design Group developed the alternative 308,650 square foot, five-story building with three floors of subterranean parking. The report states that the alternative would result in fewer impacts than the proposed project in relation to consistency with the development standards of the area. Impacts such as those on the neighborhood, noise and traffic would be similar.

"We were taken by surprise," said Katagiri of the alternate design. "We were confused as to what the city's goal was in doing that."

Agle, the deputy city planner, said the alternative was designed to provide options to the various commissions and boards that will have to approve the project.

"What we did based on our sense of that project was when it went through discussion with staff and planning commission and council, that they would ask for a design that's more in keeping with the Civic Center Specific Plan," said Agle. "We wanted to make sure we analyzed that."