Target: The Final Shot

By Jorge Casuso

An overflow crowd of residents -- most of them sporting big, round "YES" for Target stickers -- packed the City Council chambers Tuesday night to argue the merits and drawbacks of building a new 162,000-square-foot department store in the heart of downtown.

The council meeting kicked off the final round of a two-year process that generated a rich debate on Santa Monica's future and culminated with a weeklong lobbying campaign by Target and its supporters. The council members, who gave little indication of how they might be leaning, likely will end the process with a final vote on Thursday.

As more that 70 members of the public watched the testimony on TV screens in the City Hall lobby and the upstairs hallway, many of the 100 scheduled speakers urged the council to green light a project they said would bring a much-needed affordable shopping venue to the increasingly upscale downtown.

"My kids grew up with clothes from Target. All our appliances are from Target," said Morris Levin. "We no longer have affordable places. It (the Promenade) is set up for yuppies, not for senior citizens."

"I don't shop at Banana Republic. I've never shopped at Bebe, but those stores represent something I aspire to," joked George George, referring to the upscale clothing stores, one of which only sells women's apparel on the Promenade.

"When it comes to spending my hard-earned money, I go to Target and the 99 Cent store.... and they don't sell clothes," George said. "We do something for affordable housing, but where are they (the low-income tenants) supposed to shop?"

Several of the supporters, many of whom were senior citizens, threatened to vote against council members who opposed the three-story project at the old Henshey's store site on the corner of Fifth Street and Santa Monica Boulevard.

"I live in a senior building with 200 others and it would be a Godsend for us," said Ester Bernstein. "I voted for you. If you want me to vote for you again, vote for Target."

Opponents, some of them Target shoppers, extolled the benefits of the Minnesota-based department store chain but countered that the traffic it would draw would outweigh any benefits the project might bring to an already snarled downtown.

"I don't have anything against a Target per se, I just can't think of a worse location," said Jessica Frazier, who wondered how the department store would load and unload merchandise in the narrow downtown alleys near residential buildings.

Planning Commission chair Kelly Olsen ran a videotape he produced for the meeting. The tape showed traffic backed up at key Santa Monica intersections, all of them outside the downtown, then concluded with images of shoppers at the Culver City Target store loading large purchases into their vehicles, some with difficulty.

The video countered images displayed earlier by Target representatives showing New York City department store customers taking the subway.

Target officials are making public transportation a key pitching point for the proposed store, integrating some of its design features into those of the proposed transit mall and encouraging shoppers to take buses.

They also are appealing to a sense of nostalgia, with a new design that recalls buildings from an earlier time, when affordable department stores -- such as Woolworth's, JC Penney and Henshey's -- were staples of Santa Monica's downtown.

"We want to recapture a time when back-to-school sales meant a trip downtown, not out of town," said Craig Johnson, a local developer who is a Target consultant.

Johnson said the proposed store was "a uniquely Santa Monica Target," designed to be "100 percent green," using 100 percent green energy, solar-heated water and skylights, and recycling 80 percent of its waste.

Johnson also displayed a map sprinkled with red dots representing Target stores in the Los Angeles area. The map, he said, showed that Target was a "local," and not a "regional," store like Walmart, which was represented by only two dots on the map.

Countering arguments about traffic -- a key focus of the council's questions to City staff at the start of the meeting -- Johnson said that Target was willing to spend $600,000 to help mitigate traffic impacts by synchronizing the traffic signals at all the downtown intersections. Similar computerized censors are used in Pasadena and Burbank.

During a brief exchange, several Council members questioned whether Target officials weren't downplaying the number of cars the project is expected to bring in. Johnson, on his part, questioned the City's figures, which showed that the project would add 5,500 car trips on weekdays and 7,000 trips on Saturdays.

City staff is recommending that the council turn down Target's appeal of a 5 to 2Planning Commission vote to turn down the project. The main arguments in the staff report center on traffic.

"Even with all the efforts currently underway to improve traffic conditions in the downtown, this project will cause further deterioration of the downtown circulation network," the staff report concluded.

"While traffic conditions in the downtown are currently substandard at some locations, the proposed project would significantly exacerbate this situation at several key intersections," according to the report.

"Given the nature and location of these impacts, a 162,480 square foot destination retail store results in significant impacts to the downtown traffic system that cannot be mitigated even with signal synchronization."

Although the project requires no zoning variences or conditional use permits, staff is recommending that the council deny a development review permit at its meeting Thursday. If it approves the project, the council would have to determine that there are "overriding considerations."