By Niki Cervantes
Staff Writer

June 5, 2015 -- Worried by the Planning Commission’s support Wednesday of a proposed 148-foot-tall mixed-use project Downtown, a slow-growth group said Thursday that it will rush a proposed initiative to put major developments directly in the hands of voters.

Members of Residocracy, an increasingly influential online group, are hurrying to finish the language of the ballot measure and start circulating petitions for signatures, said Armen Melkonians, the organization’s founder.

Melkonians said the proposed 420,000-square-foot development slated for nearly two blocks of City-owned property on Arizona between 4th and 5th streets, is not what residents want for their already congested downtown. (“Planning Commission Moves Ahead on Major Santa Monica Downtown Development,” June 4, 2015)

“I’m absolutely disappointed,” Melkonians said of the commission’s 4 to 1 vote to support the project with some proposed changes. “The commission is supposed to protect the community, and it actually went against its own charter’s cap of 84 feet” in height.

“There was a lot of public input, but the only voices that got through were from the developers and those with a pro-growth agenda,” he said.

The commission’s decision to recommend that the City Council enter into a development agreement with Metropolitan Pacific Capital (MPC) for The Plaza at Santa Monica, Melkonians said, shows residents that they won’t get a voice in such issues unless they get a direct vote.

“It’s clear it’s not what the residents want,” Melkonians said, referring to the proposed development.

Melkonians said he expects the initiative’s language to be finalized soon and that petitions would start circulating in the next month.  The process has taken time “because we’re all volunteers here,” he added.

Metropolitan Pacific Capital’s development would include a 12-story, mixed-use project with about 195 hotel rooms, 206,800 square feet of office space, 40,000 square feet of retail space and 48 affordable residential units.

The proposed project also includes 51,000 square feet of open public space and 1,143 parking spaces with a four-level below-ground parking garage.

Melkonians said Wednesday’s commission vote – with only Richard McKinnon dissenting -- provided a new sense of urgency to the effort to place a measure on the ballot.

Slow-growth and community groups are particularly worried because The Plaza at Santa Monica is one in a string of major developments proposed for Downtown, Melkonians said.

Melkonians said he collected 1,000 signatures online from residents opposed to The Plaza.

The Santa Monica Coalition for a Livable Santa Monica also has been critical of the proposed development.

“Although we are supposedly at the beginning of the Arizona approval process, our city elected and appointed officials have eagerly embraced it -- a lot like the original three 21-story towers proposal for Santa Monica Place and last year's Hines project,” said Diana Gordon, the organization’s co-chair.

“Those projects were defeated only because residents organized successful opposition to them, resulting in smaller, far superior projects with far fewer environmental and traffic impacts.”

Gordon has said the group will support a ballot measure similar to Proposition T in 2008, which placed a cap on the amount of annual commercial development allowed in Santa Monica.

Projects that surpassed the cap would have been required to come before the voters. Heavily outspent, the measure failed, garnering 45 percent of the vote, she said.