By Jorge Casuso
July 8, 2025 -- Advocates for a "Great Park" at Santa Moica Airport will rally outside City Hall before a highly anticipated showdown with housing advocates who will present a new poll to bolster their case at Tuesday night's City Council meeting.
The Council will pick a "preferred" scenario for the 197-acres of open land after the airport closes at the end of 2028 -- one scenario includes no housing, another adds "some housing" at the edges of the site, while the third features a “complete neighborhood.”
"The key question before City Council is whether the Preferred Scenario should include any uses that could or would require future voter approval, pursuant to Measure LC, or not," staff wrote in its report to the Council.
Approved by 60 percent of the voters in 2014, Measure LC prohibits "new development on Airport land, except for parks, public open spaces and public recreational facilities, until the voters approve limits on the uses and development that may occur on the land."
While the first scenario "reflects strong community support" and doesn't require a ballot measure, it also "presents significant financial challenges," staff wrote in its report to the Council.
"Without high-revenue land uses, funding would rely on limited on-site income from non-aeronautical sources."
The Council, staff said, "will have to decide if housing should be considered at all, recognizing that the City has not yet identified sufficient funding for capital infrastructure, development of income supporting uses, and ongoing maintenance and operations to achieve fiscal sustainability."
The city's major political players are divided, with Santa Monicans for Renters' Rights (SMRR) and the Hotel Workers Union backing housing on the airport site, while the local Democratic Club backs a "Great Park" with no housing.
At 4:30 p.m. on Tuesday, the Santa Monica Airport2Park Foundation and the Santa Monica Great Park Coalition, which consists of more than 60 organizations representing 20,000 participants, will hold a “Rally for a Great Park” in front of City Hall.
Coalition members "have submitted more than a dozen letters of interest to the City showing how they can use and support the park,” said Coalition President John Fairweather, who notes that five City commissions have passed resolutions supporting the plan.
Neil Carrey, president of the Santa Monica Airport2Park Foundation, said both groups believe a plan compliant with Measure LC "can be actualized with existing or predictable financing, so that planning for the park can continue and ground can be broken for the park when the airport closes.”
During the Council meeting, housing advocates will present a recent poll conducted for the hotel workers union, Unite HERE Local 11, that found that 65 percent of the local voters polled "want at least some housing built on the site."
The survey of 449 randomly selected voters taken between June 26 to July 1 in English and Spanish, found that 46 percent "support an even split between housing and open space" and 28 percent "support using the entire site exclusively for parks or open space."
The results differ from an online survey released by the City in May that found "community members were divided on whether or not they would like to see housing on the future site" ("Survey Shows Division Over Airport Housing," May 22, 2025).
The online survey that closed April 28 had 4,984 responses. Of the
approximately 2,000 who responded to the housing section of the survey, 53 percent did not support housing, 35 percent supported general affordable housing and 24 percent supported market rate housing.
While the community debate at Tuesday night's meeting promises to be heated, several Councilmembers have indicated where they stand on the issue of housing on airport land.
Councilmember Dan Hall made his position clear in an Opinion piece that ran in the Santa Monica Daily Press on July 2.
"On July 8, I will be voting to move forward with the Great Park upon closure of the Santa Monica Airport -- an open space plan that is Measure LC compliant, provides opportunities for recreation and the arts, and delivers on a promise I made to voters," Hall wrote.
At a packed candidates' forum sponsored by the neighborhood associations last September, Hall's three victorious running mates -- Councilmembers Ellis Raskin, Barry Snell and Natalya Zernitskaya -- all said they supported "returning airport land to a great park."
All four candidates also answered no when asked whether they would "allow housing/development on airport land."
The candidates elaborated on their positions in the endorsement Q&As with the Democratic Club last August.
"I support the will of the voters, and I agree with the plan to create a Great Park at the airport," Raskin wrote. "We will never have an opportunity in our lifetime to develop a continuous piece of land of that size into a park."
"Our main priority," said Zernitskaya, "should be community-serving uses including a grand park, arts & cultural, and educational uses as specified in 2014’s Measure LC, but I believe the community-serving uses include using a portion of the land for housing (especially deed-restricted affordable, mixed income, and/or social housing)."
Barry Snell said, "I support the airport becoming a park; however, maintaining a park is costly. So we must have solutions to generate revenue to support the park."
It is unclear whether months of community debate, resident surveys, public hearings and lobbying by major groups has further influenced those initial positions.
