[Editor’s Note: Second of two parts. See “Inspecting the Hayden Project from the Builders’ Perspective,” Nov. 29.]
“Even though there are people in the Hayden Tract who support our project, we want the rest of the neighbors to know that we are definitely listening to the criticism,” says Greg Reitz, a Culver City developer who is planning a four-story office building at the end of Hayden Place, 8665.
The building’s uniqueness lies in its greenness and the relatively new concept of selling business condominiums.
[img]43|left|||no_popup[/img]
From long ago schooldays, Steve Edwards, left, Greg Reitz, right.
After two recent meetings with neighbors who complained the green-oriented project is too tall and will generate an intolerable increase in traffic in their cozy neighborhood, Mr. Reitz and his partner, Steve Edwards, have pledged to practice sensitivity. Company policy, they say.
Seated around an outdoors table in Downtown not long after a breakfast rush at a restaurant, Mr. Edwards and Mr. Reitz form a new kind of building team in Culver City.
Tall, spare, youthful, articulate and smart — each of them possesses gifts that set the over-40 crowd to drooling down their wrinkly shirts.
Mr. Reitz and Mr. Edwards both tried out different and separate careers before reuniting in Culver City and forming their own company.
They come by their present careers honestly, once you know their pedigrees.
Deep Backgrounds
Mr. Reitz is practically a born environmentalist. He developed an awareness not long into his South Bay school days, which began in the late 1970s. His timing was good. That was when environment, as an important worldwide philosophy, was taking off.
Mr. Edwards’ family has been involved in real estate as long as he has been alive, endowing him with crucial instincts that cannot be gained in a classroom.
Barely more than a decade out of college, they are unlike their older, grayer colleagues in critical ways. They bring a hurricane of energy and a keenly acute understanding of — and love for — the environment that hardly was known to older generations.
They walk around Los Angeles with bursting minds that teem with imaginative ideas for simultaneously cleansing and reshaping its architectural contours.
There Are Two Sides
On the other side of the fence is a familiar Culver City face.
The residents’ side of the story is sure to be told because opposition to the project is led by City Council candidate Mehaul O’Leary.
Aware of missteps other developers have made in Culver City, Mr. Edwards says, “We want to be a good neighbor. The people who will be buying these commercial condos will have more concern for the neighborhood and its surroundings than they would if they were only leasing. We believe it is a good mix for the area.”
In the last half-year, the young men who were boyhood pals in Manhattan Beach, have seen one Culver City re-development fail under the weight of neighbor protest and another succeed when major compromises were rendered.
Not that they are ready to run a white flag up the pole.
“We want to build, basically, the building that we have,” Mr. Reitz said. “But we also want to address people’s concerns the best way we can. We want to reduce traffic. We want to make it appear in a way that is acceptable to (critics).”
Q. Where are you prepared to be flexible?
“We have a fair amount of flexibility in how we operate the building,” said Mr. Edwards, “in how we deal with parking and with traffic. Those were two of the three main concerns we heard. A woman whose name, I believe, was Donna, came up with a great parking suggestion we never would have thought of.
“Sony and Culver Studios, I think, have done it — with stickers on cars that are supposed to be parked in the building. If the cars are out on the street, they can be cited or dealt with appropriately.”
Q. What have you learned from the mixed experiences of other developers in Culver City?
“I know one thing we are not doing,” Mr. Edwards said. “We are not asking for a variance or anything out of the ordinary. 9900 Culver was asking for a zone change. Bob Champion (the now spurned developer of South Sepulveda Boulevard) was asking for a whole litany of things.
“We just want to build what we are allowed to build, according to the zoning. Within that, we would like to work with the neighbors to figure out how to mitigate the traffic and parking issues.”
Q. From other developers’ experiences, have you learned something to avoid or to include?
“We haven’t even submitted our application yet (to City Hall),” Mr. Reitz said, “and we already have gone out and met twice with the neighbors. I intend to continue doing that so when we do file our application, maybe the neighbors are not excited about it, but they will be able to live with it.
“We believe this is better than the official process where you make your application and everyone is caught by surprise — ‘Oh, my God, there’s a new development. What are we going to do now?’
“Our hope was to start a dialogue as soon as we owned the property and we had some ideas about what we wanted to do. That way, the neighbors’ ideas could be put into the project before we submitted it.”
Establishing a Pattern
Since the 35-year-old former schoolmates organized their Culver City headquartered company two years ago, REthink Development (rethinkdev.com), “this is typically how we do a development. We have a couple (projects) going on in Los Angeles. Well before we submit any documents, we meet with the Neighborhood Councils, as they are known.
“They have a more formal process. They have a board, which gave its approval. They are really glad we had an informal meeting with them. Then we had formal meetings well before we submitted. By the time we submitted, we had their approval.
“Our Los Angeles project is in a very impacted area. Right around The Grove. We are increasing the density. And we are building a residential and commercial, a mixed-use project. We had some opposition. We talked to the people, and they didn’t really oppose it after awhile.
“They had a 40-person board of directors, and they voted unanimously to support the project. First time that has happened.
“I would say that happened because we started talking to them very early, and we listened. We are doing a green project there, and they liked that as well.”
Q. Anything unusual about the green building you are planning at 8665 Hayden Pl.?
“”Yes,” said Mr. Reitz, whose environmental sensitivity and acuity date back to his South Bay days when his age was measured in a single digit.
“This almost certainly is the greenest building being built, being planned, in Los Angeles right now. We have a green design team that is dedicated to green design and is committed to lowering the impact of buildings. We are going about the process in ‘exactly the right way,’ starting early with all of the concepts for reducing the impact of the building.
“It will far exceed the performance of any office building out there in terms of energy performance, in terms of health and comfort.
“In addition, aspects with respect to traffic are important. Not by accident, we are close to the Expo line. That was a choice so people can use public transportation effectively. There is a host of other strategies we use to encourage people to use alternative transportation.
“For example, there are showers on every floor. If people ride their bikes to work, they have the option of showering before they go to work.”
Not Fashionable, It Is Policy
Mr. Edwards wanted his prospective Hayden Tract neighbors to know his team is not trying to be trendy.
“We are not doing green because it is the popular thing right now,” he said. “It is not a marketing thing we patch on top. Greg was the Green Building Advisor for the city of Santa Monica. So he has been in it for the last five years.
“Greg really was the green building pioneer in the Los Angeles area. He created the municipal program for Santa Monica. He helped do it with Los Angeles, and he has been advising West Hollywood.
“Green, and Greg’s background, are important for us and for our company.
“We don’t do anything but green developments. Even though everybody is now kind of getting into it, this is a real point of differentiation with us. We will always be leading the pack.”
