In 2007, Texas developer Hines bought the 7-acre site of the former Papermate factory at 26th and Olympic in Santa Monica. The site was zoned for no more than 300,000 square feet.
At the time, Hines stated its intention to build a low-slung series of office buildings in compliance with existing zoning.
This made sense because the site is located directly across the street from the Water Garden on one of the most congested corridors on the Westside. The freeway access points at Cloverfield are already at functional collapse thanks to the nine million square feet of commercial space built in this area in the 1980s.
But after Hines began pouring significant sums into the re-election coffers of some sitting Santa Monica councilmembers, the project expanded exponentially.
Present plans call for 750,000 square feet of mostly office space.
Real world traffic impacts of a project this large will be severe, affecting the entire Westside. No amount of wishful thinking or future Expo line proximity can credibly reduce them.
The Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR) will be released later this month. All of us on the Westside need to work with our neighborhood associations, city councilmembers, as well as the City of Los Angeles’s responsible agencies, to respond to any deficiencies in its findings, especially inadequate and inaccurate analyses of traffic impacts.
The Hines project could be another Bundy “Village†in the making — it’s only a quarter mile away. In its current form, this project will create a traffic meltdown on the overly congested Westside.
We need to insist on a smaller project with a greater residential mix, one that works within the constraints of an already over-taxed infrastructure, and one that balances the needs of the community with the goals of the developer.
For more information:
www.smclc.net/Hines_list.html
Diana Gordon is co-chair of the “Santa Monica Coalition for a Livable City†(www.smclc.org), a nonprofit, volunteer group of Santa Monica residents concerned about unsustainable commercial development and the oversized influence developers have on our local elections.
