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Health & Fitness

Due Process Undone, or Take the Money and Run

Before Community Leaders join with City Planners to work on HUD Master Plan, City Council may go astray.


As with any process of governance, those governing have the choice of following due process or ignoring due process.   On Tuesday night's City Council meeting, the Council Members are being asked by the developer of the new Bergamot Transit Village to ignore due process.   

HUD Money

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Santa Monica was awarded a HUD grant of $652,500 to fund the creation of a Master Plan to “connect the Bergamot Station, Transit Village, and Mixed-Use Creative District to the new Exposition Light Rail, which will connect Santa Monica to the densely populated Los Angeles Westside, including Culver City, West Los Angeles, and Downtown Los Angeles.”  So far, we have no Master Plan.  Yet, on Tuesday, Hines Development, headquartered in Houston with assets “valued at approximately $23.7 billion” is asking City Council members to fast track the process. They want our representatives to abandon due process and direct staff to initiate the Development Agreement negotiation with them for the Bergamot Transit Village before the HUD-funded Master Plan is presented.

Due Process

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But there are laws that need to be followed.  State law mandates that a Traffic Environmental Impact Review be completed.  The LUCE mandates that the city develop a Circulation Element for the area and a zoning plan.  The fact that this project has been added to the City Council’s agenda suggests, “We don’t need no stinkin’ due process.  Let’s take the money and run.”  That's not supposed to be an option.

Green-Lighting 2-Sided Building

Yet, we saw an erosion of due process begin on July 26th, when the Lionsgate Project came before City Council.  Only 4 of 7 Council members were in attendance.  The plans presented showed only two sides of what should have been a four-sided building.  One can understand the problem that developer Jack Walter faced.  The east side of his building was supposed to be coordinated with plans from two other projects sharing making up the Mixed-Use Creative District east of Steward and south of Colorado.  None of the other projects had been drawn up.  Yet these plans were “green-lighted.”

When a film is “green-lighted,” the production company has final edit and oversees the project from beginning to end.  And it can pull the funding at any time.  But, with development, it is the developer who is providing the funds.  To “green-light” a project is, essentially, to give control over to the developer.

This action, taken by 4 members of City Council while others were away, essentially started the domino effect, where one project going forward knocks the next one going forward and so on. 

Change on the Horizon

In a move to support due process, the day after all of this took place, David Martin, the Interim Planning Director, met with community leaders representing all of the city’s neighborhood associations—Pico Neighborhood Association, Ocean Park Association, Friends of Sunset Park, Wilshire/Montana Neighborhood Coalition, North of Montana Association, Mid-City Neighbors, and Northeast Neighbors—to include them in the decision-making process.  The meeting was excellent.  Everyone attending felt that progress was made.  Yet, already, the approval of the Lionsgate Project suggested the city no longer saw the need to develop a Master Plan with the funds the city had received. 

One Flushed Down, Another Floats Up

With Tuesday’s Float-Up—the second one to be presented by Hines—many community leaders wonder why changes in attitude, expressed by David Martin and others at City Hall, have not changed how they deal developers' demands.  

The first Hines Float-Up of the Bergamot Transit Village was rejected by all members of the City Council for being hugely out of scale and very poorly planned.  In all, 13 specific objections were filed.  In evaluating the new proposal, the Planning Staff said that for only 1 of those objections was the “Issue Adequately Addressed.”  As one community organizer put it, “If this had been a college essay, the first grade was clearly a ‘Fail.’  According to any rubric, the plan is has been found ‘Inadequate.’  Yet after 20 pages of detailed objections to the plan, the report says that ‘staff recommends that the City Council authorize initiation of the Development Agreement negotiation and review process.’”  Some community leaders worry that working with the city is like healing a schizophrenic patient. Just as change seems imminent, the symptoms reappear.

Undead Developments Lurch Forward

Allowing two-sided buildings and half-baked projects to go forward calls to mind The Re-Animator, a schlock horror film (now brought back to life as a schlock musical, playing in Hollywood).  It's about a doctor who injects corpses with a serum that brings them back to life.  With developers, that serum seems to be money.  Promise to inject enough of it even into a project that seems Dead On Arrival and there is good chance members of City Council will declare, “It’s alive!  It’s alive!”

It is sad to imagine this may be the tragic tale of people so eager to animate their community that they bypass all the normal regulations for fear that the job might not get done.  To rush without judgment is to lose the opportunity we have. We need to build a fitting Gateway to Our City, one that reflects Santa Monica's character.  That is not what you see when you examine photos I have taken of the staff report showing "improvements" Hines made in response to Council critiques. 

Developing a Conscience

It's ironic that the community must place its hopes on a pro-development City Council with 4 of its members up for re-election next year.  Of course, that City Council rejected Hines outright the first time Hines brought an ill-considered plan before them.  They could surprise community activists again by rejecting the minimal changes offered this second time.  Would they put their political futures at risk by misusing funds provided to them by American taxpayers?  Or will they align themselves with the regulatory processes designed to protect communities from making careless mistakes that could cost them their future?

Community leaders hope that scheduling the Hines Float-Up was just a glitch, that the good will shown by David Martin in meeting with them will prevail, that Council Members will not negotiate with Hines until they have received the Draft EIR and a completed Traffic Management Plan and the HUD-funded Master Plan so they can proceed with zoning.  Only by following due process do we make certain that all our obligations are met and the best possible project is approved.

Add Your Comment to the Mix

Meanwhile, add your comments here or write an email to members of the City Council, council@smgov.net, to let them know your thoughts on this subject.

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