Koreatown community leaders gave Jill Stewart, campaign director for the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative, a tour of the site where a Beverly Hills developer is seeking to build a 27-story luxury housing project. It abuts low-rise apartments on streets that cannot handle the traffic of a mega-project.
“This project is the poster-child for our Neighborhood Integrity Initiative,” Ms. Stewart told six TV and radio reporters at an impromptu news conference after the tour. “This project should have died long ago at the hands of sensible planning. Instead it continues to live and pose a threat to Koreatown’s character, its traffic and its environment. When our ballot measure is approved by voters, projects like this will be stopped in their tracks.”
The Neighborhood Integrity Initiative is a proposed ballot measure to limit an over-development frenzy in Los Angeles that is creating overwhelming traffic gridlock and destroying the character of neighborhoods.
Proponents are obtaining the signatures needed to place the measure on the ballot.
Last year the Los Angeles city planning commission voted to kill developer Mike Hakim’s 27-story Koreatown project. One commissioner called Mr. Hakim’s mega-project “wildly inappropriate.” B
Mayor Garcetti, however, kept it alive by overriding the commission decision. He moved the project forward to a City Council vote. The project — aka Colony Holdings LLC — is awaiting a hearing before the Council’s Planning and Land Use Committee.
“For this 27-story project to be built, city officials will have to bend almost every rule in the book,” Ms. Stewart said. “But that happens every day at City Hall.
“The rigged system at City Hall rewards greedy developers. It is hard to beat. But the public can win and put new controls on reckless development if they vote for our measure when it gets on the ballot.”
Koreatown attorney and activist Grace Yoo said the project will result in the destruction of more than a dozen rent-controlled units.
“If this project is built, it will have a domino effect on the rest of the area,” Ms. Yoo warned. “All of these mom-and-pop apartment buildings will be swept up by developers. The working families living in them will be evicted, and the developers will put up luxury housing. I support the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative. We need it to save our communities.”
Reporters also heard from Wilshire Center Koreatown Neighborhood Council vice-president Aura Vasquez.
“I am not against all development,” she said, just irresponsible projects like this one.
“Unfortunately many developers don’t have the best interests of the community in mind. They are ruining our community and filling the streets with their traffic.
“In Koreatown we have a traffic crisis and a parking availability crisis created by too much development.
“When I get home from work, it’s often almost impossible for me to find a parking space. Many times I have to walk alone several blocks in the dark from my car to my apartment. That is scary.”
The Neighborhood Integrity Initiative would impose a two-year moratorium on all discretionary development projects. These are projects that require special handling, rule-bending and Council intervention to go forward.
Mr. Schwada may be contacted at john.schwada@gmail.com
