After Monday night’s not-quite-unanimous City Council vote approving the presumed last pre-construction addition to Downtown Parcel B, Mayor Mehaul O’Leary pronounced the decision “a huge success for Culver City.”
The Council endorsed a two-level underground parking garage from a northerly entrance, Main Street, to not only complement but relieve the pressure on the only other ingress-egress, Ince-Washington.
“I have looked at this project as it stood up until Monday night, and it was just going to be hell with only one entry-exit,” Mr. O’Leary said.
“The flow of traffic out of Parcel B, all of those cars landing on Ince – it was a worst-case scenario. I could not understand.
“The public wanted that particular project,” the mayor said. “It would not have mattered what iteration we went with. Ince/Washington was the only exit, that confined exit.
“There were only two ways you could go off the project –m one was straight on east Washington, and the other was to turn right onto Ince.
“Therefore you would be forcing anyone who wants to go west, toward the 405 Freeway, to turn right on Ince, to get back to Duquesne through Lucerne, and then who knows where else?”
Mr. O’Leary recalled that when Combined Properties was chosen as the developer, he and Seth Horowitz, general manager of The Culver Hotel, stood in front of the hotel and studied the single ingress-egress outlet.
“We agreed that a tunnel was needed right here off of Main Street” for traffic from the north and west. “There was plenty of space. We even had parts of this discussion behind the scenes to see if we could do something. What if we started the tunnel at Main Street and went under Culver Boulevard? That was eve talked about in the very beginning to see if there was any other way of getting an exit over there.”
A thundering change came, Mr. O’Leary said, “when Michael Hackman bought Culver Studios. He realized the value of that. He became the catalyst who got Combined Properties into discussions.”
Since Parcel B has been decades in the making, should the community be skeptical about its prospects of going forward.
Mr. O’Leary mentioned the anticipated single dissenting vote, cast by Councilperson Meghan Sahli-Wells.
“I accepted Meghan’s concern, ‘why are we rushing now? There is plenty of time. There is no need for this decision to happen three days before Christmas.’
“I understand all of that,” said the mayor. “But I firmly stated I will hang my hat on this. I will take the heat.”
