(Lauren Cole is Chair of the Brentwood Community Council Transportation Committee)
Bundy Village and Medical Park is a massive project that is proposed for the block northwest of Bundy Drive and Olympic Blvd. This 11-½ acre, L-shaped project would occupy a large portion of the block behind the Martin Cadillac dealer and FOX Television. The project area stretches from Olympic Blvd. on the south to Missouri Avenue on the north, and is between Bundy Drive and Centinela Avenue. The site was previously owned by the Teledyne Corporation, which operated several small industrial buildings on the property.
The developer of Bundy Village is proposing to build six new buildings which will add well over 1 million square feet of new construction to the area, and which would have a massively negative impact on traffic throughout the Westside. The environmental impact report for the project does not disclose the exact size, but I’ve seen estimates ranging from 1 million to 1.3 million square feet. To give you an idea of how big this is, the triangular Century City towers are each about 1.2 million square feet. Bundy Village would include medical offices, residential units (including some senior housing and some moderate income housing), retail, and a nine story parking garage.
A dozen homeowners groups from across the Westside, including the Brentwood Community Council, the Mar Vista Community Council, Westwood South of Santa Monica Homeowners’ Association, Friends of Sunset Park, the Pacific Palisades Residents’ Association, and the West Sawtelle Homeowners’ Association have all banded together to oppose this project as it is currently proposed.
What’s wrong with the project?
As currently proposed, Bundy Village is simply too big for that location. The traffic generated by the project, particularly from the nearly 400,0000 square feet of medical space requested, is simply too great for the infrastructure in that area.
As anyone who drives around the Westside knows, all of the major east-west thoroughfares and freeways from Ocean Park to Sunset are gridlocked during morning and evening rush hour, particularly when we are not in the middle of a recession. In the language of the Los Angeles Department of Transportation, most of the major intersections across West Los Angeles operate at a Level of Service “E†or “F†during peak hours, which means that we all sit in traffic and miss light cycle after light cycle because we can’t move. Caltrans has stated at meetings of the West Los Angeles Neighborhood Council that the I-405 and I-10 freeways in the area are “failing†and cannot handle the level of traffic that they currently get, and there is no way to widen them to handle more cars.
The developer of Bundy Village conducted a traffic study of the area as he is required to do, and has proposed a variety of changes to left and right turn lanes, signal timing, and reconfiguration of the on- and off-ramps to the 10 freeway at Bundy to try to improve traffic flow around the area. However, according to his own report these changes do not come anywhere close to mitigating the massive additional traffic impact that this project would have on the area.
In 2006, 24 hour traffic counts on Olympic Blvd. between Centinela and 26th Street showed 33,880 daily car trips. By the developer’s own study, Bundy Village would add 21,000 additional trips, an increase of over 60% to the existing traffic through the area. This does not include the impact of several other projects that have not been built but which are proposed for Olympic Blvd. west of Centinela. Even after reconfiguring the off ramps from the westbound I-10 freeway, cars exiting north onto Bundy would have to queue up for nearly a mile and wait 9 minutes just to get to the bottom of the freeway exit during peak hours– and then of course then they would still need to sit in gridlock to drive up Bundy to get to their final destination.
In the State of California, developers are required to mitigate the significant traffic impacts of any projects that they construct, to the extent feasible, although some large projects such as Playa Vista are allowed to proceed even though a handful of intersections cannot be mitigated fully and are considered to be “significantly impacted†by the project. The Bundy Village developer is requesting that he be allowed to proceed even though this project would leave over 20 “significantly impacted†intersections that cannot be mitigated in West Los Angeles after he implements all of his proposed mitigation efforts— and undoubtedly a large additional number of intersections in the surrounding areas that the traffic study did not address will also be significantly impacted. Never in the history of Los Angeles has a project been approved that left such a large number of unmitigated significantly impacted intersections.
The homeowners groups who oppose Bundy Village have asked Councilman Bill Rosendahl and the Los Angeles Department of City Planning not to allow this project to proceed until it has been downsized to a level at which the traffic impacts are thoroughly reduced. Hundreds of area residents, workers, and businesses have sent in emails and letters opposing the current project, and have called the Councilman’s office to ask that the project be downsized. These groups do not oppose developing a project on the site, nor are they opposed to using the site for medical offices, senior housing, or retail— although many question whether yet another supermarket is needed in the area, or whether this location really is “under-served†by medical facilities, as the developer claims, given that it is wedged in between St. John’s, UCLA, and their numerous medical office buildings west of the I-405.
Councilman Rosendahl has asked the developer to meet with a committee consisting of representatives from the homeowners groups to discuss downsizing the project to a level that is acceptable to area residents. The developer has refused to schedule that meeting.
The developer has also sent flyers to residents of West Los Angeles touting the large amount of open space that this project will offer to community residents. However, anyone who reviews the plans for the project can see that most of this “open space†is on the roofs of 6 to 12 story buildings not accessible to neighborhood residents, on the driveways into and out of the project, and on Olympic Blvd near Centinela, not exactly an ideal setting for hanging out and relaxing.
Current Status
The Los Angeles City Planning Commissions has passed the Bundy Village project along to the City Council’s Planning and Land Use Management (PLUM) Committee and recommended that the City Council approve a General Plan Amendment and changes to zoning that would be required to build the project as it does not conform to the current zoning for the area. No hearing date has been set, although it could be scheduled very soon in May or June.
What you can do
Please call Councilman Rosendahl’s office at 213-473-7011 (downtown) or 310-575-8461 (West LA), or visit www.stopbundyvillage.com or www.fightbundyvillage.org and click on “Send an email†to send in emails voicing your opposition. These sites give additional information about the project and will provide ongoing updates on its status. You can send an email to info@stopbundyvillage.com to get more information.
