At the urging of City Councilman Kevin McKeown, the council took an unusual step Tuesday night to rescind its earlier approval of a development agreement for a major mixed-use project at Village Trailer Park.
The 4-3 vote does not kill the project. It does, however, reopen negotiations with the developer. Councilmembers want to secure more "affordable" housing at the project, called the East Village, which will replace 99 trailers at one of the last two remaining mobile home parks in Santa Monica.
In the now-voided development agreement, only 16 apartments of the planned 377 apartments and condos will be be deed-restricted for tenants with "very low" and "low" incomes.
"If we don’t have affordable housing built in this area… the people who work there won’t be able to afford to live there and they will become commuters—which is exactly the problem we’re trying to solve," McKeown said.
McKeown was able to secure support from the council's two new members, Ted Winterer and Tony Vazquez, and from Gleam Davis, who had voted against the development agreement in November. (Former councilman Richard Bloom had voted for the agreement and former councilman Bobby Shriver abstained.)
"We're headed in the wrong direction," Winterer said. The former planning commissioner's opposition to the development agreement centered primarily on it being approved before the release of the city's Bergamot Area Plan.
The plan is supposed to guide the city as developers propose changes to the former industrial areas near the Bergamot Arts Station. Its framework includes managing traffic and parking, urban design, land use, wages and housing. A final draft will be presented to the planning commission for the first time Wednesday night and to the City Council for adoption later this winter.
"Until we really have a handle on what’s going on in this area," Winterer said, "I just think it’s premature."
The draft was released Friday, three days after the council's approval of the East Village agreement.
It shows 45 percent of workers in the Bergamot area—which encompases the East Village—could afford to rent a home in Santa Monica and just 19 percent could afford to buy a condo. One percent could afford to purchase a single family home.
City staffers say to make "living in the plan a genuine choice for 75 percent of the employees," rent levels will need to be between $1,000 and $1,500 per month for a one-bedroom unit.
"Providing a stronger match between Bergamot workers and housing options may also be advantageous for businesses in the Bergamot area to attract and retain skilled workers, helping the creative industry cluster to remain and grow," they wrote in their report to the Planning Commission. Enabling "more of them to choose to live nearer to their jobs, thereby reducing congestion, commute time, and vehicle miles traveled."
The council's reconsideration of the East Village development agreement was supported by the boards of directors of the following groups: Friends of Sunset Park, Northeast Neighbors, Pico Neighborhood Association Board of Directors, Santa Monica Mid City Neighbors, among other local groups, including Santa Monicans for Renters' Rights.
"Affordable housing is so crucial to our city," said SMRR co-chair Patricia Hoffman. "We’re talking about working people here... we need to make sure we have enough work force housing for low income and very low income families."
Sue Himmelrich, a Santa Monica resident and attorney with Western Center on Law and Poverty, has argued the East Village development agreement violates Santa Monica's own Affordable Housing Production Program, a 2006 plan that requires new developments to provide, as a part of their projects, a certain ratio of affordable housing units to regularly priced units. She contends the project needs 70 affordable units, not 16.
But park owner and developer Marc Luzzatto said Himmelrich's calculations don't take into consideration concessions he has made, including the retention of 10 mobile homes and 40 parking spaces for the affordable units on a nearby parcel.
"We have been working on this for 6½ years," he said. "We spent a tremendous amount of money, a lot of blood sweat and tears negotiating the development agreement."
Newly-appointed mayor Pam O'Connor and council members Bob Holbrook and Terry O'Day voted not to rescind the agreement. The councilmen have supported the agreement because it provides substantial relocation benefits for the trailer park residents who will be displaced by the development.
"I’m very concerned the great benefit program… will be lost," Holbrook said. "And that really worries me."
Stay connected with Santa Monica Patch throughout the day on Facebook and Twitter. Subscribe to our free daily newsletter for email updates.
Gleam Davis made it clear she would not vote for it if it interfered with what she always calls when voting for development, "the integrity of the process" of negotiating development agreements. First off, the process has no integrity. The Planning Department meets with the developers month after month, with no record of what is said (including any inferences of future benefits, aka bribes), none of the other side there or even being told the meetings are taking place, and with the decision to approve really having already been made at what they call the "float-up," if not before that. The public never is part of the decision-making process. Second, there are no standards at all for what "community benefits," also aka bribes, have to be paid by developers in return for millions of dollars of increased value in their properties from getting higher density and heights, and reduced obligations, compared to what even the LUCE--a developer's dream--requires. Without standards, every property gets a case-by-case approach, and that's why we have such a mess.
She's talking about Community Corp of SM! That's the "non-profit" they funnel all their affordable housing through. The co-developer of the Village at SM, a luxury 300-unit condo development! The place with 3,000 people on the waiting list where no one with any mark on their credit or making less than the max for the unit will ever get a unit! Where restrictions on the number of people in an apartment and their pets are worse than in the open market! And where they treat you like scum if you dare to go to one of their informational meetings, yelling at people, insisting on their standing here, not there, and don't dare ask a question. This is to get you to know how "lucky" you will be if they "let" you rent an apartment, and how these Nazis are going to treat you as a tenant. Tenants at Mountain View Mobilehome Inn filed a $120 million claim against the City, which is their landlord from Hell. Now they'll probably get Community Corp or an offshoot of it, with interlocking boards in SMRR and the City departments. Hopeless.
We, however, are not willing to give up one of the 109 rent-controlled spaces for putting people's own owned homes on here. This is the last stand for low-cost HOME OWNERSHIP in SM, and we are not going to give it up. We prepared a case of first impression for the CA Supreme Court--where I worked as a law clerk--from Day One three years ago. We are not about to give it up in return for 10 trailers left on Stanford in a ghetto in the shadow of the Manor House without any of the great amenities--primarily the right to own and will our own homes in place and covered by rent control--which we have now. The reason people should join us is we are HOME OWNERS. We are home owners with special protections most home owners do not have. If we can be moved out to make money for developers and the City, no home owner in town is safe.
What I said above about no standards is really important. If every case can be decided in a vacuum, we are lost. Cumulative effects are never considered, and we have no input at the beginning when the actual decision is made, so we will be having one after the other after the other until the Airport is closed and that becomes Playa Vista North, and on and on. In the meantime, people who used to be developers (and will be again after they pay off their friends awhile to show they deserve to be VP of a big company rather than the small one they came from) are in charge of our planning, they are meeting with the Chamber of Commerce every month, and the City has a development partnership with the Chamber of Commerce! Last night the Council put through more money to promote tourism unanimously without one word of discussion. These people--some of whom are really good people--just know not what they do. But we can't forgive them without fighting against destruction of our quality of life.
Because my dentist practices on wilshire I had to partake a nightmare journey from the west to the east. The nightmare of cloverfield, the nightmare of trying to find a way out of traffic nightmare. I hate this bloody train who will not do one thing for the people living in the far east of Santa Parking Meter.
But look at the advantages we have. We can't be evicted in the meantime because we're covered by both rent control and the state Mobilehome Residency Law, both of which require good cause for eviction. Because we are covered by rent control, the developer can't reduce our amenities, which he has steadily been doing trying to get us to move. We plan class actions quickly as well as the long-term case against the development. He should be bankrupt by April and have to turn the Park over to us, since that is his only asset, and then we will have money to fight the City. Look at this listing in craigslist: http://losangeles.craigslist.org/wst/apa/3471694290.html Maybe someone wants to be our legal coordinator in return for living in Santa Monica. What an advantage to have housing we own here. We own our homes and finally know we have the right to rent them out or let other people stay in them, so we can use the very homes he is trying to bulldoze as a tool to fight this land speculator..
People need to know the decisions happen far earlier in the process than the City admits. SCAG has a definition of transit-oriented development, which is for properties within a half-mile of a station. VTP is .7 miles from the station, so they keep moving the station on their maps! Incredible dishonesty. The station was at Cloverfield and Olympic in LUCE, where there is to be a bridge across the street. That is all that makes any sense, given what would happen to traffic if Expo crossed the street at grade there. Now they are claiming the station goes all the way to 26th Street, which is three blocks. The other Expo intermediate stop stations are about 300 feet long, just a place for trains to stop, people to wait, tickets to be bought, not some gigantic three-block long thing.
I am so sick of all the new large and expensive apartments and condos going in without any consideration to the traffic and parking issue that plague the city right now. My only hope is that the council continue in a more positive less large development direction.