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Downtown Development: The Train has Left the Station and is Arriving Soon
I left Monday night’s public meeting about downtown development standards around 9:00 and so I didn’t hear all the comments, but I’ve been thinking a lot about what I heard. The open mic format...
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Fact: for 20 Years There has been Little Development in Santa Monica
I’m still thinking about that big meeting a week ago Monday on downtown development. When planning staffer Francie Stefan was describing, in remarks before the microphone was opened to the public, the...
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Money Isn’t Everything
On Saturday I co-hosted with former Santa Monica Mayor Mike Feinstein a forum to discuss whether Santa Monica should relax the limitations on building height that it enacted in the ’80s. Because of...
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For Poorer and for Richer
Two of my favorite Santa Monicans to argue or agree with are former mayors Denny Zane and Michael Feinstein. (But it’s better when they agree with you.) The two of them will always let you know exactly...
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Some are brave. I’m just curious.
In Santa Monica politics, you’ve got to be brave to support a planning staff recommendation, and I have to extend the profile in courage award to former mayor Mike Feinstein, who did precisely that...
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An emerging consensus on what to build in Santa Monica?
After six years of communal agonizing over the LUCE and then another five spent on a new zoning code to implement the LUCE, is there finally a working consensus on what projects can be built in Santa...
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Not-inspirational: more on the Downtown Community Plan
In my rant a few days ago I promised (threatened?) to come back with substantive analysis of the Downtown Community Plan (DCP), which the Planning Commission will review at its meeting Wednesday night....
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More on Santa Monica’s DCP: discretionary review and parking
As I’ve written in two recent posts, tomorrow night the Planning Commission will review the Santa Monica Downtown Community Plan (DCP). After staff makes revisions to the current draft, the City...
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The DCP on its final stage
After, in words taken from the staff report, “nearly six years in development” (not too much longer than it takes to get approval to build an apartment building!), Santa Monica’s Downtown Community...
View ArticleSix years of process, and then . . . boom!
At the City Council meeting last Tuesday night on Santa Monica’s Downtown Community Plan (DCP) the ironies abounded. As planning staff has told us many times, the DCP is the result of six years’ of...
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